Thursday, August 27, 2009
Joanne Kilgour Dowdy’s “Ovuh Dyuh” discusses Dowdy’s insecurities concerning her search for the “right” language, and consequently the “right” identity for herself, as she is growing up as a young girl, and later as a young woman, in Trinidad. Dowdy relates her experiences as wearing several different “masks” and “playing” someone else. When Dowdy finally finds the balance between her two languages, and her two “selves”, she describes people like herself as having a need to live in “double realities” and the need to be “in two places at the same time, ovuh dyuh and here too” (11). Another way Dowdy addresses this same topic is by discussing the challenges of switching between the “home language to the public language” (13). But what is Dowdy’s true language? Is it Trinidadian that she speaks privately, or is it English that she speaks publicly? Is it in both? If all the Trinidadians are being encouraged to speak more and more Standard English, what will happen to the Trinidad language? As future teachers, how do we go about approaching students that will have similar conflicts as Dowdy has? Should we encourage both languages and encourage the student to find their “double reality”, or should we tell the student to leave their “home language” at the door and bring their “public language” to class?
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This opening chapter essentially serves as an introduction to the issues of linguistic insecurity and the muddled sense of identity one experiences as the result of the loss of one’s native language. The narrator feels conflicted by her mother’s desire to raise a daughter who is capable of becoming a prominent figure in society by practicing the British English of the imperialistic regime present in Trinidad and her own desire to feel comfortable communicating with her peers. It is not until the narrator has graduated from secondary school that she is able to balance her use of the Trinidadian language with the formal English that has pervaded all public forums. It took great will upon the part of the narrator to embrace the English language that had previously ostracized her from her people and left her feeling that she had betrayed her culture only to be plagued by feelings of insecurity. This passage has caused me to speculate as to why colonists are motivated to strip the subjugated people of their native language. Perhaps, they feel it would cause separation among those being oppressed or that it would expedite the process of proselytization. I also find it intriguing that even after Trinidad gained its independence that it retained the language of those who had previously stifled Trinidad and its culture. I am also compelled by the idea that the act of translation is debilitating for the speaker, “the act of translation cooling the passion of thought” (12). It is unfortunate that the narrator and those individuals like her were unable to express themselves as freely and concretely as they desired. I am left with the sobering reality that every individual uses language as a means to be understood, but in the case of the narrator when the pressure to conform to a “master discourse” impressed itself upon her she was left voiceless (12).
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