Biography of Trevor
Johnston
30th
September 1952
[Back to Trevor
Johnston’s homepage]
Family and language
I
have a native signing background. I grew up in a sign language using family
with two signing deaf parents, both of whom had deaf siblings and/or parents.
On my paternal grandmother’s side of the family deafness now extends over five
generations. I grew up spending a lot of time with the many deaf relatives I
had (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins). There are now 21 deaf relatives in
the family tree (7 of whom are deceased). I am not myself deaf (nor are my
sisters and brother). I feel that the signed language I grew up using (Auslan)
is just as much my language as is spoken and written English. Consequently, I
have little patience with anyone (hearing or deaf) who tries to delineate
ownership of signed languages along the lines of hearing status. In this sense,
studying, researching or describing Auslan is, for me, no different than
studying English. Nonetheless, English is my preferred language and it is the
language in which I am able to express my thoughts most comfortably and easily
(except, perhaps, when tired, angry or intoxicated).
The
journey to sign linguistics
I
have always been interested in language, social justice and knowledge (or, more
precisely and rather inelegantly, what it is that people think it is that
they know!).
It appears obvious to me that these interests stem from my family and life
background. With respect to language, the facility I had with Auslan clashed
with the strange beliefs most other hearing people had about signed languages.
With respect to social justice, I was offended by the discrimination and
unfairness that deaf people around me had to suffer. And with respect to what
it is that people think it is that they know, I was saddened by the ignorance
(and, especially ignorance of ignorance) many deaf people had about the world
they lived in, just as much as I was irritated by the ignorance of hearing
people about signed languages and deaf people.
After
a period of time pursuing philosophy, the history and philosophy of science,
and sociology (in order to find an explanation for this state of affairs) I was
drawn to Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and finally linguistics
during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the 1970s. While a
postgraduate student in a garret in Paris, however, I became disenchanted by
the non-scientific and non-empirical bases of some of these ‘isms’ and appalled
by the shocking ignorance of even the most supposedly learned scholars and
academics about signed language. Not surprisingly, I felt I knew more than just
a little about this myself.
After
a couple of years intellectual retreat teaching English as a second language in
Kuwait, China and Australia I yielded to the appeals of some of my deaf
relatives to ‘do something’ about the mess that the education of the deaf was
becoming in Australia (mainstreaming, oralism, Signed English, etc.) and turned
my attention to signed language. For me, the best way of ‘doing something’ was
to record and document Auslan. This pretty well determined my fate and I became
involved in sign linguistics.
Academic history
I
have worked in the area of sign language linguistics since the early 1980s. I
am the author of the first ever dictionary of Auslan published in 1987. As far
as I am aware, this dictionary was also the first of any sign language that
used the principle of organizing signs according to language internal
principles (such as handshape) absolutely systematically. By the end of 2001, I
had authored or edited three editions of this dictionary (in book and CD-ROM
formats).
I
have consulted with or advised sign language dictionary teams or publishers in
Finland, Denmark, Great Britain, South Africa, Germany, New Zealand, Canada,
and Hong Kong.
In
1989 I completed the first doctoral dissertation on the sign language of the
Australian deaf community (Auslan). I was instrumental in achieving the
recognition of Auslan in Australia through advocacy and lobbying on behalf of
the deaf community and by being involved with them (especially with one of my
deaf aunts, Dorothy Shaw, first president of the Australian Association of the Deaf) in the
Australian government Senate enquiry into a National Language Policy in the
mid-1980s.
I
have had a considerable record of public and academic presentations in the
field of sign linguistics, language policy, and professional development for
teachers of Auslan, both in Australia and overseas.
I
held a post-doctoral research fellowship and several large research grants from
the Australian Research Council in the Department
of Linguistics at the University of
Sydney between 1989 and 1996, and at the Royal
Institute for Deaf and Blind Children/University
of Newcastle in 1997 and ’98. I was a visiting senior research fellow at
the Institute of
German Sign Language (Hamburg University) in 1998.
I
was awarded an honorary doctorate by Macquarie University (Sydney) in 1997 in
recognition of his contribution to the field of sign language linguistics and
to the deaf community.
From
1999 to 2001 I conducted a research project through the University of Newcastle
in the area of sign bilingual education, evaluating the implementation and
effectiveness of the approach in the education of deaf children. The project
was funded by the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children and the
Australian Research Council.
I
was appointed Associate Professor in 2002. I currently hold an ARC Linkage
project grant with Adam Schembri
(as ARC post-doctoral research fellow) for three years (2003-2005) to study
sociolinguistic variation in Auslan and an endangered languages documentation
project grant from the Hans Rausing
Endangered Languages Project at the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London.
I
recently joined the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University (Sydney) as
Associate Professor in Signed Language Linguistics.
Last updated: 7 March 2006