Note: Due to length this 42 page paper does not appear here. To read the entire paper go to http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patri.../KSTpapwww.pdf



The Meaning of Kiss-teeth
Esther Figueroa
Email: efigs@aol.com

Peter L. Patrick
Dept. of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom
Email: patrickp@essex.ac.uk
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/

To appear in Arthur K Spears & James DeJongh (eds.), Black language
in the U.S. and Caribbean: Education, history, structure, and use.

ABSTRACT: We examine an everyday Caribbean oral gesture, kiss-teeth or (KST),exploring previously-unresolved problems of meaning. Such forms are as examples of African cultural continuity across the Diaspora, often overlooked despite continuing interest in historical links between Caribbean Creoles and African communication systems. Forms such as (KST) are typically treated as lexical items: dictionary entries provide overlapping
lists of emotions or affective states (eg, “scorn, impatience�) for each of several entries ( suck-teeth, chups, etc.). Such approaches are inadequate, as the meaning of (KST) is not a single semantic unit, while lists are incomplete, contingent and inadequate. We distinguish ideophones from metalinguistic labels; consider geographical distribution and diffusion with
respect to both functions and particular forms; and analyze related signs as a set, with reference to shared pragmatic function. (KST) is an inherently evaluative and inexplicit oral gesture with a sound-symbolic component, and a remarkably stable set of functions across the Diaspora: an interactional resource with multiple possibilities for sequential organization, often used to negotiate moral positioning among speakers and referents, and
closely linked to community norms and expectations of conduct and attitude. It participates in a system of indirect discourse, requiring co-construction of intention by speaker and hearers. Moreover, it functions in personal narratives to mark both internal and external evaluation, sometimes ambiguously. Each of the proposed functions is illustrated with data
ranging from historical to contemporary, oral to literary, monologic to interactional.


Cut-eye and suck-teeth provide clear evidence that ‘Africanisms’ in the
New World may reside not only in the exotic, but also (and perhaps more
frequently) in the commonplace. (Rickford & Rickford 1999:170)
It is twenty-five years since John and Angela Rickford described these
two everyday gestures of West Indian life, demonstrating their roots in (West) Africa and continuing use throughout the Caribbean; the close link with North American Blacks, most of whom proved familiar with them; and the
marking of a sociolinguistic boundary with American Whites, who were
almost entirely unaware of the occurrence, names or significance of these
crucial signs of attitude and orientation.

Recently, when one of us mentioned suck-teeth to a new arrival in
Jamaica (a White woman from the US), the woman knew instantly and without
explanation just what Figueroa was talking about, commenting that it was
one of the first things she had noticed. Indeed, it is so ubiquitous, so
important interactionally, that we can hardly imagine a Jamaican exists – of
whatever social background – who is not fully competent in its production,
contextualization and interpretation.

Yet, as the Rickfords pointed out in connection with the question of
origins, the very mundane character of these signs has served to hide them
from deeper examination. In fact, their article is still the only in-depth
examination of suck-teeth by linguists, to our knowledge. We take its
African origins to be uncontroversial, and find it striking that something so
recognizable, so widespread, remains largely unstudied by creolists. It is
much more than a mere snort or tic: it is a sign both verbal and embodied,
unwritten of course, known throughout the Atlantic world, shared and
passed on like a dance riddim. A fundamental expression, it remains outside
the grammar, unremarked yet indispensable – we cannot resist using it even
among the uninitiated, while outsiders to Diaspora culture who learn it, find
that it instantly fills an expressive gap.

