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DEBRA SPITULNIK
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology
Ph. D. in Linguistic Anthropology
University of Chicago, 1994
OFFICE: Anthropology Building, Rm 217
PHONE: 404-727-3651
EMAIL: dspitul@emory.edu
Professor Spitulnik has been an a active member of the Program in Linguistics since its founding
in 1995 and is also a former Director of the Program. Her areas of specialization include
linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, semiotics, comparative Bantu
linguistics, Bemba, sociocultural anthropology, national and transnational processes, and Media
studies. She regularly teaches courses such as Linguistics 330 Language and Culture and
Linguistics 340 Topics in Sociolinguistics (including courses on Discourse Analysis and
Ethnography of Communication), as well as other courses in Anthropology at the undergraduate
and graduate levels.
In her research, writing, and teaching, Professor. Spitulnik takes a critical social science
perspective, one which asks about the disciplinary practices that surround the production
and presentation of knowledge. Accordingly, research methods - as well as the processes of
induction, conjecture, and the entextualization of research data in ethnographic writing -
are central concerns. This approach is informed by her background in the philosophy of
language and linguistic anthropology. Along these lines, she takes a discourse-centered
approach to culture, viewing language and communicative practices as constitutive of culture
and the very practice of social science. In addition to these interests, her work has focused
on talk radio, multilingualism, codeswitching, problems of translation, lexical semantics,
corpus linguistics, and linguistic hybridity in relationship to identity and modernity.
Professor Spitulnik's current research focuses on media theory, media ethnography,
media-nation-publics, critical media literacy, discourse circulation, and discourse analysis.
This work investigates how media have the power to define reality and to set the tone for public
culture and political life. She is also concerned with the way that people resist or reshape media
messages and the intended functions of media. Her approach to the way that media work emphasizes
the discursive and semiotic processes of mediated communication, as well as the ethnographic
particulars of media production and media consumption.
Prof. Spitulnik's Anthropology Faculty Page
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