Bob Hodge

Bob Hodge’s discovery of Latin America (like Columbus he was unaware at the time that others had already discovered it) occurred almost by accident in 1990, where he was invited as a visiting professor to a Mexican research centre, CIESAS, to lecture on critical linguistics. He was impressed and excited by the quality of research doen by Mexican academics, much of it not known in the English-speaking world. As a social semiotician he was delighted by the richness of Mexican culture. The search for Atlantis found fascinating materials there. From the point of view of post-colonial theory he was struck by the complex similarities and differences between Australia’s treatment of its indigenous people, and Mexico’s for much longer. In both cases, many still wait for the ‘post’ to come to post-coloniality.

His work in Latin American studies has been done on Spanish language texts from Mexico, which he has been able to subject to close readings using critical linguistic methods of analysis. The Larrikin project includes Brazil alongside Mexico, and texts in Portuguese, where the collaboration of Fernanda Duarte has been essential to understand these.  Most of his work on Mexican themes involves collaboration or co-writing with Gabriela Coronado, some written in English, others in Spanish. The most important of their works has been their study of multicultural, post-modern Mexico and its relationships with USA, using chaos theory as the organising principle to inform a richer form of social semiotics, plus post-colonial theory in counter-point to theories of globalisation. The role of the net, and issues of cyberculture, were also important in the study.

In forming his pedagogic practice as PhD supervisor, students from Mexico have played an especially gratifying role, with exciting, innovative PhDs being done by students in Mexico (Dras Teresa Carbo, Irene Fonte, Rose Lema) and Australia (Drs. Gabriela Coronado, Claudia Magallanes, Laura Calderón de la Barca).