In this paper we explore kiss-teeth (as we call it) and associated oral
signs, primarily as used among Jamaicans, as an entry point into the study of
contemporary Caribbean and African Diasporic pragmatic systems. First we
describe the phenomenon briefly, and discuss its names and their
distribution across the Caribbean and North America. We consider the
meanings attributed to it by previous writers; examples of many kinds, from
written and oral sources, are provided and interpreted. We note problems of
representation, and relative infrequency, in written accounts, and examine
the work done by related forms. We then problematize its meaning, looking
for shared understandings among speakers to account for the rich and
flexible patterns found. We investigate the evolution and use of these signs
as powerful interactional resources across the English-speaking African
Diaspora, including its functions in oral personal narrative. Acknowledging
that this space allows only cursory attention to many important aspects, we
hope not only to highlight key features of (KST), but to draw new attention to the exploration of Caribbean discourse systems.

The sounds of kiss-teeth

Kiss-teeth is a conventionalized set of sounds which vary considerably
in form. It is produced by a velaric ingressive airstream involving closure at
two points in the mouth: against the velum (using the back of the tongue),
and farther forward. The forward closure is the source of most variation. It
may be palatal, post-alveolar or labio-dental; it may be a single click, i.e. a
stop, or more frequently an affricate; it may be a series of discrete bursts, or
a continuous stream, with variations in pitch (usually dropping), lasting as
long as several seconds. The tongue may be placed against, or at various
points behind, the upper or lower teeth, or visibly in one side of the mouth.
Other visible aspects of the gesture include the lips, which may be
closed, or slightly opened to one side; flat or compressed (e.g. with lower lip
pressed against upper teeth, see Rickford & Rickford 1999, Fig. 7.2), or
protruding, but always with some tension. Lip tension in the form of a pout
may noticeably precede the sound, thus contextualizing it, or may simply
co-occur with it; it may also continue afterwards, as part of a post-utterance
physical attitude, frequently including head-movements (here see the
Rickfords on cut-eye).

All forms are, at one level, labelled and interpreted as the same in
Jamaica, and will be abbreviated here as (KST). However, the variation is
meaningful in complex ways. In general, (KST) is considered rude, and has
been broadly defined as expressing negative affect. Sounds of greater
intensity are iconically understood as expressing stronger and/or more overt
feeling, as are sounds of greater duration; however pitch variation is not so
straightforward. In addition, (KST) is closely linked to – and sometimes, in
print, replaced by – interjections with morphological substance, such as Cho!
and Chups (see below), which may serve identical or complementary
functions, and extend possibilities for repetition, sequencing and bracketing.
The sounds of (KST) do not lend themselves to literary description, and
attempts are rarely committed to paper. An exception occurs in one of
Louise Bennett’s ‘Aunty Roachy Seh’ stories (radio monologues broadcast
from 1965-82, and printed in Bennett 1993:58-60), titled ‘Bad Manners’.
(The collection is edited by poet Mervyn Morris, who refers explicitly to
linguistic works on Jamaican Creole in his introduction, and discusses the
complexities of representing Bennett’s performances in print.) It concerns a
‘walk-an-sell [w]oman’ named Shake-up who behaves in an ‘outa-order’
way in an urban office, where she normally sells her wares to the secretaries:
Hear Shake-up, “Weh my lickle customer Cutie deh?� So anodder lady seh,
“Miss Jones can’t be disturbed now. She is in the manager’s office.� Eheh!
Shake-up suck her teet tshwaah and walk bram-bram through de
office towards de door mark ‘Private’.

The strategic contrast of Jamaican Creole and English dialogue instantly sets
up a scene of class tension and conflict. Bennett vividly evokes her
character’s rejection of the middle-class norms of quiet and politeness (prefigured in her name). First comes the interjection ‘Eh-eh!’ marking amused
surprise – the narrator/onlooker’s reaction – and then the two ideophones
describing the higgler’s determinedly noisy progress. Suck-teeth is both
named and performed here (as with Son-son, below).

The problem of description is an old one. A century before, Thomas
Russell concluded his Etymology of Jamaica Grammar (1868) with a puzzle:
There is still one Interjection, an exclamation of disgust, admitting of no
orthography; the sound is represented by that made by a person
suffering extreme pain, say tooth ache, only it is represented quickly
about a dozen times. I believe I could in no better ‘wind up’ Jamaica
Grammar than by setting forth this orthographical problem; now let him
who is so clever make out this curious interjection.

