Volume 2015, Issue 233 - Special Issue: The Transnational Politics of Language in Hispaniola/Yspayola, Issue Editor: Juan R. Valdez

Given the persistent legacy of colonization and slavery in the Caribbean, a significant portion of recent scholarship on the island internationally known as Hispaniola is dedicated to debunking (neo)colonial myths (Buck-Morss 2009; San Miguel 2005). Not the least of these myths is the idea that this island’s peculiar history produced a “lower”, not fully civilized race of speakers. In keeping with the task of myth-busting, this special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language ( IJSL ) analyzes in detail the dynamics of communicative practice, language ideologies and intercultural conflict on this island. A product of colonialism, neocolonialism and the problematic policies and practices of the leading classes, a linguistic landscape emerged in Hispaniola in which varieties of Haitian Creole, French, Spanish and (in some areas) English have played significant roles in the formation of communities, zones of contact, their boundaries, identities and racial antagonisms. From discrepancies surrounding the name of the island (“Hispaniola”, “Yspayola”, “Quisqueya”, “Saint Domingue”, “Haiti”), to what to call their languages, to controversies over which language to allow in the classrooms, speech communities and discourses in Hispaniola are conflict-ridden. While we find many examples of collaboration between the two countries, there are many forms of cultural and linguistic disputes, especially at the level of social elites who capitalize on linguistic differences in order to advance nationalist discourses and sociocultural hierarchies.

Zones of Dominican-Haitian contact can be analyzed from anthropological, sociolinguistic and language-acquisition perspectives. Despite recent advances in the linguistic study of this area (Ortiz López 2010), many contact phenomena remain unexamined. Building on previous work, I analyze Dominican-Haitian contact from a transnational (Duany 2011) and ethno-sociolinguistic perspective. Here, I document the roles that Dominican Spanish, Haitian Kreyòl and Haitianized Spanish play for speakers in the speech community of the Dominican-Haitian border, while considering the ethno-social dimension in which language acquires meanings associated with race, power, status, prestige, etc. I tackle the following questions: how do the aforementioned linguistic varieties become instruments for negotiating a fluid yet conflictive and ambiguous ethnolinguistic identity (Coupland 2001; Fishman 1987; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985; Zentella 2000; Duany 2010, 2011)?; where lie the specific connections between these linguistic varieties and ethnic components within the +/− black, +/− Haitian-Dominican, +/− Dominican, +/− monolingual continuum?; what values do these (often hybrid) linguistic varieties represent for the distant (Dominican and Haitian) neighbors from Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince as well as for the members of the hybrid, transnational and bifocal community of “others”?; and which linguistic varieties emerge from such a complex continuum? Resumen El contacto dominico-haitiano se podría analizar desde perspectivas antropológicas, sociolingüísticas y adquisitivas. En los pasados años, el acercamiento investigación lingüística en este escenario ha avanzado (Ortiz López 2010). No obstante, existen ocultas muchas otras facetas del contacto. Por ende, aquí, examino el contacto dominico-haitiano desde una perspectiva transnacional (Duany 2011) y etno-sociolingüística. Documento el papel que desempeñan el español dominicano, el criollo haitiano y el español haitianizado para los hablantes de esta comunidad de habla desde una dimensión etno-social, en la que el lenguaje se salpica de semánticas asociadas a la raza, al poder, al estatus, al prestigio y a un largo etcétera. Intento responder a preguntas como las siguientes: ¿cómo se convierten las lenguas (el criollo haitiano, el español dominicano y español haitianizado) en instrumentos de negociación de una identidad étnico-racial fluida, pero conflictiva y ambigua (Coupland 2001; Fishman 1987; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985; Zentella 2000; Duany 2010, 2011)?; ¿qué vínculos existen entre estas lenguas/variedades y esa etnicidad dentro de un continuum +/− negro, +/− haitiano/dominicano, +/− dominicano; +/− monolingüe; qué valor representan estas lenguas/variedades, muchas veces híbridas, en ese continuo para los vecinos distantes (dominicanos y haitianos) y para la comunidad híbrida, transnacional y bifocal que representan los otros; ¿qué variedades lingüísticas surgen dentro de ese continuum?

