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SUSAN TAMASI 
Director of Undergradute Studies
Sr. Lecturer in Linguistics, Program in Linguistics
Associated Lecturer, Department of Anthropology
Ph. D. in Linguistics
University of Georgia, 2003
OFFICE: Modern Languages Bldg, Rm 208
PHONE: 404-727-7843
EMAIL: stamasi@learnlink.emory.edu
Professor Tamasi, a specialist in sociolinguistics, began teaching in the Program in Linguistics in 2002.
Her connection to Emory, however, goes back to the early 1990s when she was an undergraduate pursuing a
major in Russian and a minor in Soviet, Post-Soviet, and East European Studies. She is widely recognized
by students and colleagues as a stellar instructor, and regularly teaches courses such as Linguistics 101
History of the American Languages, Linguistics 385 Languages of the World, and Linguistics 333 Language,
Gender and Sexuality. She also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Program in Linguistics.
Professor Tamasi's specialty is in American English dialects -- their structure, development, and
connections with social and political issues. Within this field, her research focuses on two primary areas.
The first explores the attitudes and perceptions that nonlinguists have about variation in language. Her work
in this area shows that people categorize their knowledge of language in patterned, culturally-determined ways
and that the conceptual organization of language reveals a complex, interrelated network of both structural and
social information. This information is used to examine the interaction between language attitudes and linguistic
prejudice and discrimination. She has also examined the levels of linguistic (in)security presented by speakers
in areas of stigmatized speech, such as the Southeastern United States and New Jersey.
Prof. Tamasi's second and more recent area of interest is health communication. She is presently participating
in a project on health literacy in collaboration with Sunil Kripalani in the Emory School of Medicine. In this study,
she is studying the impact of language and dialect variation in the administration of health literacy tests and during
interactions between health care providers and patients. For example, patients who use nonstandard, local
pronunciations are commonly viewed as not being able to understand basic health information or make appropriate
health decisions.
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