(KST) seems the most likely candidate, but as his humorous description is
less successful than the collaboration between Morris and Miss Lou, we
cannot be entirely sure.

Names of kiss-teeth and Caribbean regional distribution

The sounds of (KST) are called by various names in the Caribbean. We
here prefer kiss-(you-)teeth, which we learned in 1960s Jamaica; the most
detailed survey of the Caribbean English lexicon to date, Dictionary of
Caribbean English Usage ( DCEU; Allsopp 1996), notes no other locations.
Allsopp derives the Jamaican noun from the phrase, and further suggests
that use of kiss is onomatopoeic. Oddly enough, kiss-teeth is not to be
found in the Dictionary of Jamaican English ( DJE; Cassidy and LePage 1980)
or Jamaica Talk ( JT; Cassidy 1961), either. Indeed, it rarely occurs in print in
Jamaica (Patrick 1995), though it is found in Sistren (1987) and newspapers
such as The Gleaner. Presently we have no citations before 1975, but our
memories place it earlier.

The Bahamas also have the phrase kiss your teeth at someone/-thing
( DCEU:331; not attested in Glinton-Meicholas 1994, 1995). A variant form of
the phrase, hiss your teeth, is used in Tobago ( DCEU:293); hiss also occurs
intransitively among Nigerian English speakers (parallel to the Yoruba form
kpòšé) for the gesture. Suck-(you-)teeth is more widely found, not only in
Jamaica (Cassidy dates it to 1915 via childhood memories, DJE:428) but also
Barbados, Belize, Guyana (Cruickshank 1916:50), Trinidad and, as suck your
mouth, the Cayman Islands. Like kiss- and hiss-teeth, it only names the
transgressive act; there is felt to be nothing improper about uttering these
names.

The third metalinguistic label, chups, has numerous spelling variants –
e.g. cheups, steups, stupse, stchoops – in Jamaica and across the Eastern
Caribbean (Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Trinidad, and
Tobago; also Nevis, where it appears as stupe; DCEU, various entries). Like
the first two terms, chups names the sound and the action that produces it,
i.e. is both noun and verb (though usually intransitive). Unlike them,
however, it is also an ideophone, and may thus be uttered in place of the
sound (KST) which it directly represents. The effect of doing this is to
diminish the intensity and the transgression of politeness norms. Thus it is
The meaning of ‘Kiss-teeth’ (2002) not surprising that chups has other meanings, too (below). Chups also occurs commonly in Haitian Creole as both noun and verb, where it is tuipe, tchuipe, tchoupe, kuipe, etc. (p.c. Michel DeGraff; Fattier 1998, vol. 1:94).

Derivation is often suggested from Spanish ( DJE, DCEU), but
Portuguese seems more likely – both are chupar, ‘to suck’ – as /tšupa/ is the
form in Papiamentu and Sranan, according to Rickford & Rickford (1999).3
However, their review establishes beyond doubt that the gesture (KST) itself
is widespread in West Africa, and they credit Ian Hancock with a plausible
Wolof etymon /tšipú/, adopted into Gambian Krio. (KST) is a named gesture
in languages of at least the Atlantic, Mande, and Benue-Congo (Igboid and
Yoruboid) families, as well as Bantu (where in Kiyansu, the form /nswea:b/ is
an ideophone; p.c. Salikoko Mufwene). Several appear to be possible sources
of a calque on both “suck� and “teeth� or “mouth� ( ibid.: 169). (KST) is used
freely in all Liberian languages, whether creolized or not. The DJE links cho
(see below) to similar interjections in the Kwa family (Akan and Gbe language
groups). Thus the African origins of the gesture seem secure, while the name
chups itself may well have a direct African etymon or be the result of convergence between African and Romance sources, and suck-teeth may be
calqued.

