Alexandria Miller: 0:01

Welcome to Strictly Facts, A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, hosted by me, Alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Hello, hello, big ups everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture. If you are no stranger to the podcast, you know we've had quite a few conversations on the various languages of the Caribbean, be that our vibrant nation languages, you know, papiamento in the Dutch Caribbean and so much more.

Alexandria Miller: 0:41

But how many times have you considered the languages that are not directly spoken, or at least in the way that I'm communicating and sharing with you now? We communicate in various ways, whether that is through body language, like the infamous Caribbean point, you know, the mouth point, if everybody knows what I'm talking about. If you know, you know right. But there are several other languages, including the wealth of Caribbean sign languages, the ways that they permeate throughout the region, the differences amongst them. These are all things that we will be sharing today with you. So this is an episode I really wanted to have and I'm really grateful to have Christy Ali joining me. Fellow grad student, you know we are in the trenches together. She's in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, santa Barbara. So, christy, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Let everybody know a bit about yourself, your personal connection to the Caribbean and, of course, what inspired your work and passion for Caribbean Sign Languages.

Kris M. Ali: 1:42

Thank you so much, alexandria. I'm so honored to be on Strictly Facts. Hi everyone. As Alexandria said, I am Christy Ali. I am a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of California, santa Barbara. I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. I was born there, I grew up there and I lived there until I moved for my PhD two years ago.

Kris M. Ali: 2:12

What inspired me is a long story but I'll try to make it as brief as possible. So I got into linguistics in my undergrad, which I'd never heard of linguistics before Previously. I was obsessed with learning languages and speaking languages, but I had never realized that there was a whole field of science where you researched how languages were used and how they worked and you asked questions about language and then you went and did research and found out the answers too, and that blew my mind and I always said I want to do that for the rest of my life. And, luckily for me, I went to the University of the West in East St Augustine for my bachelor's and my MPhil and, luckily for me, there were three levels of linguistics courses on sign languages, specifically on sign languages used in the Caribbean, taught by Professor Ben Braithwaite at UWE St Augustine. Half of the class was on the linguistics of sign languages, particularly Trinidad and Tobago sign language as it was set in Trinidad, and the other half was where we were taught how to use Trinidad and Tobago sign language by an expert deaf teacher, ian Dardulao. So that was my first foray into sign languages and through those classes both Ben and Ian were super inviting to come to community events, come meet more Deaf people. They were both very of the view that if you're learning a sign language, you should be embedded in the community, you should know Deaf people, you should sign with Deaf people, you should learn from deaf people.

Kris M. Ali: 3:45

So I went to a lot of deaf events and Ian is a very well-known leader in the community. He's an advocate for sign language rights for deaf people in Trinidad and Tobago and so through Ian I learned a lot about what the community wanted and what it was trying to do. It wants a legal recognition for Trinidad and Tobago sign language to improve primarily the education of deaf kids and deaf adults. There's a lot of issues that I could go into, but I'll keep it brief. That would be improved by recognizing that Trinidad and Tobago sign language was a real language and that it was the primary language of deaf people in Trinidad and the kids deserved access to it. So Ian had a lot of experience with that and he shared so many ideas with me, and so this was my first experience with community-based research and activism as well as opposed to, like, academic led research, and I understood the balance of both and how academia is not the x-face and how academia is actually always trying to catch up with community members. So, um, I was really really lucky that ben, my professor, was really encouraging to like follow what deaf people want and say so. Because of that, I really got roped into the community, and so I I think what really helps is having personal connections and making friends. You know, I suddenly became friends, good friends, with ian and other deaf people, and that was it. I was just continuing doing that.

Kris M. Ali: 5:18

I um, did a lot of volunteering and I eventually ended up working for a Deaf-led organization called Deaf Empowerment and Advancement Foundation, deaf. I worked for another non-profit that wasn't Deaf-led but served the Deaf population. I went on trips with Ian and Ben to different parts of the Caribbean to meet other Deaf communities, to do the same thing that we were doing in Trinidad there, to get to know what they wanted, what their situation was how well documented and resourced were their sign languages? How many protections and rights do they have? Because, for both of them, their passion wasn't just playing Trinidad. They wanted to do a pan-regional project and sharing resources across countries, making connections across communities and, yeah, just working together to achieve more. So that's the brief of it. It's been seven years since that started, so a lot has happened, but yeah, that's how I started my passion.

