This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge’. It’s been lightly edited to reflect the Auslan used in the interview. Watch the bilingual Auslan/English video episode here, and listen to the audio only version here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

L: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch. I’m here with Dr. Gabrielle Hodge who’s a deaf researcher and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She specialises in research relating to d/Deaf people, signed languages, and communication, and has worked with Auslan and British Sign Language (BSL) in Australia and the UK. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about how we bring stories to life. But first, if you’re listening to this episode in the normal Lingthusiasm audio feed or reading the transcript, you are missing out. This episode is in Auslan and English. We’re working with an interpreter, Julie Judd, so you definitely want to see the video version to see the full interview with Gab. You can see the video with captions at youtube.com/lingthusiasm. If you’re already seeing my face, you’re in the right spot! It’s thanks to our patrons that we’re able to do these occasional video episodes. To become a patreon, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hello, Gab, welcome!

Gabrielle: Hi! Hi, everyone.

Gretchen: Thanks so much for joining us.

Gabrielle: Ah, thanks for having me. I would like to, before we start, just acknowledge the Country and where we are at the moment is at La Trobe University Bundoora campus. It’s beautiful Wurundjeri country. I want to pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Gretchen: Thanks for sharing that. My first question is “How did you get into linguistics?”

Gabrielle: Wow! A big question. I think that I began my journey into linguistics when I was at school. Originally, I was very enthusiastic about plants. Things like biology, the life system, how things grow, and how we’re all connected. I thought I might become a nurse. So, I registered in a course, and then I pulled out because there wasn’t any role models. Deaf nurses were not there. I felt that I couldn’t do that and dropped it. In a few years, I went to work, realised as a deaf person seeing a world very differently, it was very different from being in school, being in the big wide world, and communication was very difficult. There were many barriers. I started to get interested in language, communication, speech, and sign. I started to think, “Okay, I want to go into a university course and look at linguistics.” Auslan being my language, I wanted to bring those two together. I enrolled here at La Trobe University way back.

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