Hearing and Deaf Signers on Providence Island

SLS 24 (1979), 191-214 @ by Linstok Press, Inc. HEARING AND DEAF SIGNERS ON PROVIDENCE ISLAND William Washabaugh Introduction . Providence Island, Colombia, harbors a small number of deaf persons who have developed a manual sign language. The island (see Figure 1) is small in size (15 square miles) and in population (2500-3000). The people of Providence are isolated from the British West Indies with which they are culturally affiliated. They are governed by Colombia, but their political and economic links to the distant mainland are weak. In short, Providence is not only a geographical island; it is a cultural, economic, and political island as well. The deaf people of Providence Island are scattered in villages around the perimeter of this mountainous island in such a way that a few of them live in each of the seven villages. Three deaf persons live in Town, one in Bailey, three in Rocky Point, two in Smoothwater Bay, five in Southwest Bay, two in Lazy Hill. Three deaf persons regularly live in Old Town, though they are temporarily absent while recuperating from illnesses. One deaf person who resided in Bailey for some twenty-three years now resides in the neighboring island of San Andres. Most of the deaf people are integrated into the daily round of life on Providence Island; though one middle aged male in Town has been confined and isolated by his parents since his youth. The integration of the deaf into the social life of Providence is facilitated by the character of the island's economy. Traditionally the mainstay of the economy has been a combination of fishing, slash-and-burn horti- Sign Language Studies 24 culture, cattle-raising, and fruit gathering. The products of these labors, when augmented by the cash returned by the men who have shipped out to work in the merchant marine, provide for the material necessities of life on Providence. Formal education has long existed on Providence, but except for training a few to take up work outside the island, that formal education has not trained persons to handle the workaday tasks that they face on their home ground. This subsistence economy is one to which a deaf person can make as significant contribution as a hearing person. Not a few deaf persons are well reputed in their villages for their cooking, washing, sewing, fishing, farming, and cattle raising. The participation of the deaf in the routine subsistence activities of the island has led to a rather more positive valuation of the deaf and their language than is realized in the United States. Woodward (1978a: 66) has shown that a majority of the hearing on Providence judge the sign language of the deaf (which will be referred to here as PSL) to be an autochthonous and systematic language, which is distinct from the oral language of the island (Woodward 1978b). These favorable attitudes and judgments contrast sharply with the negative attitudes that the majority of hearing Americans hold in regard to the American deaf and their language. Both the subsistence character of the economy and the favorable attitudes of the hearing toward the deaf promote the acquisition of the deaf sign language by the hearing on Providence Island. This natural, untutored acquisiton of a sign language by hearing persons is a rare process, and one that has not been described for any other community. The description that follows is intended to fill this gap in the literature. A sociolinguistic profile The deaf on Providence of the signing community. Island, as in the United States, are for the most part born into hearing families. There is no deaf person on Providence whose parents are deaf. In consequence, the deaf must accommodate their behavior to the needs of the hearing. And conversely, in every deaf person's family there are hearing persons who must attune much of their daily behavior to the needs of the deaf. A second significant sociolinguistic fact is that the Washabaugh Santa Catilina Is. N Town Old Town Mountain Lazy Hill T n Bailey Freshwater Bay Rocky Point Sothes:BySmoothwater Bay Southwest Bay --- . Bottomhouse Providence Island Figure 1. Sign Language Studies 24 deaf people are scattered in different villages around the island...