Sign Languages in Jamaica

Fall 1986 SIGN LANGUAGES IN JAMAICA David Dolman Two different sign languages are in use by deaf people on the English-speaking island of Jamaica. One of these is plainly similar in its signs (and in their pairing with English word glosses) to the varieties of signing used in the United States. Quite different from this urban Jamaican sign language is that known locally in Saint Elizabeth's parish as "country sign language." The urban sign language is used throughout the island in the schools, in platform and television interpreting, and among most members of Jamaica's deaf community. Country sign language is used by perhaps 200 deaf people living within a few miles of each other on an isolated part of the island. Although the users of the urban and the country sign language are aware of the existence of the other kind, only about ten persons on the island have fluency in both. In Kingston, the nation's capital and largest city, a scene occurs every Thursday evening that would be familiar to anyone who has attended a deaf club in the United States. A group of 40 or 50 people, members of the Kingston Club for the Deaf, get together for an evening of eating, laughing, gossiping, and information sharing. The communication system they use reflects the American influence on education of the deaf on the island. As in the United States, oralism prevailed until the early 1970s, when total communication was embraced. In both countries one finds a continuum or mixing of more English-like signing and less English-like signing. The more English-like variety -- especially initialized @ 1986 by Linstok Press, Inc. See inside front cover. ISSN 0302-1475 SLS 52 Dolman : 236 signs and signs for English inflectional endings -- are commonly used in the schools but a much less English-like form of signing among the deaf adults. The adult version contains some signs peculiar to Jamaica which probably were current before the introduction of the educational sign systems associated with total communication. Nevertheless, the adult version of the urban sign language bears many resemblances to ASL in its use of space, movement, and facial expression; it is understood, with minor clarification, by most deaf adults who visit the island from the United States. Country sign language is an entirely different story. Its users live about 70 miles west of Kingston in Saint Elizabeth parish, near the villages of .Junction and Top Hill. No causes of the high incidence of deafness in this area are know, but the deaf people there are accepted members of the larger community and live similarly to their hearing neighbors, tilling an acre or two of land, tending a few animals, and doing occasional odd jobs when opportunities arise. As coordinator for the past year of a deaf education teacher-training program in Kingston, I have had the opportunity to act as consultant to a privately funded two-classroom school for the deaf that has served this community since the 1970s. In the process I have become acquainted with members of the Saint Elizabeth deaf community and their sign language. My interpreter has been a deaf man who, like a handful of other adults, has benefited from formal education outside of Saint Elizabeth. Able to communicate in both urban and country sign language, he served both as chief informant and link to other members of the rural deaf community. One of the more interesting aspects of country sign language is the use of name signs. No fingerspelling SLS 52 Fall 1986 Dolman : 237 alphabet exists, and most of the members of the community are illiterate and unaware of their "hearing" or legal names. One woman told me that as a young girl her name sign related to her long straight hair. After an operation her name sign became a slash across the stomach to indicate a scar. Her current identification sign, a reference to her one remaining tooth, will presumably change again as nature takes its course. When I asked her what "hearing" name she had been given she shrugged and told me to ask the hearing people who lived near by. Names in the community generally seem to...