Gestures: every known language has them, and there’s a growing body of research on how they fit into communication. But academic literature can be hard to dig into on your own. So Lauren has spent the past 5 years diving into the gesture literature and boiling it down into a tight 147 page book.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about Lauren’s new book, Gesture: A Slim Guide from Oxford University Press. Is it a general audience book? An academic book? A bit of both. (Please enjoy our highlights version in this episode, a slim guide to the Slim Guide, if you will.) We talk about the wacky hijinks gesture researchers have gotten up to with the aim of preventing people from gesturing without tipping them off that the study is about gesture, including a tricked-out “coloured garden relax chair” that makes people “um” more, as well as crosslinguistic gestural connections between signed and spoken languages, and how Gretchen’s gestures in English have been changing after a year of ASL classes. Plus, a few behind-the-scenes moments: Lauren putting a line drawing of her very first gesture study on the cover, and how the emoji connection from Because Internet made its way into Gesture (and also into the emoji on your phone right now).
There were also many other gesture stories that we couldn’t fit in this episode, so keep an eye out for Lauren doing guest interviews on other podcasts! We’ll add them to the crossovers page and the Lingthusiasm hosts elsewhere playlist as they come up. And if there are any other shows you’d like to hear a gesture episode on, feel free to tell them to chat to Lauren!
We’ve made a special jazzed-up version of the Lingthusiasm logo to put on stickers, featuring fun little drawings from the past 8.5 years of enthusiasm about linguistics by our artist Lucy Maddox. There’s a leaping Gavagai rabbit, bouba and kiki shapes, and more…see how many items you can recognize!
This sticker (or possibly a subtle variation…stay tuned for an all-patron vote!) will go out to everyone who’s a patron at the Lingthusiast level or higher as of July 1st, 2025.
We’re also hoping that this sticker special offer encourages people to join and stick around as we need to do an inflation-related price increase at the Lingthusiast level. As we mentioned on the last bonus episode, our coffee hasn’t cost us five bucks in a while now, and we need to keep paying the team who enables us to keep making the show amid our other linguistics prof-ing and writing jobs. In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about linguist celebrities! We talk about start with the historically famous Brothers Grimm and quickly move onto modern people of varying levels of fame, including a curiously large number of linguistics figure skaters. We also talk about a few people who are famous within linguistics, including a recent memoir by Noam Chomsky’s assistant Bev Stohl about what it was like keeping him fueled with coffee. And finally, we reflect on running into authors of papers we’ve read at conferences, when people started recognizing us sometimes, and our tips and scripts for navigating celebrity encounters from both sides.
Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
Episode 78: Bringing stories to life in Auslan - Interview with Gabrielle Hodge
Communicating is about more than the literal, dictionary-entry-style words that we say – it’s also about the many subtle ingredients that go into a message, from how you keep your audience in mind to how you portray the actions of the people you’re talking about.
In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr. Gabrielle Hodge, 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. We talk about Gab’s work analysing how people tell stories using a mixture of conventional signs (such as “book”) and enactment, aka showing what another person or character did using your body, such as depicting how someone is carrying a heavy book. We also talk about collaborations in multiple countries and assessing what makes a translation accessible to deaf people.
We’re excited to bring you this bilingual episode in Auslan and English! For the full experience, make sure to watch the captioned video version of this episode at youtube.com/lingthusiasm (and check out our previous bilingual episode in ASL and English with Dr. Lynn Hou while you’re there).
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about four science fiction books/series we’re read recently that project interesting future versions of English. We also talk about reading books set in the future but written in the past, and how several of these books now exist in a future that’s in some ways more similar to their imagined futures than the time when they were being written.
When we were organising the Lingthusiasm Liveshows in Australia
last November, I knew I wanted them to be as accessible as possible.
This included accessibility for Deaf audience members. In the end, we
ended up having Auslan interpreters at the Sydney show, and live captions at the Melbourne show. Doing the same show with two different set ups provided a really nice opportunity to consider the difference between them, and the advantages and disadvantages.
