SUNDAY 1 JULY, 2018 – UWI TODAY
23
When you think of the
kind of person
who
inter views loca l
gang members
to gain hidden
i n s i g h t s , a
soft-spoken
l i ngu i s t i c s
l e c t u r e r
p r o b a b l y
d o e s n ’ t
come to
m i n d .
B u t
t h a t ’ s
e x a c t l y
w h a t
Dr Renée
Figuera did
with the help
of one of her
former student s .
Figuera is Linguistics Lecturer and coordinator of
the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
(TESOL) programme at UWI. Figuera has a lifelong
obsession with how language is represented and its
ability to empower and disempower people who are
often overlooked by our society. Who gets to tell the
prevailing narrative, and who doesn’t?
The first language Figuera learnt was Hindi, thanks
to her time at Rio Claro Hindu School. It is here where
she fell in love with language and later went on to do
her Bachelor of Arts in French and Spanish at The
UWI, St Augustine. Her PhD in Applied Linguistics
enabled her to do studies in critical discourse analysis,
specifically looking at inequality as represented
through language. This training combined with her
years of teaching students in the tertiary, secondary
and adult continuing education sector, opened her up
to worlds she didn’t know existed.
The span of her research projects are too
long to list here, but her focus on needs-based
curricula and programmes stems from her desire
to always be socially relevant. So it’s no surprise
that right now she’s passionate about some of the
most misunderstood and talked about minority
populations – gang members, migrants and refugees.
UWI Today interviewed Dr Figuera on the top
floor of UWI’s Faculty of Humanities and Education
Building in Figuera’s stomping ground, the
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
(DMLL). She remembered a seminal moment for
her: the time she assigned a rudimentary business
writing essay to her students at the UWI Applied
School of Business. The homework she got back
eventually changed the course of her academic
career.
“They were using language about gangs that they
couldn’t have known unless they were an insider.
I wanted them to know that their world view was
important.”
Figuera encouraged the student to write about the
experience, even becoming so invested that when the
student dropped out, Figuera helped them get back in
school and continue with education. Emerging from
this, Figuera began research on language and gang
culture. The specific study analysed the conversations
of members of gang culture, exploring the sense of
shared “moral agency” among seasoned gang players
between the ages of 25 and 41 in the community
context of the Patna-River Estate and the Northern
Blue Basin community of Diego Martin.
Figuera was able to directly interview gang players
and hear in their own words how they viewed gang
culture and their role within it. The study honed in
on the language used by six key people to provide a
much-needed context on how in their own world, they
legitimised violent crimes.
Figuera also interviewed a female gang member
dubbed “Barbie” (ironic as her role as a gang player
is anything but light-hearted or frivolous). In
Barbie’s words, “Practically I come like de moddah
uh de broderhood, I deal all financial an lawyers an
whatnot, am, basically I like de queen on de board, I
cover all ovah an basically dais it.”
The study doesn’t glamorize or judge these gang
players’ behaviour. It asks them to look at themselves,
and puts Figuera in the role of an empathetic linguist
closely analysing the language of their responses.
When the gang players were asked, “If yuh had
to describe yuhself growin’ up, what would you say
about yuhself?” – all six subjects seemed to tone
down the matter of involvement in crime by pointing
either to the nurturing life conditions of positive
parenting, or to schooling and religion, which they
used to construct their sense of self as inherently
moral and law-abiding community residents. Here’s
Keyser Soze: “Family was okay, moddah treat meh
good, faddah dey fuh meh, sistahs, no broddahs.”
Most players also discussed their experience
with being “failed by the system” thus resulting in
a distancing of themselves as active participants or
“deagentialisation.” They saw themselves as people
who had “ended up in crime” as opposed to actively
seeking out a criminal lifestyle from the outset.
Figuera finds this kind of insider perspective
invaluable and a cornerstone for reexamining the
sociocultural rationale for crime. She is working to
develop this project (on gang language) into a paper
which will be co-authored by one of her students
involved in the project. It is possible that lawmakers,
researchers and other groups interested in curtailing
crime may follow Figuera’s example of “going
dey”and use existing intermediary resources between
insider and outsider groups to gain new information.
Looking at language critically is something
Figuera doesn’t just practice; she demands it. As
coordinator of The UWI St Augustine’s TESOL
programme, she trains teachers to look at their
position in the world as Caribbean English speakers
teaching English to non-native English speakers.
For example, what does being a Caribbean English
speaker bring to the table? How is your perspective
different when you are a yardie teaching in the JET
(Japanese Exchange and Teaching) programme? By
looking at our own Caribbean varieties of English
and accents, she aims to empower Caribbean English
teachers to legitimise their brand of teaching and
continue to make it in demand regionally and
internationally.
The ability to look at how language affects groups
on the margins of the mainstream is Figuera’s main
obsession. “My students will tell you that I always
say – ‘It’s not what you want to research, it’s why you
want to research. What is your end goal?Whose lives
will your research impact?’” There is no doubt that
under Figuera’s tutelage, the research coming from
UWI’s linguistics students will matter to the people
that most need to be heard.
RENÉE FIGUERA:
Language on the Margins
B Y J E A N E T T E A W A I
PROFILES
Dr Renée Figuera
Figuera was able to
directly interview
gang players and hear
in their own words
how they viewed gang
culture and their role
within it.
The study, playfully titled “Doh go Dey”, was one
of the first of its kind to actually “go dey”. According to
Figuera, “I had not previously come across studies done
with an adult population, and more specifically, gang
players, whose economic livelihoods were intertwined
with gang activity and violence.”
By asking a series of questions in creole such as,
“Okay… so what would you say is your role an function
in de brodahhood?” and “Do you think dat gangsters
are misunderstood an if yes or if no, wha would you like
people tuh understan?” resulted in gangmembers giving
micro-narratives about their upbringing and education,
their routes into gang life, their roles as members within
the gang fraternity and their experiences as gang players.
Figuera says the route to gang membership
often defies predominant narratives echoed in daily
newspapers. “People think that people get into gangs
because they didn’t like school or wanted to go the easy
route, but a lot of gang members are smart. They like
school, they like to play chess, they like strategy.”
Just looking at the pseudonyms of the interviewed
gang players, it’s surprising to see the name “Keyser
Soze” – a character made famous by Kevin Spacey in
the 1995 movie The Usual Suspects. (Movie spoiler
alert: the character Keyser Soze plays the role of an
unlikely suspect.) Gang players refer to giving the police
a “keyser” or “hitting them a shot” or ruse, which is
usually orchestrated by a cunning, intelligent playmaker.
