Rate My Professor Samantha Rarrick

Dr. Samantha Rarrick is a linguist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. She currently holds the position of Program Director for the Bachelor of Languages and Linguistics and is a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Rarrick obtained her PhD in Linguistics in 2017 and her MA in Linguistics from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Her academic career at Griffith is based at the Gold Coast campus in Arts Education 1 (G30) building.

Rarrick's research interests lie in language documentation, languages of the Pacific, and sign linguistics. She focuses on documenting and preserving endangered small languages, particularly sign languages in highly multilingual contexts. Her primary fieldwork is with Sinasina Sign Language (SSSL), an endangered sign language used by deaf and hearing communities in the Sinasina Valley, Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea. This work involves community collaboration to record narratives, build lexicons, and assess language vitality. She advocates for increased documentation of sign languages in PNG and the Pacific region.

Key publications include "Mouthings in highly multilingual contexts: typological observations from Sinasina Sign Language" (2025, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism), "Sinasina Sign Language (Chimbu, Papua New Guinea) – Language Snapshot" (2020, Language Documentation and Description, pp. 79-86), "Is Sinasina Sign Language an isolate? A call for further sign language documentation and description in Papua New Guinea" (2021), "Tok Pisin metalanguage: why is there no word for 'noun'?" (2024), "Contextual clips: Prioritizing neglected recordings in corpora" (2025, with Reza Arab), a review of "Nukna grammar sketch by Matthew A. Taylor" (2017, Oceanic Linguistics), and "Documenting Hawai'i's sign languages" (2016, University of Hawaii Press). Rarrick has also produced datasets such as the Samantha Rarrick Collection - Varieties of Sinasina. Her scholarship has been cited over 60 times according to Google Scholar. Additionally, she contributes to public engagement through podcasts like "Documenting Sign Languages" and co-develops courses for Papua New Guinean leaders on gender equality, development, sustainable inclusion (GEDSI), funded by Australia Awards.