Gallaudet University Documentation of ASL

What is GUDA?

The name Gallaudet University Documentation of ASL (GUDA) refers to both a research philosophy and a resource hub. It is inspired in part by other data efforts such as the Austin Principles of Data Citation, FAIR, and CARE.

The philosophy behind GUDA is that, in order to be useful for communities and for linguistic research, ASL materials must be accessible and searchable. This philosophy has been described in a 2021 paper published in Sign Language Studies. The vision is also displayed in a 2019 poster from TISLR in Hamburg!

The resource hub is the website you are currently browsing. This is a place where we link to materials that have been collected and processed under the GUDA umbrella. Not all of the materials linked here are fully accessible or searchable yet, but it is a work in progress.

Professor Julie A. Hochgesang in the Linguistics Department at Gallaudet University has been the primary architect of GUDA. On her website and on her figshare page, you can find a lot of resources that either directly support or are broadly aligned with the GUDA philosophy. Julie also expands on GUDA in this 2019 presentation:

Julie also explains this visual representation of the GUDA vision starting at around the 12:50 mark

You can cite the following materials to recognize GUDA efforts:

Occhino, Corrine, Fisher, Jami N., Hill, Joseph C., Hochgesang, Julie A., Shaw, Emily, & Tamminga, Meredith. (2021). New Trends in ASL Variation Documentation. Sign Language Studies 21(3), 350-377. http://doi.org/10.1353/sls.2021.0003

Hochgesang, Julie A. (2020). Gallaudet University Documentation of ASL (GUDA). figshare Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5223824.v5


Other materials that might be useful:

Hochgesang, Julie A., Lepic, Ryan, and Shaw, Emily (2022). W(h)ither the ASL corpus?: Considering trends in signed corpus development. figshare Preprint. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20394285.v1

Fenlon, Jordan, and Hochgesang, Julie A. (2022). Signed Language Corpora. Gallaudet University Press.