Susan Tamasi

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 Language & Literature. A recipient of the Emory Williams Teaching Award and the Emory Award for Advising, she is widely recognized by students and colleagues as a stellar instructor. She currently serves as the Director of the Program in Linguistics.

Dr. Tamasi's scholarly interests lie in the fields of linguistic variation and health communication. She examines the structure and development of American English dialects and their connections with social and political issues. Her research explores the attitudes and perceptions that people have about variation in language and the role language plays in prejudice and discrimination.

Her early research in health communication investigated the language used in physician/patient interactions and the effects of nonstandard dialectal variation in healthcare settings. Currently, she is working on two health-related research projects: The first, carried out through collaboration with GA Tech’s Institute for People and Technology & Emory’s Department of Anesthesiology, is the creation of an Augmented Reality (AR) simulation for training healthcare providers about decision making in the operating room. The second is an analysis of discussions about women’s health through social media platforms.