Patricia Amate Núñez is Ph.D. candidate in the Joint Program of Beijing Normal University and University of Almeria, a member of the Research Institute Centre for Communication and Society (CySOC) and of the Teaching Innovation Project “Theatron: Dramatisation as a Teaching Resource in Higher Education” at the University of Almeria. She is also a member of the China Contemporary Research Group HUM-1018. Her research interests include: sinology, gender studies, social linguistics. Her doctoral thesis focuses on a sociolinguistic analysis of the novel ''Dream of the Red Chamber''.