Kris M. Ali: 6:24

So, I'm doing the six.

Alexandria Miller: 6:26

Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm always intrigued and, just you know, really moved by how we get our starts. I think, especially when we get into grad school, it feels like you know, we're here and we're doing this thing and we're just trying to get to graduation and I always love that reminder of my why and other people's why, as we're, you know, moving through regularly, right, but I definitely want to kick us off. You know you touched a bit on. You know the need for documentation and other aspects of Caribbean sign languages as you were speaking. You know when I think of oftentimes you know whether that's English in the region, but you know that also applies to several other languages. We think of the ways that they came to the region. You know through colonization and you know which ones really get. Languages really got their start, whether that's, you know, through missionaries coming in, um and maybe, if that's not the case, but you know what really sparked their growth within the region because obviously you know deaf communities are across the world yeah, absolutely.

Kris M. Ali: 7:38

That's such a good question and I I do agree. Knowing the history really helps to know where we're headed. Um, so I'll start off by saying that you may have heard of American Sign Language. So people usually think of American Sign Language when they hear sign language, and a misconception people have is that there's one sign language. I hear this a lot. How come there isn't a universal sign language? And wouldn't that be useful to have a universal sign language? And I always try to tell people what about the diversity of spoken languages? The same way that spoken languages vary, are diverse there are 7,000 spoken languages at the moment so too do sign languages are diverse. So in terms of the origins of sign languages, to an extent they do mirror the origins of spoken languages. So you can imagine some spoken languages do descend from parents spoken languages. So, like French descending from Latin, for example, american Sign Language is a good example of that. American Sign Language descended from French Sign Language, and that's true of other European languages.

Kris M. Ali: 8:46

In the Caribbean and in the global south it's a bit different, because deaf education doesn't play as much of a role in the origins of sign languages. So there's lots of rural areas where the communities don't use the sign language in formal education. They use it outside of formal education. It emerged naturally in a community where there's multiple generations of a family, where there's multiple deaf people in different generations, and the language emerged out of a need to communicate with one or a few deaf people and then it was passed down to further generations and nativize. It was acquired natively by young people, so you could say it emerged organically. So that's one way sign languages can emerge, so without any influence of other sign languages.

Kris M. Ali: 9:36

But in the Caribbean and in Africa and Asia, american Sign Language does play a huge role in the emergence of new sign languages, through missionaries, as you identified, but also through the setting up of schools and the introduction of American Sign Language into the schools as the right or proper way of signing. So missionaries you're right, they have been in the region for many, many decades and they'll continue to be there Canadian and US missionaries who bring ASL and try to convert deaf people. And it's quite powerful because oftentimes deaf people are isolated in families who don't want to sign with them, in families who don't want to sign with them, but these churches present like an opportunity for social communication and having a social network because they're usually hearing people in those churches because they really want to convince you, who sign very fluently. So churches can be a huge factor for deaf people to make friends, to have a network. And then in deaf education, there were missionaries and proponents of ASL coming to the friends to have a network. And then in deaf education, there were missionaries and proponents of ASL coming to the region, particularly around the 60s, 70s and 80s, and introducing ASL to those teachers in the schools who were all hearing, by the way. So they don't know what the best way is right For deaf people to learn. They just know that, hey, this comes from the global north, it seems great.

Kris M. Ali: 11:05

And so ASL was introduced as a method that you can communicate with deaf kids and so that in the 60s, 70s and 80s presented a major shift for a lot of deaf communities in the Caribbean, particularly Trinidad and Tobago, guyana, grenada, a bunch of other, like Cuba, lots of other Caribbean territories. So if there was a sign language before, it was now being dominated by ASL and in some cases the former sign language has persevered. So in Trinidad and Tobago there's still Trinidad and Tobago sign language, which was what they were using before ASL was introduced. But of course, with ASL being introduced into the schools and schools being a major transmitter of language, the newer generation started using ASL and then, with the introduction of globalization and media, it's so dominant in media that's the main sign language that people see.

