Susan Gal

Susan Gal is the Mae & Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 1994. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (1976). Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, semiotics, and language ideology, with a particular emphasis on multilingualism, gender, and political rhetoric. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Austria and Hungary, examining minority language dynamics and sociocultural transformations in post-communist Eastern Europe.

Her major works include Language Shift (1979), Signs of Difference (2019, co-authored), and Languages and Publics (2014, co-edited). She has received prestigious awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship (2002) and the Edward Sapir Prize (2021). Her current research explores media and communication in post-communist Europe.

Gal teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on linguistic politics, language revitalization, expertise rhetoric, and narrative theory. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held multiple fellowships from organizations like the ACLS and NIMH.