None of these principal names for (KST) appears in the Oxford English
Dictionary ( OED, 1971), suggesting a lack of English origins. Nor, for that
matter, do they occur in North America: they are absent from Webster's New
World Dictionary (Guralnik, 1970), the Random House Historical Dictionary of
American Slang (Lighter 1994, 1997), Farmer & Henley (1809-1904), and
even the Dictionary of American Regional English to date ( DARE vols. 1-3,
Cassidy & Hall, eds.), though Cassidy would certainly have been alert to
them.4 They are apparently unknown to native North American speakers. The
exception is suck-teeth, familiar to African Americans as a name for (KST)
and attested in DARE and Dillard (1977:107), though absent from such
dictionaries as Major (1994) and Smitherman (1994).

It cannot be ruled out that (KST) has some universal sound-symbolic
aspect. The forms known in English as pshaw and tche express disapproval,
regret, sympathy and similar emotions, though they are milder in affect and
more restricted in domain. The Rickfords note (1999:169) that tche is only
dated to 1844 by the OED and suggest it may derive from African sources.
Indeed, it is not implausible that English usage might diminish the intensity
and domesticate the range of the vibrant African forms, yet the two may well
have arisen independently, too. The OED dates pshaw to 1673, but this is
still not enough to determine direction; nor even is 1529 for tut(-tut), which
however has Scots connections and a different sense, primarily impatience (it
also connotes status difference as much as moral positioning).

While diffusion might be responsible for a connection between African
and New World forms (including also Gullah, the Surinam Creoles and
varieties of Spanish in the Americas) and those in England, the net stretches
wider for these slight and mild interjections, which are found in Delhi, India;
around the Eastern Mediterranean, in Lebanon and Jordan; even as far as
Samoa, all with similar meanings. We are doubtful about a monogenetic
hypothesis for them all. Before we consider the more clearly-related forms
Cho and Chut, let us illustrate (KST).

Examples and their ‘meanings’

The chupse is not a word, it is a whole language. There is the small
effortless chupse of indifference; the thin hard chupse of mere disdain;
the long, liquid, vibrating chupse which shakes the rafters and expresses
every kind of defiance. It is the universal language of the West Indies, the
passport to confidence from Jamaica to British South America. How dare
the compiler degrade it to a mere word!(from The Barbados Advocate, quoted in Collymore 1970) One of the most striking aspects of kiss-teeth is undoubtedly its ability to express a wide range of meanings, for which it is celebrated by authors, lexicographers, entertainers and newspaper writers alike. An account of Barbadian speech includes “the chupse self-admonitory… disgusted… sorrowful… offensive and abusive… provocative,� and more (Collymore’s list, which provoked the response above, is given in full by Rickford & Rickford 1999:167). The sheer variety of emotions and attitudes which can be perfectly expressed using (KST) has staggered even the most seasoned composers of definitions. The DJE entries for (KST) forms make an exemplary catalogue:[For Suck-teeth:] … annoyance, displeasure, ill-nature, or disrespect… an insult or mark of scorn… ( DJE:428)[ Cho:] An exclamation expressing scorn, impatience, annoyance, disagreement, expostulation, etc. … ( DJE:103) [ Chups:] …disdain, impatience… a sense of having been wronged, when one is in a position to say so (e.g. when a servant is made to do something against his will) ( DJE:103) Resentful (KST) occurs in the life-story of ‘Doreen’, echoing precisely the latter situation. A working-class Jamaican girl forced into domestic service, she goes unpaid by the employer whose child she cares for: “After you are here eating and have shelter… What pay do you want? I don’t make no arrangement to pay you.� To how she talk is like she save me. Me react by getting neglectful. Me kiss-kiss me teeth every minute. She notice it. “Doreen you not going to bathe Angela?� Me no say notten more dan me get up and do it, but me face swell up. (Sistren 1987:121)Note the frequency of the gesture, its strategically public nature (performed under the employer’s eye), the absence of verbal elaboration, and the facial attitude accompanying and following it.