Kris M. Ali: 12:02

So I like to say ASL is like the English of sign languages, because it's not the most widely used sign language natively, but everyone knows some of it, everyone's aware of it, everyone knows how prestigious it is. So in some cases I would say it's really endangered a lot of the native sign languages. Yeah, so in total, american Sign Language, implantation of American Sign Language. But also there was some sign languages before that grew organically, some of which are very endangered. In the French Caribbean, french Sign Language is also used and in the Dutch Caribbean I know sign language of the Netherlands is also used. So it also depends on the colonial powers of those places as well, but I think ASL just permeates it everywhere.

Alexandria Miller: 12:52

In preparing for this episode, I was reading about the Cascade School for the Deaf in Trinidad, right. So for those who may not be familiar, it's the first school of the deaf in Trinidad, got started around the 40s. But what I found really interesting about that story was you know they're teaching students. You know the formalized ASL versions, right, but the students when they went back to the dorms were, you know, in effect, I'm not sure if it was called Trinidad sign language yet, but they were maintaining their own versions, et cetera. You made a really interesting point. You know, comparing, like the ASL to English, how do you see various Caribbean sign languages differing from those of you know the major, like colonial influences? So you know, for Trinidad or for Jamaica, it would be Jamaican sign language to ASL, but it could be, you know, dutch Sign Language and Curacaoan Sign Language. How are those similar? How are they different?

Kris M. Ali: 14:02

Yeah, well, first of all, I really like that you brought up Cascades School for the Deaf, because I do think those kids, when the teachers weren't looking, sign in their own way. That's what we now know to be Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language.

Kris M. Ali: 14:14

I find that such a beautiful act of resilience, and that's not just about those deaf kids. I think that caribbean people in general are very resilient about the use of language, that we have kept our ways of speaking despite hundreds of years of brutal colonialism. So I just want to say that that that's also something that really moved me. But yeah, I, when I say that ASL is like the English of sign languages, people like oh yeah, asl is like English, sign languages like English. I'm like no, no, I didn't mean that. I don't mean it's the same as English, because that's another misconception is that it's just English on the hand. Right, it has English grammar and that's not true. So they're very, very different from each other and sign languages vary different from each other as well.

Kris M. Ali: 15:01

So, as you mentioned, jamaica, so there is a national sign language called jamaican sign language and even though it's called jamaican sign language, there's variation within that. So jamaica is very big. Um has lots of different deaf schools it's just massive, right. So there's different. I mean, in different parishes people probably sign differently and all sorts of things. There's also a country sign in jamaica that emerged in top hill, kind of a more rural area that didn't have any influence from asl or jamaican sign language and those people have been really resilient in keeping country sign as well. So just within one territory you can have multiple sign languages or multiple varieties. So there's so many misconceptions. Not one universal sign language, not like English or other spoken languages, and there's not one sign language per country as well. I think the one sign language per country is such a European colonial mentality, because Europe is very much like one language, one nation right, which the US has adopted, and so people have this idea of one nation has to have one language. We know what it's like in the.

Kris M. Ali: 16:06

US. But that's not really true. Multilingualism is the norm in the world before it was crushed by colonization, and that's just true of sign languages and true of spoken languages too. So in terms of differences, I would say the national sign languages may tend to be similar because they tend to be the ones influenced by ASL, but they're still quite different. So a Trinidadian and a Jamaican who know Trinidadian, Spago sign language and Jamaican sign language will be able to communicate right. So that's probably ASL vocabulary in common, but a lot of the grammar is going to be so different. Just the Jamaican-ness and the Trinidadian-ness will be so different.

Kris M. Ali: 16:49

But those like national sign languages are the ones that tend to I mean, they tend to be the national ones because they are influenced by ASL as well, and the smaller, less recognized sign languages, like Country Sign, tend to be more marginalized and stigmatized.

Kris M. Ali: 17:07

Even so, people who grew up using Country Sign, maybe when they moved to the town or the city and meet other deaf people who use Jamaican Sign Language, may stop using Country country sign because it's more prestigious to use Jamaican sign language, it's more proper.

