Dr Jo-Anne Ferreira campaigns for language rights and social justice
Brazil’s highest honorific title has been bestowed on our very own Dr Jo-Anne Ferreira, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. The Order of Rio Branco was presented to her at a ceremony at the official residence of the Brazilian Ambassador, Her Excellency Maria Elisa Teófilo de Luna on December 16, 2024.
This honour, conferred by the President, recognised Dr Ferreira’s outstanding contributions to advancing the Portuguese language and fostering cultural ties between Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago.
She is one of several linguists from UWI St Augustine that have been recognised for their work. In 2019, Emeritus Professor Lawrence D Carrington received the Chaconia Medal, Gold, for Language and Development. Professor Beverly Carter, former Head of the Centre for Language Learning (CLL), has received awards from both the French and Japanese governments. Mr Eric Maitrejean, lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (DMLL), also received high honours from the government of France.
Dr Ferreira's 40-year academic career began at Université de Grenoble III (now Grenoble Alpes) in France, where she first studied Portuguese with Brazilian teachers. After earning her BA in Language and Literature at The UWI, St Augustine, she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Brazilian Indigenous Languages and Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1998 and defended her PhD in Linguistics at The UWI in 1999, focusing on the Portuguese language of Trinidad and Tobago.
UWI TODAY reached out to Dr Ferreira. Here is an excerpt of the exchange.
UT: What inspired your interest in the study of language and linguistics?
JF: Apart from English and Trinidadian English Creole, my grandmothers were speakers of Portuguese on one side (this Granny also grew up hearing Tobagonian English Creole), and of Spanish and French-related Creole (Patois) on the other. My grandfathers only spoke English and understood Trini because of their foreign mothers. We didn't grow up hearing the "foreign" (non-English or English-related) languages at home, but my parents did, and they both loved languages—the ones that they studied at school (English, French, Spanish, Latin) and of course, English and Trini.
I was first formally exposed to Spanish in primary school, and informally through parang and Sesame Street, and of course Spanish was all around us in our place names and surnames. I fell in love with French in Form 1, and I liked to make connections between French and English words, which I later understood to be French loanwords in English. I eventually chose English, French and Spanish for A- Levels. One of my French teachers, Tracey Jodhan, had been to France and Israel, and I thought, well, going to France makes sense if I want to be fluent in French.
In France, I discovered Linguistics or Language Sciences, and fell in love with phonetics, sociolinguistics and language history. (One of the fun facts of language history is that it was mostly Norman French that influenced Anglo-Saxon and Norman French that largely influenced French and French-related Creole in the Americas.) It was also in France where I met numerous French Creole-speaking Caribbean people from Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Haiti. As a teenager, I had zero idea of how much French Creole influence there is in Trinidad—my astonishment over maco, cagou, fig and more, all being Patois, was great. Even more astonishing is that this was 40 years ago and we still don't know these basics.
At one point in my life, I wondered why I had to pay to study to learn the languages of my ancestors, instead of growing up with them, but that is still the legacy of the Anglicisation policy of the 1840s. At least some languages of ours survived covertly, even in the context of English having such high prestige. It's been the story of my life, trying to answer the questions I had as a young person, to understand more about language(s), and to make available aspects of our intangible cultural heritage available to all generations.
UT: One of your imperatives is the preservation of Creole in T&T and the region. Why is it important?
JF: Language is a means of transmitting intangible cultural heritage. Linguacultural documentation and preservation are crucial to an understanding of self, identity, accent, and place in the world. Language history is critical to self-understanding and self-acceptance.
French Creole is the number one language of CARICOM citizens, and the number two language of the Caribbean region. Trinidad has had a considerable role in the history of documented French Creole (John Jacob Thomas being our hero). Its role is fundamental in the development of Trinidadian English-related Creole, and it is infused into our names for flora, fauna, folklore, festivals, foods, fun, phonology and place names, and even more domains.
As my colleague Nnamdi Hodge and I like to say, French Creole is in our linguistic DNA and explains a lot about this country. To lose it as a first language and lingua franca is one thing; to lose knowledge of it is quite another. Creoles are traditionally languages of resistance. Now there seems to be great resistance against them, for no good reason (including even issues of orthography). There is no need to glorify one language over another, none whatsoever. Yes, we do campaign for language rights and social justice, even historically.
We don't need to apologise for who we are, or worse, adapt to and adopt every foreign accent and culture to the point of self-rejection. It is nice not to be ignorant of history. People who have no idea about language change regularly get worked up over and are disparaging about pooteegal, tambran, aks, our pronunciation of San Juan, and more. Nobody questions words like people, thunder, bird, our pronunciation of Farfan, yet these all went through similar phonological processes to reach their esteemed status as good pronunciations. Most of us don't even know what Morne in our context means. I love digging deep into some of these urban myths and folk views, explaining what we do with our languages that outsiders may or may not do.
UT: What have been some of the most important accomplishments/moments of your career, and what is next for you?
JF: Documenting Portuguese and French Creole linguistic and cultural heritage have meant the world to me. I count it a huge honour to be able to help to unveil these often overlooked pieces of our mosaic and to show just how important these two cultures have been to our nation and region. Being conferred with the Ordem de Rio Branco has been the biggest honour of my entire life. I am still interested in understanding more of our Portuguese heritage and contributions.
I would also like to do a series of popular books or coffee table books for all aspects of French Creole, in particular, and have authoritative and accessible and attractive websites and social media outlets. When you google Trinbagonian and Caribbean language issues, you should immediately be able to get to these websites and social media outlets, and not keep trying to fit us into someone else's mould. I would also like to see a language documentation unit here at UWI, St Augustine.