Live Auslan Interpreting - Sydney show
Auslan is the most common sign language in Australia (many Australian Aboriginal communities also have signed languages as well as spoken languages). For live interpreting long events like this you need two (or more) interpreters so that they can swap out every 10-15 minutes for a break, simultaneous interpreting like this is tough work! Interpreters are great because they can convey for a deaf audience things like tone and emphasis. I also like having interpreters at events because more visibility of the local/national sign language is a good thing in my opinion.
As you can see from the photo, interpreting like this only works if there’s room on stage and the audience is able to sit close enough. We provided the interpreters with all the summary text about the show, and key vocabulary we were using on the night. Unless you’ve planned it with them in advance, it’s generally better to not drag the interpreters into what you’re doing, but just let them get on with their job.
For our Melbourne show we had a hard time booking interpreters. We gave it plenty of time, but Friday night was a busy time and apparently there’d been a festival that week that meant a lot of interpreters were really busy. This isn’t a criticism of the booking agency, who were really great to deal with - it’s just a fact that interpreters are a group of specialists who are in demand. Thankfully, there is another option, which is to have someone create live captions, essentially providing a transcript of the speech as you go. I’ve been at events where the transcriptional is in the room, they have a special keyboard that lets them type as quick as speech.
Our captionist was able to do them remotely, thanks to the magic of the internet, which made things cheaper and easier for all involved (except the State Library tech team, who were amazing at getting things set up). As you can see below, the text is large enough for the audience to read. It’s not always perfect (note that it says below “Heathrow Airport” where Gretchen said “Harry Potter” - her Canadian accent occasionally stumped the captionist, as did names and languages we haven’t briefed him on), but frankly he did a better job of transcribing live than I often manage with a recording.
The advantage of captions is that they can be of use to members of the audience who are hard of hearing, even if they don’t sign, or don’t sign the local sign language (my grandparents were in the audience in Melbourne, and it helped them greatly). Some deaf colleagues I’ve talked to actually prefer captioning because it’s a faithful representation of what is being said, rather than an interpretation (which, even in the best hands, is always a mediation of the original message). It also made it much easier for us to work up the transcription for this episode!
Accessibility requires a little more thought, and a little more planning (we started discussion about interpreters more than 6 weeks before the event, and it still came to naught in Melbourne). Accessibility is always an ongoing discussion, you learn more and you plan better next time. For example, GiantDwarf had great wheelchair access for the venue, but they’re still working on bathroom access. There are accessibility needs that I probably didn’t take into account at these events, but hope to always do better.
Thanks
to The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University
for funding our interpreters and closed captions for these events.
Thanks also to our amazing Syndey interpreters Amanda Galea and Chevoy Sweeney and our Melbourne Live Captions arranged through Auslan Connections.
There is now a publicly accessible signbank for American Sign Language (ASL)!
You can search for ASL signs by using English key words, and if you create an account you can get more information about each of the signs. This video from the site gives some more information:
The ASLSignbank joins similar websites for other signed languages, including:
The Signbank is essentially a dictionary of signs for each of the languages. Each website was set up by a different team at a different time, and have slightly different layouts and functions.
You can see that there are some signs that are similar across languages, e.g. the sign for tree in ASL and BSL looks similar to each other, but different to Auslan, while the sign for dog is different in all three (ASL, BSL, Auslan).
Just as any other dictionary won’t teach you about how to stick words together to make sentences, these Signbanks won’t teach you the grammar of each of these languages - but if you’re learning ASL, BSL or Auslan they’re a great way to look up vocabulary!
Reference
Hochgesang, Julie A., Onno Crasborn & Diane Lillo-Martin. (2018) ASL Signbank. New Haven, CT: Haskins Lab, Yale University. https://aslsignbank.haskins.yale.edu/
I saw this poster on a colleague’s office door and wanted it immediately. It’s a stylish presentation of the Auslan manual alphabet and counting, with written English letters.
From the Vivid Expressions website:
We have begun to expand the Vivid Expressions range to include New
Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). Our products are produced by Deaf artists,
graphic designers & language advisers. Our products make great
purchases for families using or learning Auslan or NZSL, for a range of
ages and abilities.
The website also includes I ♥️ Auslan stickers, alphabet cards for children, and puppets with hands that are gloves for parents or children to use to make the puppet sign. You can even commission a deaf artist to draw your portrait with the optional inclusion of your sign name.