Kris M. Ali: 17:25

So even within our territories we have these hierarchies of what is better right Because it's approximating American sign language. So that's another issue of are we endangering smaller sign languages in territories by having this idealistic idea of one nation, one sign language? And so when there is language policy being written and hopefully this is my dream is that there's language policies written in the Caribbean for every territory that includes all of our native languages, including sign languages I hope that we don't forget that there are different, smaller sign languages and even if they're small, like Vincent and the Grenadines there are people in the Grenadines who use a different way of signing, but it doesn't matter if it's small. It's so important to protect people's native languages because that's the way to get information. If there's another hurricane or if there's another natural disaster, what language are they going to be receiving information in? You can't assume that they're going to just use a national sign language and that's access for all. So it has huge consequences.

Alexandria Miller: 19:13

I think that's really an interesting point when we're talking about. You know the fact that in general maybe somebody signing from in Tr so the Jamaican country sign language is. You know a big part of what's used primarily out there and you know rural parts of the island like St Elizabeth. I'll include this in the transcript for you all so all of our listeners could see it. Could you offer us an example of you know maybe how a country sign language or a sign language of a more rural place would differ from the national sign language?

Kris M. Ali: 19:59

yeah, so I can give you an example of trinad um so uh, there's the national sign language, so let's take the word mother so internet to be your sign language, which is not what they call the national sign language. You can sign mother like this, which is actually the same as mother in ASL, which is where it comes from, but the older, more smaller variety of Trinidad and Tobago sign language, the one that emerged before the introduction of ASL. You would sign mother like that, and that has its own story, because the folklore is that, um, the mother is signed like that and ultra known to make a sign language because it looks like a mother spanking a child's butt or something. And it's like. This is what is great about our own sign languages as well, that they have like incredible stories, whereas the asl visions really are like well, this is what it looks like. We don't really know why, and it seems more proper and snoozy. But yeah, I'll definitely send you those examples for the transcripts yes, definitely.

Alexandria Miller: 21:04

Thank you so much. I look forward to it. Um, one thing that I think is great about your research as you were noting a little bit earlier is that you've really traveled far and wide studying various Caribbean sign languages, and you know how they differ, how they're similar and even beyond what you know we've been talking about as sort of the national sign languages, if they are referred to as that. One place that you have done research in, though, is the Bay Islands and studying Bay Island sign language, which I think is, not only you know integral for our conversation in general on sign language, but you know, there are so many times where there are parts of that, I consider you know parts of the Caribbean that you know aren't traditionally considered parts of the Caribbean, right, and so, for those who may not know, the Bay Islands are off the coast of Honduras. No-transcript.

Kris M. Ali: 22:25

Yeah, absolutely. So. I love what you said about the Bay Islands because I agree it's one of those places that aren't deemed to be Caribbean, but from my experience being there, they have such a Caribbean identity that when I say I'm from Trinidad it's like, oh my god, you're from Trinidad. Like we learned about Trinidad in school and I'm like we didn't learn about you. I felt so bad, you know, because they really were like where did you say it was from the Caribbean? And it's so incredible. That is one of the best experiences of my life is really working in the Bay Islands, because it really transformed how I see the Caribbean, how I see myself as a Caribbean person and, you know, identify as a Caribbeanist, and that really transformed that definition of Caribbeanist as well. So I mean, they're descendants of enslaved Africans in the Bay Islands and their former colonizers as well. There's the Garifuna people, there's, you know, latinx people from mainland, but it's just a beautiful, diverse space and it's in the Caribbean Sea. It's not politically, you know, run by Honduras, but there's still this really strong sense of a Caribbean identity.

Kris M. Ali: 23:36

And my work there was also working with a community. I did research there with Ben and Ian as well. We made an initial trip in 2016 because Ben knew people there. He knew there were deaf people there and they wanted to talk to us. So we there he knew there was deaf people there and they wanted to talk to us. So we went. We met a lot of people. We made some initial recordings. We were like, yeah, they have their own sign language.