My analysis focuses on linguistic representations in order to shed light on the political, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries of the two nation-states that share the island of Hispaniola. In the context of the 20th century, Dominican politicians and philologists converged, creating a concentrated network of schools with Spanish as the language of instruction, prohibiting the use of Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), renaming numerous places from French or Kreyòl to Spanish, and producing a corpus of texts which described and represented the Dominican linguistic landscape proper. Literacy practices and speech practices were engaged for the purpose of Hispanizing border communities. I approach the sociopolitical transformation of this region by analyzing the representations of speech practices and the related linguistic policies of the Dominican state which targeted bilingual and multicultural communities in the 1930s and 1940s. To these interrelated issues, I apply the analytical tools from research on linguistic discourse and language ideologies (Arnoux and del Valle 2010; Irvine and Gal 2000; Woolard 2008) and insights from border studies (Wilson and Donnan 2012; Houtum and Naerssen 2002). My guiding question is whether, in the case of the Dominican-Haitian border in the 20th century, linguistic difference was represented in metalinguistic discourse in order to create a Dominican identity particularly through dissimilarity.

In the vast amount of popular and folkloric literature which depicts everyday life in the rural Dominican Republic, Haitian characters are perpetually present. In particular, Juan Antonio Alix's (1833–1918) décimas contain humorous imitations of kreyòl speech and of Haitian's attempts at speaking Spanish. These linguistic representations will be the focus of this article. In contrast to previous studies on literary ethnic speech which tend to treat literary texts as original linguistic data (cf. especially Lipski 2005), we propose to analyze them as metalinguistic documents, under the assumption that (popular) literature functions as one of the sites where identities and representations of racial and cultural differences are negotiated and linguistic ideologies are generated, discussed and diffused. In light of the semiotic processes of iconization , fractal recursivity and erasure as proposed by Irvine and Gal (2000), we will examine how borders between ethnic, cultural and racial affiliations are drawn by means of literary stylization, in order to shed some light on the history of language policies and ideologies in Hispaniola.

By examining the question of language in Haiti, this article aims at broadening the debate and dialogue among language policymakers and language rights advocates, scholars, researchers and educators about the effects of “linguistic imperialism” (Phillipson 1992) on the development of Haitian Creole and its impact on Haitian children's educational experience. Drawing from theoretical approaches in history (James 1989 [1963]; Fouron 2010; Dubois 2012), linguistics (Calvet 1974; DeGraff 2001; Dejan 2006), language planning and language policy research (Blommaert 2006; Spolksy 2004), and education (Madhere 2010; Plaisir 2010; Shor 1992) has helped shape the scope of this analysis, while also garnering various critical insights from the field of oral literature. In sum, this work reflects an interdisciplinary effort that highlights the impact of linguistic and cultural agents and historical events as it also sheds light on the lived experiences of Haitians within the larger Haitian democratic project begun in 1791 (James 1989; Dupuy 1997; Dubois 2004).

A critical question that has recently surfaced in the discourse of reconstruction in Haiti is the role that the education system will have to play in creating new generations of educated citizens for a new post-earthquake Haitian society. Central to discussions about the educational system is the “thorny” language question. Should the language of instruction in the school system continue to be French or should it be Haitian Creole? The present research note examines the relationship between French and Creole in Haiti since colonial times and the resulting linguistic ideologies that have developed over time. In addition, it reviews the various promising developments that have taken place in the educational system both before and after the earthquake, and ends with a discussion of future challenges.

The following note is a brief discussion of the most recent developments in the language debate in Haiti. Our main objective is to raise awareness of the ongoing tensions between those that advocate for some type of bilingual Haitian society and those who passionately seek to empower Haitian Creole. These reflections were triggered by the availability of the first comprehensive linguistic, social and historical account of Haitian Creole, Spears and Joseph's (2010) The Haitian Creole language: history, structure, use, and education (Lexington Books) and the recent airing of these debates on Haitian media.