I don’t usually go in for TED talks, but I’m a big fan of Drisana Levitzke-Gray, and this video gives you an insight into the challenges that people who are deaf or hearing impaired face from birth. The majority of people who are born deaf have hearing parents (95%). The current medical system treats deafness as a problem to be overcome, rather than providing new parents with options, or the support of the Deaf community.
In this short video Drisana is (as always) an articulate advocate for Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and the need for better attitudes and access.
If you need reminding of the privileges that being hearing affords, check out the tweets on the recent #HearingPrivileges hashtag, and maybe follow a few of the great people on there.
[Thanks to Adam Schembri for letting me know about this video!]
During last week’s post about the Australian words survey I briefly mentioned The Linguistics Roadshow. From their website:
The Linguistics Roadshow is a fun and interactive showcase about the
science of language, presenting the big questions and the little-known
facts about language for high-school students. The Roadshow consists of a
team of linguists from the University of Melbourne and the Centre of
Excellence for the Dynamics of Language who are passionate about
bringing their knowledge about language and linguistics to rural
Australian high-school students.
The team have finished their 2015 Roadshow, having visited high-school students in Ararat, Murtoa, and
Dimboola, in rural Victoria, Australia. They report that the workshops
went very well, and that they really enjoyed visiting the schools. Students
were engaged during the opening mini-talks introducing linguistics,
global language diversity, and Australia’s rich linguistic history, and
then happily got elbow-deep in linguistics over the course of three
activity groups. They puzzled out Dyirbal noun classes, tried a wug test
while chatting about child language acquisition, and comparing
human language to animal and machine communication, and then hotly
debated lexical variants in Australian English while filling out a short
survey and looking at maps of variation across the country. These
activities gave them a taste of the sort of work linguists do, and the
types of data linguists collect to find out more about how language
works. The Roadshow team also learned a few new things, like the word
’florry’ - a local delicacy in the Horsham/Murtoa area - and the
preference for ‘bubble tap’ across western Victoria, quite different to
the mix of 'drink tap’, 'drinking tap’, and 'drinking fountain’ in
Victoria’s capital, Melbourne. The students each left with a showbag
full of goodies, including a DIY paper larynx, secret spectrograms, an
Auslan fingerspelling alphabet, and other bits of swag collected at the
activity groups, with the Team Potato Cake badges being
especially popular.
With any luck the Linguistics Roadshow will be hitting the road again in 2016. Until then their website has a whole bunch of great resources, links and information about studying linguistics.
Regular Superlinguo readers will recognise the team from their fantastic linguistics baking featured here; Katie made that amazing Australian Language Biscuit map, Rosey created this fabulous tongue and Jill sculpted this Rosetta Stone tribute. And, of course, Jill was my co-author on the LOLspeak work.
One of the regular tasks a sign language researcher has to engage in is dispelling myths and misconceptions (something we share with other linguists, including even those who work on English). There is a widespread lack of awareness of basic facts about sign languages, among the general public, in academia, and within signing communities themselves. As a result, busting myths, as I attempted to do in this article for The Conversation website, occupies a regular spot on a sign linguist’s to-do list. Like other introductory textbooks on sign language linguistics, Trevor Johnston and I devoted some space to discussing myths about sign languages in our 2007 book on the linguistics of Auslan. We tried, however, to acknowledge if there was any aspect of a particular myth that contained a grain of truth. For example, when it comes to the erroneous assumption that there is a single universal sign language, we discuss how, in fact, unrelated sign languages do appear to share more structural properties with each other than unrelated spoken languages. Similar uses of directionality with indicating verbs, for example (also widely known as ‘verb agreement’) have been documented for most sign languages.
Even within the field of sign language research, we sometimes encounter myths. One of my favourites is an often-repeated example used in the literature to illustrate form-meaning relationships in sign languages. Despite the fact that sign languages make greater use of iconicity than spoken languages, the particular patterns of iconicity can vary from one sign language to another. In the ground-breaking 1979 book by Ursula Bellugi and Ed Klima ‘The Signs of Language’, examples of signs meaning ‘tree’ in American Sign Language (ASL), Chinese Sign Language and Danish Sign Language (Dansk Tegnsprog) were discussed. The signs are shown in Figure 1.8 from the book below. This example was recently used by a sign language linguistics colleague teaching at the Linguistics Institute in Chicago, as mentioned in a tweet by Gretchen McCulloch.
