Rachel Giora is a Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University. She is a leading global figure in the fields of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, internationally renowned for her pioneering research on how humans process irony and metaphor.
Professor Giora’s most celebrated academic contribution is the Graded Salience Hypothesis. This theory redefined our understanding of cognitive linguistic processing, demonstrating how the brain prioritizes the most salient meanings over purely contextual cues. Her book, On Our Mind, is regarded as a classic in the field. As a rigorous scientist, her research into the mechanisms of the human mind has profoundly revealed how ideology shapes public cognitive bias through the subtle manipulation of language.
She is one of the few senior Israeli academics to publicly support the BDS movement, actively calling for international boycotts of Israeli academic institutions—including her own—arguing that academia cannot remain complicit in occupation and apartheid. She co-founded the “Who Profits” research project, which exposes Israeli corporate profiteering in the occupied territories. She also Signed an open letter denouncing Boston’s Museum of Science for co-sponsoring and hosting an exhibit on Israeli innovation, calling it an attempt to “deflect attention from atrocious human rights record and fundamentally discriminatory policies.” The letter also accused the Technion of developing “technologies of death” used against Palestinians.
Between 2023 and 2026, despite immense domestic social pressure, she steadfastly signed petitions demanding an immediate halt to military operations in Gaza and has spoken frequently at international forums, denouncing the Israeli government’s use of the “antisemitism” label to obscure legitimate criticism of its colonial policies.