Trevor Johnston is an Australian expert on

Auslan Auslan () is the majority sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term ''Auslan'' is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is relate ...

. Johnston received his from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

in 1989 for his work on Auslan. Johnston was responsible for coining the term ''Auslan'', and created the first Auslan dictionary, which was also one of the first

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

dictionaries that sequenced signs throughout according to principles that were language internal - such as

handshape In sign languages, handshape, or dez, refers to the distinctive configurations that the hands take as they are used to form words. In Stokoe terminology it is known as the , an abbreviation of ''designator''. Handshape is one of five components o ...

. While Johnston's research focuses on sign languages, his interests within this area are broad. They include both public and academic contributions towards sign language documentation and description,

sociolinguistic Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...

variation,

language change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...

language policy Language policy is an interdisciplinary academic field. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard SpolskyRobert B. Kaplanand Joseph Lo Bianco ...

and professional development for teachers of the deaf and teachers of sign languages. Johnston has made an important contribution to developments in the emerging field of

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is the study of language, study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural ''corpora''), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feas ...

of sign languages. Johnston is a native Auslan user, having grown up with deaf signing parents and an extensive network of deaf relatives on both sides of his family.

Key Publications

(2008) Johnston, T. Corpus of grammar and discourse strategies of deaf native users of Auslan (Australian Sign Language), Endangered Languages Archive, SOAS, University of London. http://elar.soas.ac.uk/node/3. Public access from 2012. (2007) Johnston, T., & A. Schembri. Auslan (Australian Sign Language): An Introduction to Sign Language Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2003) Johnston, T., & A. Schembri (eds). The Survival Guide to Auslan: a beginner's pocket dictionary of Australian Sign Language. Sydney: North Rocks Press. (1989) Johnston, T. Auslan: The sign language of the Australian deaf community. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney, Sydney.

References

External links

* http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_human_sciences/linguistics/linguistics_staff/professor_trevor_johnston/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Johnston, Trevor Living people Linguists from Australia Year of birth missing (living people)