Roger J. Kreuz
Roger J. Kreuz | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Psychologist, academic, and author |
| Academic background | |
| Education | B.A., Psychology and Linguistics M.A., Cognitive Psychology Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology |
| Alma mater | University of Toledo Princeton University |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Memphis |
Roger J. Kreuz is an American cognitive psychologist and author. He is a Professor and an Associate Dean at the University of Memphis.
Kreuz is known for his work on pragmatics, figurative language, miscommunication, and stylometry. He is a fellow of the Psychonomic Society, the Society for Text and Discourse, and the Association for Psychological Science.
Education
[edit]Kreuz earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Psychology and in Linguistics from the University of Toledo in 1983. He went on to receive a Master of Arts in Cognitive Psychology in 1985, followed by a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology in 1987 from Princeton University.[1]
Career
[edit]Kreuz worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Duke University from 1987 to 1988. Between 1988 and 1993, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Memphis State University. In 1993, he was promoted to Associate Professor and became a Full Professor in 2000. He has held several administrative roles, including Program Director of the Master of Science in General Psychology from 2004 to 2014 and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychology from 2011 to 2014. Since 2014, he has worked as Associate Dean and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis.[1]
Research
[edit]Kreuz’s early work helped to establish the empirical study of verbal irony within experimental psychology.[2] In later research, he and Richard Roberts explored the discourse goals that are accomplished by using various figures of speech, such as smile, hyperbole, metaphor, and irony, among others. They found that metaphors and similes serve similar purposes, but that metaphors added more interest and have greater pragmatic force.[3] He also co-developed AutoTutor, a computer tutor that mimics human teaching by asking questions, analyzing student responses, and deciding next steps, such as moving on or giving hints based on the meaning of inputs and understanding the grammar.[4]
Kreuz’s psychological research has been used by researchers attempting to create automatic sarcasm detection systems.[5] He and his students have also studied how punctuation and emoticons affect comprehension in computer-mediated communication (CMC), and how lexical choices influence the perception of sarcasm.[6]
In 2020, Kreuz authored the book Irony and Sarcasm, in which he traced the history of the two terms, distinguished their types, explored their social roles and challenges (especially online), and considered whether “irony” might eventually be replaced by “sarcasm.”[7] In his later work, he and his students examined how sarcasm is signaled in natural conversation, finding that sarcastic speech has distinctive acoustic features (e.g., varied pitch, slower rate) and that these cues are more pronounced with friends than with strangers.[8]
Other works
[edit]In addition to his scholarly publications, Kreuz has also written about language and communication for a general audience. He has authored or co-authored seven books that have been translated into Korean, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.[9] Moreover, he has also contributed articles to The Conversation[10] and Psychology Today.[11]
Awards and honors
[edit]- 2014 – Fellow, The Psychonomic Society[12]
- 2020 – Fellow, The Association for Psychological Science[13]
- 2020 – Fellow, The Society for Text and Discourse[14]
Bibliography
[edit]Selected books
[edit]- Roberts, Richard; Kreuz, Roger (2015). Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language. MIT Press.
- Kreuz, Roger; Roberts, Richard (2017). Getting Through: The Pleasures and Perils of Cross-cultural Communication. MIT Press.
- Kreuz, Roger; Roberts, Richard (2019). Changing Minds: How Aging Affects Language and How Language Affects Aging. MIT Press.
- Kreuz, Roger (2020). Irony and Sarcasm. Essential Knowledge Series. MIT Press.
- Kreuz, Roger (2023). Failure to Communicate: Why We Misunderstand What We Hear, Read, and See. Prometheus Books.
- Kreuz, Roger (2023). Linguistic Fingerprints: How Language Creates and Reveals Identity. Prometheus Books.
- Kreuz, Roger (2026). Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots. Cambridge University Press.
Selected articles
[edit]- Kreuz, Roger J.; Glucksberg, Sam (1989). "How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 118 (4): 374–386. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.118.4.374.
- Roberts, Richard M.; Kreuz, Roger J. (1994). "Why do people use figurative language?". Psychological Science. 5 (3): 159–163. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1994.tb00653.x.
- Kreuz, Roger J.; Roberts, Richard M. (1995). "Two cues for verbal irony: Hyperbole and the ironic tone of voice". Metaphor and Symbol. 10 (1): 21–31. doi:10.1207/s15327868ms1001_3.
- Riordan, M. A.; Kreuz, R. J. (2010). "Emotion encoding and interpretation in computer-mediated communication: Reasons for use". Computers in Human Behavior. 26 (6): 1667–1673. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.06.015.
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Roger J. Kreuz". University of Memphis. Retrieved July 20, 2025.
- ^ González-Ibáñez, Roberto; Muresan, Smaranda; Wacholder, Nina (June 2011). "Identifying Sarcasm in Twitter: A Closer Look". Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies. Association for Computational Linguistics: 581–586.
- ^ Bowdle, Brian F.; Gentner, Dedre (January 2005). "The career of metaphor". Psychological Review. 112 (1): 193–216. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.112.1.193. ISSN 0033-295X. PMID 15631593.
- ^ Merav, Allouch; Amos, Azaria; Rina, Azoulay (January 2021). "Conversational Agents: Goals, Technologies, Vision and Challenges". Sensors. 21 (24). ISSN 1424-8220.
- ^ Joshi, Aditya; Bhattacharyya, Pushpak; Carman, Mark J. (26 September 2017). "Automatic Sarcasm Detection: A Survey". ACM Comput. Surv. 50 (5): 73:1–73:22. doi:10.1145/3124420. hdl:11311/1145142. ISSN 0360-0300.
- ^ Riordan, Monica A.; Kreuz, Roger J. (1 November 2010). "Emotion encoding and interpretation in computer-mediated communication: Reasons for use". Computers in Human Behavior. 26 (6): 1667–1673. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.06.015. ISSN 0747-5632.
- ^ Bai, Qiyu; Dan, Qi; Mu, Zhe; Yang, Maokun (15 October 2019). "A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives". Frontiers in Psychology. 10: 2221. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02221. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 6803511. PMID 31681068.
- ^ Caucci, Gina M.; Kreuz, Roger J.; Buder, Eugene H. (1 September 2024). "What's a Little Sarcasm Between Friends: Exploring the Sarcastic Tone of Voice". Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 43 (4): 486–502. doi:10.1177/0261927X241233001. ISSN 0261-927X.
- ^ "Roger J. Kreuz - Mississippi Free Press". Mississippi Free Press. 15 July 2024. Retrieved July 24, 2025.
- ^ "Roger J. Kreuz - The Conversation". The Conversation. 28 August 2019. Retrieved July 24, 2025.
- ^ "Small Talk and Big Questions". Psychology Today. Retrieved July 24, 2025.
- ^ "Roger J. Kreuz - Psychonomic Society". Psychonomic Society. Retrieved July 28, 2025.
- ^ "APS Fellows". Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved July 20, 2025.
- ^ "List of Fellows". Society for Text and Discourse. Retrieved July 20, 2025.