David Cortés Ferrández’s research and teaching interests focus on sociolinguistics, including topics such as critical discourse analysis, bilingualism, other Hispanic linguistics topics and also discourses in the new media, especially on Twitter.
Professor Cortés is a Lecturer in Spanish and, at the same time, serves as the Second Language Pedagogy Materials Coordinator for Spanish. In his first year at Washington University in St. Louis, he is teaching linguistics and conversation-focused courses: Cultures and Communication in the Spanish-Speaking World (302) and Debating Cultures: How Spanish is Used (3220).
He earned his PhD at the University of Kentucky (2023), where he also completed a MA in Hispanic Linguistics after finishing his BA at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in his hometown Tarragona. During his teaching-assistantship, professor Cortés Ferrández received Teaching Awards such as the Hispanic Studies Teaching Awards in 2019 and the Outstanding Teaching Award of the College of Arts and Sciences.
In his dissertation, titled La nueva argumentació de Twitter: el cambio de paradigma retórica y la independencia de Catalunya en tuits, prof. Cortés Ferrández explores some of his topics of interest: Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse in the New Media or Catalan Studies among others.