Isabel Ermida is Full Professor at the Department of English and North American Studies of the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal). She holds a PhD in English Linguistics, on a linguistic approach to literary comedy (2002), an area she has pursued by exploring the language of humour in non-literary texts as well, both contemporary and historical, especially news satire. She has also dedicated her research activity to the analysis of other forms of indirectness and concealment in language, as is the case of prejudice and discrimination in social media discourse, with a focus on the ideological construction of identity and belonging. By juggling social variables such as gender, ethnicity, age, nationality, and social class, her publications have applied input from impoliteness studies and speech act scholarship to the analysis of online conflict, aggression, and the expression of hate. Her latest international financed project delves into the language of online hate speech.