What we find in writing is that the principal names above ( kiss-teeth,
suck-teeth, chups) occur rarely and late, with only suck-teeth so far attested before the mid-20th century (and then only to 1915); while Cho! and related forms occur relatively early, and more often. A brief survey of various materials confirms this impression.


Meta-linguistic Labels
Onomatopoeic Terms
Ideophones

kiss-teeth
suck-teeth
chups
cho
other
N America Gullah
s-(y-)t
pshaw /šʌ/
AAE, Afro-Seminole
-xs-(
y-)t
-x-
-x-
W Caribbean
Bahamas
k-y-t at sb, hiss s-(y-)t
Belize
s-(y-)t
pchuh
Jamaica
k-t, k-y-t at sb,
k(-k)-y-t, hiss-y-t
s-t, s-y-t,
s-y-t at s.o.
chups & sp.v. cho, chu,
chaw, chut
Caymans
s-y-mouth
Haiti
-x- -x- poss.= tuipe
tchoupe, kuipe
E Caribbean
Barbados
s-(y-)t chups & sp.v. cho
Antig/Dominica/Gren
chups & sp.v. cho (inc Carib)
Nevis
stupe(-y-mouth)
Tobago
hiss-y-t chups & sp.v., chipy-
t, steups-y-t
Trinidad
hiss-y-t s-(y-)t chups & sp.v., stupe,
steups-y-t
choo
S CaribbeanABC islands
chupa
C. Rica/ Nicaragua
cho
S America
Brazil
muxoxo
Guyana
s-(y-)t chups & sp.v. cho
Surinam: Aluku
(meki) tjuu
Saramaccan
kòòn
Sranan
chupa
Esther Figueroa & Peter L Patrick
36
“sp.v.� =spelling variants “-x-“ =attested as absent “s-(y-)t� =suck (your) teeth
The meaning of ‘Kiss-teeth’ (2002)
37
List of Forms
The spellings given are those found in the sources.
The Americas (Principal forms first, alphabetically, then variants):
cho
• chaw, pchuh, chu, chut
• chi (Bonny, W Africa)
• choo dat, choo pool (Trinidad)
• pshaw /šʌ/ (Gullah)
• (meki) tjuu (Aluku)
chups(e)
• cheups(e), choops, stchoops steups(e), stewps(e), stroops, stupe (-your-mouth),
stupse
• chip-you-teeth
• tuipe, tchuipe, tchipe, tchywipe, tchoupe, kuipe, kwipe, kipe (all Haitian Creole)
• chupa (Papiamentu, Sranan)
hiss your teeth (at someone)
kiss-(kiss-) (you-) teeth (at someone)
kòòn (Saramaccan)
muxoxo (Brazilian Portuguese)
suck- (you-) teeth (at someone)
suck your mouth
Esther Figueroa & Peter L Patrick
38
African (Bilby p.c., DCEU, DJE; alphabetised by source language):
Efik asiama
Ewe tsóò
Fongbe cé¡
Gambian Krio & Wolof tšipú
Guinée-Bissau/Casamance (Kriol) cia
Hausa tsaki
Ibibio siɔɔp
Kikongo tsiona
Kiyansu nswea:b
Kumbundu mushoshu
Twi twéaa, twô
Wolof tšipú
Yoruba kpòšé
English (by date attested):
• tut(-tut) ( OED 1529)
• pshaw ( OED 1673)
• tchick (OED 1823)
• tcha, tche ( OED 1844)

Interesting. I hear a West African woman kiss her teeth on the train to her friend and the windows rattled.. its a everyday sign of the cultural unity of Africans and speaks its own language.

"eh eh" is another that springs to mind. I always found it strange as a youth when white teachers or police would say "we thought you were having an argument" when in general discourse with your friends on road. White people hear raised voices and blackpeople expressing themselves and assume there is some kind of altercation.

Its them simple things that get police call on plenty brothers too in innoculous situations.