While working on our 2007 book on Auslan, we were keen to make the same point about cross-linguistic diversity in iconicity. We considered using the same example, but I decided to verify it for myself as I had heard rumours that it wasn’t accurate. Although sources confirmed that the sign shown in ( c ) above did represent a possible lexical variant in Chinese Sign Language, I could find no colleagues who could corroborate the Danish Sign Language example ( b ). In fact, the online dictionary of Danish Sign Language provides only one variant, quite similar to the American Sign Language sign, as you can see below (the sign meaning ’træ’ on the right).
Anecdotally, I’ve been told by some colleagues that, while writing the book, Ursula Bellugi asked a Danish Sign Language consultant how to sign ‘tree’ in their sign language. She was apparently disappointed with the response, given its similarity to the ASL sign, and so she asked what other ways to sign it might be possible. It seems the consultant then produced a depicting sign construction, which traced out the shape of a tree’s foliage and trunk. The resulting sign was a description of the appearance of a tree, rather than a lexical sign meaning ‘tree’. It appears, however, that Bellugi misunderstood the example, and it got included as the Danish Sign Language sign ‘tree’ in the book. I’ve never actually discussed this story with Ursula Bellugi herself, however, so I don’t actually know whether this anecdote constitutes its own separate myth in the field. Regardless of the truth of this anecdote, however, the available evidence suggests that this particular example is a misrepresentation, and we should avoid including it our classes, talks and publications in future.
Adam’s been my go-to for sign language, and now he’s started a blog make
sure he’s yours too! I’m so glad that the Grumpy Sign Linguist has
started a blog, and on Tumblr too! Occasionally grumpy, but always
willing to patiently explain, follow Adam’s blog to learn more about
sign languages, Auslan, and the Deaf community.
The ACT Brumbies’ star David Pocock has introduced thousands of rugby fans to the Auslan sign for applause.
He also graciously explained this to columnist Miranda Devine who was a bit too fast to judge his hand movements, calling him a “tosser”.
Pocock happens to be a fantastically outspoken sportsperson - he’s a climate activist who participated in direct action blockades against coal mine expansion and recently made an on-field complaint against a fellow rugby player about homophobic slurs. (More on that here.)
We’re making Auslan *applause* signs in your direction, David!
We are absolutely thrilled that Drisana Levitzke-Gray was named Young Australian of the Year earlier this week.
Drisana has done amazing work promoting the importance of Auslan in Australia, and Sign Language all over the world.The awards website gives you an idea of her amazing work - here are a couple of excerpts:
The fifth generation in her family to be born deaf, Drisana Levitzke-Gray, is dedicated to helping other deaf people and advocating their human rights.
She promotes the deaf community as one without borders and one of rich language, culture, history and traditions. As the only Australian selected to attend the Frontrunners international deaf youth leadership course in 2012 and 2013, Drisana worked with communities in Europe and Samoa to expand leadership capacity and human rights understanding of deaf youth. I
Drisana is the embodiment of the concept of ‘deaf gain’, not ‘hearing loss’, inspiring the deaf community, encouraging others to accept diversity and promoting a positive image of deafness which says loudly and proudly: “it is OK to be deaf”.
Drisana was the first Auslan user to participate in jury duty in Australia - deaf people have been historically excluded from this civic role. It’s great that there are passionate and committed people like Drisana challenging these perceptions.
Applause Auslan-style for the fabulous Drisana Levitzke-Grey at the Australian of the Year ceremony (photo from the ABC):
Drisana has a YouTube channel where you can follow some of her adventures. We hope this inspires you to learn Auslan finger spelling or maybe a few key phrases - perhaps this is the year to take and Auslan short course!
This picture’s been doing the rounds for a few days - and now Adam Schembri has a great piece about it over at Fully (Sic).
