All content © K.M. Jaszczolt       

Kasia Jaszczolt (pronounced: Yashchout), (D.Phil Oxon, PhD Cantab, MAE) is Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, University of Cambridge, and Professorial Fellow and Director of Studies in Linguistics at Newnham College, Cambridge.  She obtained Master’s degrees in English and Linguistics (1987) and Philosophy (1988) from University of Łódź, Poland (her home town) and D.Phil. in Linguistics and Philosophy from University of Oxford (1992), where she was a Rawnsley Scholar at St Hugh’s College and previously a Soros Scholar at Somerville College. She joined University of Cambridge and Newnham College in 1995 as University Assistant Lecturer and College Fellow and Tutor respectively. Since 2010 she has been University Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language and College Professorial Fellow.  She was President of the Cambridge Institute of Language Research and Head of Department of Linguistics 2009-11.  In 2012 she was elected Member of Academia Europaea and in 2015 obtained the title Alumnus VIP from the University of Łódź. 

She has published 6 authored books, 13 co-authored and co-edited books, and over 100 articles on topics in semantics, pragmatics and philosophy.  She is the author of a theory of discourse interpretation Default Semantics and a theory of human time as degrees of epistemic commitment to events. She has been a recipient of various research grants, among others from The Leverhulme Trust (Default Semantics 2003-4 and Expressing the Self: Cultural Diversity and Cognitive Universals 2014-17).  

Her current research focuses on two projects:  (i) the dynamic meaning in discourse and  (ii) the semantics, pragmatics and metaphysics of time.  Regarding (i),  she has been developing the new concept of a functional, dynamic  proposition (with Chi-Hé Elder) that captures meaning as it evolves in discourse but is also formalizable using contextualist assumptions about propositional content. This is part of an overarching project in metasemantics and metapragmatics that was partly funded by Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme. Concerning (ii), she is interested in the human concepts of time and time flow as externalized in different human languages, and the relation of the human perspective on time to 'real' time as a dimension of spacetime. She is collaborating on a project CHRONOS: Rethinking and Communicating Time with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

She is General Editor of a book series Oxford Studies of Time in Language and Thought, Oxford University Press (with Louis de Saussure) and a member of several editorial boards of linguistics journals, including Intercultural Pragmatics, Journal of Pragmatics, Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Kalbotyra, Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Studies in Polish Linguistics, Łódź Papers in Linguistics, International Journal of Language Studies, Folia Philosophica, and book series, including Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy and Psychology, Springer, New Waves in Pragmatics Research, Routledge, and Studies in Pragmatics, Elsevier. From 1996 to 2008 she was General Editor of a book series Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, Elsevier. She was also member of the Committee of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain (LAGB), 2003-2009.

• Available from 2023  from Cambridge University Press: Jaszczolt, Kasia M. Semantics, Pragmatics, Philosophy: A Journey Through Meaning

• Available from 2023  from Oxford University Press: Jaszczolt, Kasia M. (ed.). Understanding Human Time

• Academia site

• Short biography on the Faculty website

• Wikipedia entry

 Updated 24 June 2024