Kris M. Ali: 23:57

But what I didn't realize was that there were generations of deaf people, but a lot of them were blind as well, and through talking to people, we discovered that people were born deaf and then became blind later on in life, so they gradually started losing their vision until they became completely blind, and that happened across generations, and so it seemed like it's a genetic syndrome that causes that. But what was so interesting was that they would touch each other's hands to sign. They'd touch each other's hands on bodies, sometimes even face, to sign on them, and so, unlike visual sign languages, where people just sign in front of their own bodies, they were touching each other's bodies and the other person was perceiving the language through the touch, and that was even more incredible. People thought that this was really normal, right? So when people didn't think it was anything weird about, well, you touch an older deaf person's body or hands to sign to them, and there were lots of people who told us when they were growing up it was just normal to do that. They never thought anything about it. So I think some people never even thought about it not being normal, but it's actually extremely rare to have a community with so many deaf-blind people and to have a tactile sign language is what is called being used there. So that was really incredibly, just fascinating.

Kris M. Ali: 25:24

And this community was super interested in their family history, their oral history, community history, and so they really wanted to document that, more so than the language itself, because the youngest deaf person was over 50. And so, really, if there's no children acquiring a language, no deaf children at least acquiring a sign, a sign language that is unlikely to be passed on. So they're hearing people who sign, but they're not going to use it, primarily unless there's a deaf person. So what they were more interested in was documenting their history, and so, in 2018, we got a grant from the Endangered Languages Documentation Project to document this language, and we the three of us lived there for three months, you know, going to people's houses every day, talking to them, recording videos. Um, they would tell stories about their past and we record conversations between two or three people. We would do interviews, um, we'd go around the island and they'd tell us things about I don't know their past and stuff, and we have 50 hours of video recording of their sign language and have a wealth of oral history.

Kris M. Ali: 26:37

So, apart from just being a really incredible sign language you know a tight-sail sign language it just is a really important part of Caribbean history. I feel like you know, just because the Bay Islands are left out, at least in all parts of the Caribbean, as being part of Caribbean history. I feel like you know, just because the Bay Islands are left out, at least in all parts of the Caribbean, as being part of the Caribbean, but also their history tells a lot about the history of the Bay Islands. You know a lot of their stories go back 100 years because it has been passed down generation to generation, and so I was learning about the history of the Bay Islands while I was learning the language right, and so just one of the ways that being a linguist has really improved my entire life by really really opening my mind to the possibilities of what it means to be Caribbean- you made a point that I think is really beautiful.

Alexandria Miller: 27:22

Just like you know, we go in thinking we're studying one thing, right, you're there and you're. You know we're going to document the language. But language tells so much of our history through that too right, and just even you know, holding to the fact that you can learn so much about a people, about the history, about colonization, even right, from some of these various ways that we communicate. So thank you so much for sharing that and sharing a bit about your experience in the Bay Islands.

Alexandria Miller: 27:55

I definitely have to ask this question, the go-to strictly facts question of every episode, but one that I think is very apt at this moment where, in my view, I don't think people were necessarily paying a lot of attention to sign language until it became. You know, there are a lot of like translators and interpreters during performances and concerts and things, right. And now we have TikTok and all the apps and you know an interpreter will go viral because not only are they signing but they're like jamming while they're signing, Right. So what are some of your favorite examples of this history of Caribbean sign language showing up in our popular culture today?

Kris M. Ali: 28:52

interpreters are actually the most visible parts of sign language today, but they tend to be from the US still. So I think that Caribbean sign languages haven't really made it mainstream like in world media. But social media is such an important platform for deaf people in the Caribbean, like that's where everything happens, and I mean even there's some bad representation of sign language in the media. Where do you know of all these cases where there's a fake interpreter who's signing? Yeah, I know that's wild. Yeah, sometimes that's what people's first thought is about sign language, like do you remember?

Alexandria Miller: 29:24

that interpreter.

Kris M. Ali: 29:25

I'm like, yes, I know it happens way too often. I'm like, yes, I know it happens way too often, but if I were to think of the Caribbean, I would think about my first thing that comes to mind is all of the amazing videos that have been created and posted on social media by deaf Caribbean people. There's stories, there's jokes. I think you kind of have to be in it to see it, though Like it's a bit niche content just because, like deaf culture is so different from the way hearing people use language and how we act, like people love acting out, uh things love using language in like a really funny way, and there's a lots of videos that I will like scroll through Facebook or something and see someone, um, I don't know, acting out, maybe a story of when they went to school and a teacher did this and they're like acting really on point and did a lot of editing and stuff like that.

