About

I'm trained as a sign linguist with an interdisciplinary background in child language acquisition, linguistic ethnography, and documentary linguistics.

Previously, I was a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, San Diego, in the Communication Department from 2016 to 2018. My mentor was Carol Padden, the Dean of the Social Sciences of UCSD.

I received my Ph.D in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. My adviser was Richard P. Meier and my co-adviser was Angela Nonaka.

As an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, I studied comparative literature and women's studies. I decided to enroll in graduate school to study linguistics to better understand my own experiences.

Pronouns in English: she/they

On names: Legally, I publish by 'Lynn Hou', but elsewhere, I go by Lina. I find that it's easier for non-native English speakers to pronounce Lina.

My surname is pronounced like [hɔʊ] in Mandarin Chinese, but it is pronounced [hoʊ] in English in the U.S. and often mispronounced as [hu] or [haʊ]. My Chinese name is 侯詠絮 (transliterated as Hou Yong-Shi).

In American Sign Language (ASL), my name sign is one-handed version of 'laugh.' It is also fingerspelled, as it is custom with shorter names among deaf U.S. ASL signers.