On the relationship between Auslan signs and ‘flipping the bird’ Schembri writes:
As it happens, a small set of Auslan signs use the same hand configuration (i.e., the middle finger extended from the fist) as the one in the flipping the bird gesture. This handshape is combined with a range of movement types, for signs meaning variously ‘spare’, ‘vacant’ or ‘available’, ‘holiday’, ‘lazy’, and ‘stubborn’. None of these signs appear in any way to be related to the obscene gesture, and are commonly used by signers in the Auslan community today without any offensive connotation.
Check out the rest of the article, it’s a great weekend read!
This week (19th-25th of October) is the Australian National Week of Deaf People. There’s a lovely piece by Bethany Robinson on Ramp Up, celebrating Deaf culture. The Deaf In New South Wales community history website was also launched, which is very pretty and certainly worth a visit.
Deaf culture and language are vibrant, have their own rich history and should be given much more respect in our education system and society. I don’t lay claim to any kind of ongoing engagement with the Deaf community, but I still think it’s a travesty that we don’t teach at least basic Auslan to all school students in Australia. Even just knowing thank you, please and finger spelling the alphabet will mean that, in a pinch, you’ll be able to communicate with someone for whom Auslan is their first language.
This semester I’ve been teaching a ‘Language and Gesture’ university subject, and we’ve looked at the relationship between gestures and sign language. As a celebration of National Deaf Week I’ve turned a couple of my tutorial activities into classroom exercises, which you can find on the Superlinguo teacher resource page. The first looks at Auslan [pdf], and the second at the Alternate Sign Languages [pdf] used by a number of Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. Teacher notes are also available, but both make use of two of my favourite websites; the Auslan Signbank and Iltyem-Iltyem. The worksheets are probably best pitched to later secondary students, and are available under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to use them!
It was a real brain stretch for me to learn to count from 1-20 in the first level Auslan class. As we all learnt the hard way in Inglorious Basterds, the fingers you hold up while counting are deeply ingrained, and Auslan is slightly different to how I count. I use my thumb for ‘one’, while the index finger is used in Auslan.
Having got 1-20 sorted, I was glad to find out in this class that counting above this is just combining signs I already know. So for 25, you make the sign for 2, moving it away from you to indicate that it’s '20’ instead of '2’ and then make the sign for 5. For 26 you make the same sign for '20’ and then make the sign for 6. It was nice to know I can count all the way to 100 without much more mental effort than it took for the first 20 signs.
There was one twist on the pattern that I found really fascinating (and tripped almost everyone in the class up). For all the multiples of 11 the sign changes. Instead of making the sign for 20 and then 2 , or 30 and then 3, you simply make a small clockwise circle with the hand shape for 2 or 3. On the Auslan Signbank website it’s a flat movement - but this level of variation seems common. Perhaps this is a Victorian variation? Still, it’s a nice little ripple quirk in an otherwise very predictable system!
Last week I had my last lesson in my introductory Auslan course. I’ve probably learnt 100 basic signs, cemented my knowledge of the fingerspelling alphabet and come to appreciate some of the grammar (even if I’m terrible at using it).
I hadn’t realised how well I had internalised some of my Auslan experience until the other weekend. We were playing a very invested game of charades in the small hours of the morning (as you do) and my team were doing quite well.
Every time it was my turn, I kept getting in trouble though. This is because I kept mouthing the shapes of the words I was trying to mime - which is a basic feature of Auslan and not charades. Although it did mean that I copped a bit of yelling, I was quite pleased because this was a feature of Auslan that it took me a little while to feel comfortable using. I’ve now internalised that feature enough that I automatically do it, which is really great!
I had such fun doing Auslan 1 that I’ve signed up for Auslan 2 - which starts next week.
We learned our first compound word. The word for tomato in Auslan (well, the one that we learnt) is actually made up for the signs for ’red’ and ’ball’.
Some words don’t have signs!
There are some words that just don’t have their own sign. The word ham just uses the finger spelling for H-A-M (as you can probably tell from this, and ‘tomato’, we did a bit of stuff about making sandwhiches in class this week). I’m guessing that it’s possibly shorter words that this happens for.
Ummmmm
We learnt how to sign ummm! Very useful, I can start using it now for when I can’t remember a sign. I always find it’s these kinds of hesitations and fillers that make you sound more proficient than you really are!
Last class next week, already planning to do Auslan 2!