Kris M. Ali: 30:19

And I just think that people are so creative well, infinitely creative in the Caribbean and I don't know, deaf people are just it just feels really terrible that ableism really puts this light on people as being like deficient or less than, or like they can't be funny or like they can't have their own culture or their own funny ways of using that. That's really unfortunate because I don't know. I invite everyone to get involved in their local deaf community respectfully, by learning how to sign the local sign language and being really respectful and getting to know Deaf people on a personal level. You'll find that they have so much to say that will blow your mind, that will revolutionize what it means to be a Caribbean person, what it means to be a person from your country. Because, yeah, there's this super marginalized, historically marginalized community in your country that you even know of, with their own ways of speaking, their own culture. Yeah, that's my initial thought is the social media.

Alexandria Miller: 31:25

I agree, I think I've seen some amazing pictures by Jamaican sign language interpreter, tony Akin, and just to watch their work I think is amazing, um. So I will definitely, you know, find some of those clips and link them for our listeners, not only on the Strictly Facts website on our Strictly Facts syllabus, but also in our transcript for this episode as well.

Kris M. Ali: 31:51

Yeah, something I forgot to mention. Sorry is that maybe Tony has done this before, but like interpreting Caribbean music, caribbean songs into. Jamaican Sign Language. Trinidadian Sign Language. Like, there's a lot of soccer songs that have been interpreted into Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language, so it's the same for Jamaica, so yeah, it's another favorite of mine.

Alexandria Miller: 32:10

We will link those for all y'all to check out. You brought us to you know. My final question, though, as you were talking about the issues with ableism and you know how people just are maybe not even conscious or aware of some of the systemic issues what are your hopes, some of the systemic issues? What are your hopes, you know, for increased equity for the deaf and hearing impaired communities in the region and really, how can we increase access and understanding and, you know, greater opportunities for them to be improved?

Kris M. Ali: 32:43

Yeah, it's a great question, Quite complicated. I'll go from my biased perspective. First is that I think that language is everything. I think that language rights are social justice rights. If you can legally recognize people's native languages, they can thrive in education, they can have access to education in their own language, which would improve their education level. They can have access to interpreters in medical settings and justice settings, everywhere, and they can have better employment rates. If they have access to interpreters in their languages, there'll be less even on a second gender thing there'll be less gender based violence if women had access to services in their language, if queer and trans deaf people had access to services in their language, if queer and trans deaf people had access to services in their language.

Kris M. Ali: 33:34

So I think that in order to do that, you have to one know that their language exists, that they're not just doing gestures, they're not just using English on their hands. You have to know that exists. You have to document their language, which a lot of deaf researchers are doing at the moment and you know? It's really amazing. I think that knowing someone's language, knowing that it exists, is to know someone's humanity. So that's my biased answer. Other people come at it from different perspectives, but eventually I think we get to the same point. Other people commented from different perspectives, but eventually I think we get to the same point.

Alexandria Miller: 34:09

And that they all should be recognized as part of our national languages. Right, in the same way that you know, for centuries, activists have, you know, advocated for us to not deem Patois, or, you know, jamaica's national language, as lesser than English. Right, it is definitely in that same category. Not only should, like a Jamaica sign language not be looked down upon compared to like ASL, but we should be holding it to the same regard because it is a way that a portion of our community, of our nation, speaks. So with that, christy, I thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time and expertise in sharing with our Strictly Facts family about sign languages in the Caribbean.

Alexandria Miller: 34:57

As a little sneak peek, this isn't the only episode we'll be having, so I will leave that teaser for our listeners. We will be having a follow-up conversation very soon, but other than that, again, christy, thank you so much to our Strictly Facts listeners. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. I think I learned a lot and I hope you did as well. So till next time, little more. Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit strictlyfactspodcastcom for more information from each episode. Follow us at strictlyfactspod on Instagram and Facebook and at strictlyfactspd on Twitter.