SUNDAY 22 JANUARY, 2017 – UWI TODAY
21
BOOK REVIEW
“The Trinidad Dougla:
Identity, Ethnicity and
Lexical Choice” responds
to the most significant
responsibility of The
UWI as an institution:
to identify, explore, and
explicate the essentials of
Caribbean self.
If the region is to rise
out of the debilitating
e f f e c t s o f l e a r n e d
helplessness brought on by such questionable
philosophies as First, Second and Third World
status or even Developed and Developing status and
Globalisation, it becomes important for institutions
such as the regional university to confront the society
with its own face and its own realities. The need
for continuing self-awareness, interrogation and
informed-ness is fundamental to the regional remit.
The task is a complex and formidable one which
requires perseverance, imagination and a will to
explore in depth cardinal aspects of Caribbean being.
Even more daunting is the need to interrogate the
situations and to present findings in a form that could
interest, and be accessed by the wider audiences which
the information should target.
“The Trinidad Dougla” represents a serious
attempt to address the essentials of the remit set
out here. The work focuses on a group of persons
within Caribbean societies, Guyana, Trinidad and
Suriname, in particular, who, despite their increasing
visibility have not been the target of any serious
academic research beyond a scattering of analyses and
conference presentations.
The first significant step in the work is the use of
the name “Dougla” to refer to a specific group within
the society. The simple insistence on using Capital “D”
in the spelling of the name lifts the group to which it
refers to a status similar to Indian, African, Syrian. It is
a call to refer to me and my group by our name (spell
it with a capital letter). This capitalisation, by itself, is
a signal to the region to address the many marginal
groups that the nations of the region have learnt to take
for granted and about whom a number of dangerous
myths and stereotypes have assumed a veneer of truth.
The work itself is published within the Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, which dedicates 10% of its
publishing output each year to theses and dissertations
that have significant scholarly implications. The
challenge is to present a work that maintains its
Ian Robertson is a retired Professor of Linguistics at the St Augustine Campus
Ferne Louanne Regis PhD, teaches in the Faculty of Medical Sciences Centre for Medical Sciences Education and is
Course Instructor in the MA English Language programme at the Open Campus
A
vailable for purchase at
Paper Based Bookshop, The Market
at The Normandie, St. Ann’s. 625-3197;
from Amazon and from the
publisher’s website
There is a clear indication of the distinctions to be
observed between and among the critical concepts of
race, and ethnicity and an indication of how these are
linked to nationalism. It also sets the Dougla issue at
the heart of the discussion.
The Dougla individual is further contextualised
through exploration and examination of the historical
underpinnings of the societies that gave rise to this
group. The exploration of societies with a similar
experience in other societies places the work in a wider
context and facilitates comparison and contrast across
the respective historical experiences of the mixed
groups. This helps the reader to a further and more
refined appreciation of the significance of the work.
The remainder of the work is more tightly
focused on the research processes, the findings and
the implications. Here, the rigour and protocols of
academic research present a different set of challenges
for both writer and reader. The writer must retain
the rigorous academic research conditions and
requirements while seeking to maintain contact with
an audience with wide and varying levels of skills
and competences. This Ferne Louanne Regis adroitly
manages to do.
Froman academic point of view, the work succeeds
in outlining with a close attention to detail the research
processes engaged in the study. It is faithful to these
and presents a good model for academic research of
this kind. From the theoretical perspective, the work
addresses a dilemma of much of Caribbean research
where the contexts of operation often challenge
orthodoxy.This work shows an awareness of significant
relevant research approaches. Ultimately, it makes use
of three significant conceptual frames, Communities
of Practice, Social Networking and Accommodation
interaction, to bring clarity to what might otherwise
have been lacunae in the research findings.
One significant challenge that the writer had to
face was the justification of the use of lexical items to
determine personal allegiances within themixed group
contexts.This was challenging because one of the input
groups could not readily be seen or determined to have
an input at the lexical level.
This work holds important information for
several publics. For the lay Caribbean person as well
as for the student in secondary education and early
tertiary education, the work encourages a review of
stereotypes. “The Trinidad Dougla” confronts issues of
definition and the systemic failure to include a section
of the populationwhose significance keeps rising in the
context of empowerment and national development.
THE TRINIDAD DOUGLA:
Identity, Ethnicity
and Lexical Choice
Written by Ferne Louanne Regis
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
DOUGLARISATION
An Aspect of the Caribbean Self
B Y I A N E . R O B E R T S O N
“The Trinidad Dougla: Identity, Ethnicity and Lexical Choice”
responds to the most significant responsibility of The UWI as an institution: to identify,
explore, and explicate the essentials of Caribbean self.
scholarly standards while at the same time holding
an appeal for every person whose life it is intended
to enhance. This work succeeds in significant ways in
meeting these requirements.
The seven chapters and the preface provide
informationat varying levelsof academic sophistication.
The first two focus on the issues at the core of the work.
