Réka Benczes

Email:

rbenczes@iu.edu

Education

• Ph.D. in English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University (2005)
• University degree (equivalent with M.A.) in American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (2000)
• University degree (equivalent with M.A.) in English Language and Literature, Eötvös Loránd University (1999)

Research interests

• Cognitive semantics
• Applied metaphor research
• Word-formation and lexical creativity

Honors and awards

• 2023: Commemorative Medal for Exceptional Service, Corvinus University of Budapest
• 2023: Corvinus Research Excellence Award for Outstanding Research, Corvinus University of Budapest
• 2021: Corvinus Research Excellence Award for Outstanding Research, Corvinus University of Budapest
• 2019: Corvinus Best Paper Mentor Award, Corvinus University of Budapest
• 2011–2012: Group of Eight Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Monash University, Melbourne 

Recent publication highlights (past 5 years)

Books

• Kövecses, Z., Benczes, R., & Szelid, V. (Eds.) (2025). Metaphors of ANGER across Languages: Universality and Variation. Vols. 1-2. De Gruyter Mouton.
• Benczes, R., & Szelid, V. (Eds.) (2022). Visual Metaphors. John Benjamins.
• Benczes, R. (2019). Rhyme over Reason: Phonological Motivation in English. Cambridge University Press.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Szabó, L.P., Benczes, R., Burridge, K., Allan, K., & Lindgren, M. (2025). “Don’t worry, be a senior?” The metaphorical labelling of late-life depression in Australian news media. Text & Talk, (0). https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0200
• Benczes, R., Benczes, I., Ságvári, B., & Szabó, L.P. (2024). When life is no longer a journey: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the metaphorical conceptualization of life among Hungarian adults–a representative survey. Cognitive Linguistics, 35(1), 143–165. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2023-0050
• Kövecses, Z., Benczes, R., Rommel, A., & Szelid, V. (2024). Universality versus variation in the conceptualization of ANGER: A question of methodology? Russian Journal of Linguistics, 28(1), 55–79. https://doi.org/10.22363/2687-0088-34834
• Benczes, R., & Kovács, G. (2022). Palatal is for happiness, plosive is for sadness: Evidence for stochastic relationships between phoneme classes and sentiment polarity in Hungarian. Language and Cognition 14(4), 672–691. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2022.23
• Benczes, R., & Szabó, L.P. (2022). Onomatopoeia and metonymy. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 20(1), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00107.ben
• Benczes, R., & Ságvári, B. (2021). Migrants are not welcome: Metaphorical framing of fled people in Hungarian online media, 2015–2018. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(3), 413–434. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20042.ben
• Benczes, R., & Szabó, L.P. (2020). Brussels – boss, bully or the big brother? Jezikoslovlje 21(3), 345–369. https://doi.org/10.29162/jez.2020.11

Peer-reviewed book chapters

• Benczes, R., Kövecses, Z., & Szelid, V. (2025). Introduction: Domain, methods, research questions. In Z. Kövecses, R. Benczes, & V. Szelid (Eds.), Metaphors of ANGER across Languages: Universality and Variation (pp. 1–20). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730999-001
• Kövecses, Z., Benczes, R., Rommel, A., & Szelid, V. (2025). Conclusions. In Z. Kövecses, R. Benczes, & V. Szelid (Eds.), Metaphors of ANGER across Languages: Universality and Variation (pp. 1397–1435). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111559780-027
• Benczes, R., & Palágyi, L. (2024). Hungarian. In P. Štekauer & L. Körtvélyessy (Eds.), Onomatopoeia in the world’slLanguages: A comparative handbook (649–660). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111053226-054
• Allan, K., Benczes, R., & Burridge, K. (2021). Seniors, older people, the elderly, oldies, and old people: What language reveals about stereotypes of ageing in Australia. In A. Capone & F. Macagno (Eds.), Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics (111–125). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56696-8_6
• Benczes, R. (2020). Sound symbolism and semantic change. In: K. Allan (Ed.), Dynamics of language changes (pp. 253–264). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6430-7_16
• Palágyi, L., Tóth-Czifra, E., & Benczes, R. (2020). Introduction to Uralic languages. In L. Körtvélyessy, A. Bagasheva, and P. Štekauer (Eds.), Derivational networks in a cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 361–364). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110686630-036
• Palágyi, L., Tóth-Czifra, E., & Benczes, R. (2020). Derivational networks in Hungarian. In L. Körtvélyessy, A. Bagasheva, and P. Štekauer (Eds.), Derivational networks in a cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 385–398). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110686630-039
• Benczes, R. (2019). Morphology and lexical semantics. In R. Lieber (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.618