Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language

Preliminary research suggests that deaf people in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) were officially brought together 70 years
ago at a school for the deaf in the capital city of Port-of-Spain (Braithwaite, Drayton and Lamb 2011). Research into
various signed languages including American Sign Language
,Israeli Sign Language and especially Nicaraguan Sign
Language has revealed that the establishment of schools for the deaf have served as the place of origin of these languages (Senghas, Senghas and Pyers 290, Meir, Irit, and Sandler 190). This is because schools for the deaf are often
the first place that a large group of deaf people are given
the opportunity to meet, form a community and collectively
develop a mutual form of communication, that is, a signed communication system. Thus, it is highly likely that the first
school for the deaf played a pivotal role in the development of the language of the deaf in T&T, Trinidad and Tobago
Sign Language (TTSL). The first half of the presentation sets out to present TTSL as an emerging and developing language. It will briefly chronicle the opportunities and obstacles that have influenced the emergence of TTSL particularly within the schools for the deaf. New developments such as a dictionary of TTSL and the formation of Deaf organisations by and for deaf people will be used as evidence of a thriving minority language community in T&T.
Additionally, data on historical phonological changes in signs such as the reduction in signing space (Figure 1 and 2)
will be produced as evidence of the development of TTSL over the past 7 decades. 


The other half of the paper presents an alternative view of the status of TTSL. It will look at factors which indicate that
the deaf community in Trinidad and Tobago is shrinking which can potentially have negative implications for the future acquisition and development of TTSL. Johnston (2004:358) points out that the Australian Deaf community is quickly reducing in size because of improved medical care, mainstreaming, and cochlear implants. Similarly, factors such as the declining enrolment in schools for the deaf, mainstreaming, the introduction of cochlear implantation and increased government funding for hearing aids in T&T threatens the chances of deaf adults passing on their language to another generation. This area of the presentation will outline how these factors affect the signing community, argue that TTSL should be considered vulnerable to endangerment and advocate that immediate attention should be given to more linguistic documentation for preservation of the language before it actually becomes endangered.

As the scale of the problem of language endangerment has become better understood, much work has been done on developing and sharing methodologies for documenting and describing endangered languages around the world. At the same time, there is a growing awareness of the diversity of languages which are endangered. For example, a recent conference organised by the World Federation of the Deaf focused on “Sign Languages as Endangered Languages” and Frank (2007) discusses “Creoles as Misunderstood and Endangered Languages”.

This paper aims to broaden the scope of current discourses on language endangerment by discussing three endangered languages currently used in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T): Trinidadian French Creole or Patois (TP), Trinidadian Bhojpuri (TB) and Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language or TTSL. All of these might be considered non-canonical examples of endangered languages. None of them conforms to the definition of ‘indigenous’ used by Grenoble & Whaley (2006:14): “languages firmly planted in a particular geography before the age of European colonization”. Nonetheless, the danger of the imminent disappearance of each of these heritage languages in T&T is of great concern to the language communities who value them, and language documentation work has begun, involving collaborations between community members and academics.

The paper discusses a number of differences and similarities between the situations of these three languages and the communities who use them, and the consequences for approaches to language documentation and revitalization work.

The differences in modality mean that documentation of signed languages depends on video in a way that documentation of spoken languages does not. This has ethical consequences, such as the problem of anonymising video recordings. There are also significant demographic differences between TTSL and the other two languages: the TTSL community is both younger and more geographically spread out than the speakers of P and TB, and the factors that are causing TTSL to be endangered, above all, the shrinking of the Deaf community, are also quite different.

There are, however, important similarities. For example, each of these languages is frequently described as a ‘broken’ version of some other language: TP is “broken French”, TB is “broken Hindi” and TTSL is sometimes considered to be a kind of broken English or a bad form of ASL.

We argue that a better understanding of the diversity of endangered languages can help us to develop flexible and creative approaches to documentation and revitalization which take advantage of the similarities whilst appreciating differences.

Language transmission may occur in various domains, both the domestic domain, specifically in the home, and in the public sphere via institutions such as schools and through interaction with the wider community by way of religious organizations, clubs and associations. Most often, for majority language communities, language is transmitted naturally and effortlessly within both domains as most members of society are users of the language or languages. However, the situation is different for minority languages. Research on language transmission shows that for minority languages, transmission most often either occurs in the domestic domain or the public domain but unless they are being intentionally preserved by explicit language policies, rarely simultaneously occur within both domains (Extra and Yagmur 2006). This presentation will add to the literature on minority language transmission by providing an instance of this phenomenon in two minority language communities in Trinidad and Tobago, a thriving signed minority language community and an endangered spoken minority language Trinidad Bhojpuri (TBh), where transmission occurs in either one domain or the other but not in both.
TBh an obsolescing language spoken by small pockets of mostly the Indo-Trinidadian community; with the number of speakers estimated to be less than one hundred, emerged among indentured immigrants who came to Trinidad from several parts of India, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, during a period which lasted from 1845-1917. They brought with them different languages and language varieties including, Awadhi, Magahi, Maithili and several varieties of Bhojpuri, not all of which were mutually intelligible (Mohan 1990; 23). Within the Deaf community, the signed language situation is more complex as two main signed languages are used and transmitted among members of the community. One of these is a native sign language, Trinidad Tobago Sign Language (TTSL), which emerged after unrelated deaf children in Trinidad and Tobago were brought together for the first time approximately 70 years ago at a school for the deaf in the capital city of Port-of-Spain and thus were given a chance to create a shared communication system. The other, American Sign Language was introduced into the community in the early 1970’s (Braithwaite, Drayton and Lamb 2011).  These minority languages offer two contrasting situations: where in Trinidad Bhojpuri the home and family are essential factors in intergenerational transmission, in the other context of sign language in Trinidad and Tobago, language transmission takes place via the two pillars of the Deaf community through schools for the Deaf and associations and organizations for the Deaf. However, despite the differences in domains of transmission, the purposes of language transmission are the same in that for both these language communities, education, society and religion are major driving forces behind their transmission. The data will suggest that any attempt at preserving one language and maintaining the other should focus on ensuring that these areas of transmission be strengthened because without these domains they are more likely to vanish in the face the majority languages.

As the scale of the problem of language endangerment has become better understood, much work has been done on developing and sharing methodologies for documenting and describing endangered languages around the world. At the same time, there is a growing awareness of the diversity of languages which are endangered. For example, a recent conference organised by the World Federation of the Deaf focused on “Sign Languages as Endangered Languages” and Frank (2007) discusses “Creoles as Misunderstood and Endangered Languages”. This paper aims to broaden the scope of current discourses on language endangerment by discussing three endangered languages currently used in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T): Trinidadian French Creole or Patois (TP), Trinidadian Bhojpuri (TB) and Trinidad and Tobago Sign Language or TTSL. All of these might be considered non-canonical examples of endangered languages. None of them conforms to the definition of ‘indigenous’ used by Grenoble & Whaley (2006:14): “languages ...