@Realness. That is why when I hear ignorant people say Africans and Caribbeans have different cultures..I often just kiss teeth because most simply have no idea how deep culture and cultural practices are. Most are subconcious. We have been doing them for thousands of years and so long it is just natural.

Yes of course we have important differences but not as much that outweigh key sets of commonalities.

Saw this Nigerian elder on the bus the other day and my man almost had me in a hernia...Just the way my man set his face and his facial expression reminded me of my mother's first cousin..Like somthing pissed him off and his nostrils started to flare and everything else..

Sun and the Drum by Professor Leonard Barrett is a must read to see how many AFrican mannerism, behavioural customs etc there is to be found in Jamaica. Most of which are Akan in origin but plenty Yourba there as well. The Senegalese influence is also very very strong in New Orleans and those parts in the US.

FBniceone.gif

You know what's funny, when I was a little boy about 6 or 7 I remember my mother reprimanding me about something and I kissed my teeth. I froze in the middle of it because I knew it was a gesture you don't do to adults, but it was all too late. My mother wigged out and all I remember is getting popped in the mouth almost instantly before the sound finished coming out...LOL. Most people would be surprised at how much we Diasporans do that is identical to continental West Africans.

Shemsi en Tehuti wrote:
Shemsi,


I've seen and heard culture natural amongst our people in the Americas, not just in West Africa but all over the continent.

Some of the proverbs or sayings that we have in Diaspora, I've heard repeatedby Africans living around the River Nile, word for word.

Even the word oonu, common among Africans in the Caribbean, is used by the Zulu at the Southern most tip of the Continent, with the exact same meaning: people, group of individuals.

There's nuff evidence of our cultural unityfor our warrior scholars and students to wield in this war.



Our people need to travel the Pan-African world and see for themselves the African experience internationally. Racist European networks were never designed to enlighten us, more dumb us down.

FredB wrote:

In support of FB's quote, I found this one..............



"Make no mistake. This is a PanAfrikan nationalist book. We are approaching Afrikans as Afrikans and Europeans as European at the global level because that is our historical and cultural reality.

We should not separate Europeans anywhere from Europeans everywhere. It is not necessary to divide them by geographical locale, dress, language or any other superficial abstraction because it confuses the issue to their advantage. Differences only indicate variations within a common cultural core. The same applies to Afrikans. As with Europeans, differences between people of Afrikan descent are ethnic not cultural. Therefore, throughout this work, these racial-cultural definitions and distinctions apply.


...Europe must be brought into focus as a cultral entity. By emphasizing the ideological function of culture, it is possible to make sense of the intimidating confusion and superficial complexity of the European experience. Understanding culture as ideology allows us to approach European culture in such a way as to make it a visible, extremely cohesive and well-integrated phenomenon, in a sense more "simple" than we might suppose.

Beneath its deceptive heterogeneity lies a monolithic essence; an essence that accounts for the success of European imperialism.(7)


Culture must also be understood as race. Europeans actively practiced and perfected their way in isolation for over 18,000 years before coming in contact with others. That's 900 generations of cultural development and crystallization of distinct thought and behavior. Race produces culture through the soical development of a people relative to their environment. In order for culture to be born, evolve and normalize among a population, people must have lived together for thousands of years, biologically, socially, intellectually and spiritually creating and recreating themselves in isolation from others."



Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti
THE SEX IMPERATIVE

@All

I remember a debate I had with this brotha awhile backwho claimed he wasn't an African because all the family he ever knew came from Jamaica, therefore he was West Indian(sic).

I broke it down to him about how some of the terms we use like oonu, nyam, pickney etcas well as other colloquialexpressions we use everyday are all directly from the continent, particularly West Africa. He wasn't aware of this,but he gotthe point right after that.

Moro

Agree with you in the main except for the term pickney.

My understanding is that it is a word that was used by the slavers to denote African children. I have personally seen adverts with pickannies for sale etc.

Thats one term that was internalised and should be thrown out of Jamaican vernacularas its roots are not healthy.