Ilse Depraetere

Ilse Depraetere is a Professor at the University of Lille, affiliated with the Faculty of Languages, Cultures and Societies and the Department of Anglophone Studies (Angellier). She has been active in academia since 2001, with a focus on pragmatics (both theoretical and applied) and corpus linguistics. Her research spans modality, tense, aspect, the semantics-pragmatics interface, and politeness theory.

• Co-directed an ANR-FNS project on English modals with the University of Neuchâtel
• Currently researching hedged performatives, healthcare communication, and online complaints
• International collaborations with institutions in Belgium, Austria, and the UK
• Co-authored a grammar textbook: Advanced English Grammar. A Linguistic Approach (Bloomsbury, 2020)
• Former Vice-Chancellor for research at University of Lille SHS (2016-2018)
• Deputy director of Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) research group (2018-2020)

Her publications bridge theoretical linguistics and applied research, with recent works exploring:

• Diachronic shifts in modal verb usage
• Corpus-driven analysis of politeness markers
• Computational approaches to modality
• Grammatical agreement patterns
• Pragmatic functions of hedged speech acts
• Temporal reference in modal constructions