Alessandro Duranti

Who is Alessandro Duranti?

Alessandro Duranti is Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA. Trained in linguistics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he studied general linguistics and ethnolinguistics with Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, and at the University of Southern California, where he specialized in Bantu languages under Larry M. Hyman, Duranti fully embraced an anthropological perspective on language through his collaboration with Elinor Ochs during and after their fieldwork in Samoa in 1978-79 and 1981. His dissertation at the University of Southern California provided a detailed ethnographic account of the role of traditional Samoan speechmaking in conflict management during the meetings of the village council, which he analyzed following Dell Hymes' model of speech events. After teaching at the University of Rome, Pitzer College, and the University of California at San Diego, in 1988 Duranti joined the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.