Interview with Kyra Ann Dawkins: On Language & Storytelling
Kyra Ann Dawkins joined the SEI team after encountering the world of script encoding as an undergraduate at Columbia University, in courses taught by SEI research associate Isabelle Zaugg, whose interview we published just ahead of this one. A creative writer and oral historian by training, Kyra helps with the SEI blog and public communications.
In this interview, Kyra traces how a lifelong investment in language and storytelling led her to SEI, and reflects on the essay she contributed to Zaugg’s special issue in Modern Languages Open, “Digital Lives of Greater South Languages.”
- Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Kyra Ann Dawkins, and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up. I just graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Columbia University School of the Arts. Shorter pieces of my writing have been published in The Plain Dealer, midnight & indigo, and other collections. My debut dystopian oral history novel, The We and the They, was published in 2020. I am an oral historian, international affairs professional, and digital language rights scholar. As an aspiring cross-genre writer, I’m excited to produce more books, essays, articles, poems, and short stories in the future.
- How did you first learn about the Script Encoding Initiative and the Unicode Standard?
I first learned about the Script Encoding Initiative and the Unicode Standard during my junior year at Columbia University. In the spring semester, I took a course called “Global Language Justice in the Digital Sphere,” designed and taught by prominent Script Encoding Initiative research associate Dr. Isabelle Zaugg. As an academic and creative writer, I had always been interested in the stakes and nuances of language access as a means of storytelling and identity expression. However, this class opened my eyes and changed my life. I learned that ensuring language justice in the digital sphere specifically incentivizes the use of endangered languages on and offline for future generations. I came to understand that language and script representation online were far from the same thing, but that script and language full-stack support were still profoundly intertwined. Every script that Unicode supports enables another community to express themselves through digital tools on their own terms. Having that access and agency is essential to fruitful dialogue and storytelling.
During my senior spring semester, I took another course called “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity,” taught by Dr. Isabelle Zaugg and Dr. Smaranda Muresan. Now, as a confession, I was nervous for this class because it had more of a computer science component to it and I had extremely limited coding experience. However, I did end up learning more about the practical elements of Unicode and what it actually means to implement multilingual technologies from a developmental standpoint.
In this second class, I was particularly fascinated by the logistics and evaluation of digital translation. In fact, I was so intrigued that my project partner Nikita Desir and I explored digital translation in our final assignment, the Columbia Language Justice Perspectives Project. To put things in perspective if you will, Nikita nor I had much coding experience while everyone else in our class was a computer science student. However, not only did we do well on the assignment, but the Columbia Language Justice Perspective Project was one of the five winners of the Columbia Data Science Institute’s Best Data Science Course Project Competition. We went on to present the project at the prestigious Data Science Day. And last but not least, the Columbia Language Justice Perspectives Project was featured in the 2021 Global Grad Show (now Prototypes for Humanity). All of this is to say that learning about Unicode and SEI has shaped my academic interests and trajectory for the better!
- What work do you currently do with SEI?
I have the privilege of managing the SEI blog and helping to streamline general website administration. I also contribute to grant writing. I’m really enjoying myself. I get to listen in on policy meetings at UNESCO, attend captivating conferences (like the Unicode Technology Workshop), study compelling museum exhibitions, and my favorite part, conduct interviews with industry experts who really inspire me. It is incredible to be immersed in the stories of script encoding and to see how people with very different personalities and areas of expertise are all devoted to facilitating digital access and inclusion. I feel like I’m part of something special.
- How does this work intersect with your other research and intellectual interests?
Alongside digital language rights activism, I am most passionate about creative writing, oral history, education, and international affairs. I think communication and storytelling across differences are essential to all my areas of interest. Working with SEI has shown me that there is a lot that goes into making digital spaces increasingly accessible to different script communities. Over the course of my career, I want to dedicate my efforts to not only telling stories but also fighting for equity so that other people can receive the support necessary to tell their stories on their own terms. I also never get tired of words, and I’ll always be fascinated by the intersection of language and technology and seeing language in all its forms as technology.
- Are there any literary or pedagogical works you recommend for understanding the world of scripts and technology?
Scripts aren’t just abstractions; they are used by people. And oftentimes, it can take a bit for people and resources to align in making a change.
I read this article called “New-Alphabet Disease?” from The Atlantic for the “Multilingual Technologies and Language Diversity” course, and it completely and unforgettably recontextualized the stakes of script encoding and usage for me. Even though the article was written in 1997, it points to the nuanced implications of script usage and changes insofar as they pertain to cultural identity, sociopolitical alignment, and education, using Azerbaijan as the central example.
It is also a reminder that none of these decisions exist in a vacuum. There are always questions of communal reception, resource allocation, and continuity. So, while it would be nice to say that SEI should encode as many scripts as possible, that overlooks the complex logistics and timelines of prioritization and effective implementation. Scripts aren’t just abstractions; they are used by people. And oftentimes, it can take a bit for people and resources to align in making a change.
- Your work was recently included in a special issue on minority language politics in the digital age, edited by SEI research associate, Isabelle Zaugg. Could you tell us more about that article and how it intersects with your goals with SEI?
As a Black woman who is a descendant of enslaved people in the United States, I always grappled with what it means to have a “mother tongue” and questioned whether English could ever be mine in the wake of colonial violence. Perhaps my true mother tongue is lost to history, but I also enjoy considering means of reclamation. I first developed the basis for my essay “Language 4R: Discussing the Roots of Language Identity in the African American Community” as my final project for the “Global Language Justice in the Digital Sphere” course in 2019. In essence, the essay presents language reparation/reappropriation/reclamation/restoration, or language 4R for brevity’s sake, as a proposed mode of discourse dedicated to the roles of language in healthy constructions of African American identity. African Americans are then forced to grow, as legendary rapper and poet Tupac Shakur says, like roses from concrete. I argue the initial historical tragedies of the Atlantic Slave Trade, further compounded by present realities of gentrification, mass incarceration, and police brutality, form the concrete that estranges the African American community from complete self-actualization. In turn, this concrete blocks the critical evaluation and revitalization of identity roots. Language 4R, with the analysis of four correlative frameworks, aims to foster productive considerations of how language can help fortify these roots to break the concrete apart.
In learning about Unicode and the work of the Script Encoding Initiative, I discovered that other people’s mother tongues and scripts can be protected, which means the world to me. Returning to and expanding the language 4R concept as part of a special issue curated by the professor who introduced me to the sphere of digital language rights is wholesome and full circle in more ways than one. It is no secret that I love language and how it functions as the root for expression, communication, and caring for one another. I am so grateful for the opportunities to honor language identity in my own scholarship and in contributing to SEI. I know the best is yet to come.
“Digital Lives of Greater South Languages” is published by the open access journal, Modern Languages Open, and available here.