Leonor Ruiz Gurillo is Professor of Spanish Language at the University of Alicante. She has focused her research on various topics of Spanish phraseology, colloquial Spanish, pragmatics, irony and humor. Her works include the books Aspects of Spanish theoretical phraseology (Valencia, University, 1997), The phraseology of colloquial Spanish (Barcelona, Ariel, 1998), Locutions in current Spanish (Madrid, Arco Libros, 2001),.

Phraseology exercises (Madrid, Arco Libros, 2002), Pragmatic facts of Spanish (Alicante, University, 2006) and The linguistics of humor in Spanish (Madrid, Arco / Libros, 2012). She is a founding member of the group Val.Es.Co. (Valencia, Colloquial Spanish) coordinated by Antonio Briz and the EPA-IULMA research group. Likewise, it belongs to the IULMA (Interuniversity Institute of Modern and Applied Languages) and the IUIEG (University Institute for Research in Gender Studies).

Since 2002, she has directed the GRIALE research group that is in charge of the pragmatic analysis of irony and humor and their didactic application to the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. She is co-editor of the volumes Tell me how you ironically and I'll tell you who you are: a pragmatic approach to irony (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2009), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse (Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2013) and Humor, irony and textual genres (Alicante, University, 2013). She is editor of the collective volume Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends (Amsterdam, John Benjamins, in preparation).

It has more than 100 publications, many of them in high impact journals such as REL, Verba, RFE, Estudios de Lingüística, LEA, Oralia, Español Actual, RILCE, Onomázein, Quarderns de Filologia, Especulo, Contextos or Spanish in Context.