{"id":14858,"date":"2022-09-09T06:11:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T10:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=14858"},"modified":"2022-09-14T11:51:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T15:51:24","slug":"24-943-fall-2022-aspects-of-haitian-creole-in-minds-in-history-and-in-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2022\/09\/09\/24-943-fall-2022-aspects-of-haitian-creole-in-minds-in-history-and-in-society\/","title":{"rendered":"24.943, Fall 2022: “Aspects of Haitian Creole in minds, in history and in society”"},"content":{"rendered":"

24.943, Fall 2022: Aspects of Haitian Creole in minds, in history and in society<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Michel DeGraff<\/a><\/p>\n

Wednesdays 10AM\u00961PM, Room 32-D831<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u0093In carrying out field research, linguists are inevitably responsible to the larger human community which its results could affect\u0085 What matters is eventual success, and that will be measured by the extent to which work on the language is integrated in a meaningful way into the life of the community of people who speak it.\u0094 (Ken Hale, 2001)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Background and Course Description:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, some personal and historical background to unveil my positionality and situate the aspects of this course that are rooted in my biography and ongoing concerns as a linguist, educator, activist, Haitian and human being; then some details about topics, requirements, calendar, etc.<\/p>\n

2022 is another eventful year for me as a Haitian linguist and for Haiti and Haitian Creole (\u0093Krey\u00f2l\u0094) for a few reasons.\u00a0 Here I\u0092ll mention six of these.\u00a0 The first one is the personal that\u0092s political, the latter five bear on history, socio-linguistics and education\u0097all of these contribute to the political context of the course, keeping in mind Ken Hale\u0092s exhortation above:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This year (2022) I\u0092ve been both selected as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America<\/a> (LSA) and nominated to stand for election for a seat on LSA\u0092s Executive Committee<\/a>.\u00a0 I take both of these as kudos to my work on Krey\u00f2l with the MIT-Haiti Initiative<\/a>.\u00a0 The challenges, opportunities and documents related to this Initiative will provide some of the backdrop and resources for this course.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. On February 22, 2022, DuoLingo released its Haitian Creole online course<\/a>\u0097which will be another important resource for this course.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. On April 1, 2022 (April\u0092s Fool Day) Prof. Rochambeau Lainy, a linguist and a founding member of Akademi Krey\u00f2l Ayisyen<\/em> (AKA), made a public plea<\/a> that French should remain as the primary language of instruction in Haiti, a country where most students (and teachers!) are fluent in Krey\u00f2l only.\u00a0 Later that year, AKA\u0092s scientific commission has made proposals<\/a> to alter the structure of Krey\u00f2l\u0092s phonemic alphabet and to adopt letter names that are derived from French, thus distancing the alphabet from its phonemic bases.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

          \n
        1. On April 6, 2022, Ambassador Dominique Dupuy, Haitian Delegate at UNESCO in Paris, took a spectacular public stance<\/a> against linguistic discrimination in UNESCO\u0092s survey<\/a> for their World Language Atlas whereby Creole languages (alongside Pidgins, Mixed Languages and Language Isolates) were mis-classified<\/a> outside the \u0093Language\u0094 category.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

            \n
          1. It\u0092s now been 40 years since the most transformative and (in?)famous reform in the history of education in Haiti: the 1982 reform by Mr. Joseph C. Bernard<\/a> who was Minister of National Education in Haiti from 1979 to 1982.\u00a0 He was fired in 1982 by Dictator \/ President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier soon after he (Bernard) began efforts at implementing this reform whereby Krey\u00f2l was to become a language of instruction in the first 10 years of schooling.\u00a0 Now, Minister Nesmy Manigat, the current Minister of Education since November 2021, has valiantly relaunched efforts to implement the Bernard Reform.\u00a0 So this course will be proceeding in parallel with Minister Manigat\u0092s efforts toward the use of Krey\u00f2l to open up quality education for all in Haiti, alongside often vociferous<\/a> invectives against the claim that Krey\u00f2l is a \u0093normal\u0094 language instead of an expressively inadequate deformation of French. These invectives echo similar attacks<\/a>, even among linguists, against the validity of Krey\u00f2l and other Creole languages throughout their history.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

              \n
            1. 2022 is also when the New York Times<\/em> (on May 25, 2022) published a historic series of articles on the Ransom<\/a> that King Charles X of France levied against Haiti in 1825 as an indemnity for repayment of the \u0093lost property\u0094 of the white colonists who were ousted in 1804 as a result of the successful Haitian Revolution against colonization and slavery.\u00a0 As the NYT documents, France\u0092s syphoning Haiti\u0092s financial reserves from the birth of our nation (a ransom that forced Haiti into endless cycles of debts and corruption) made it impossible for Haiti to ever have any opportunity for sustainable development and sovereignty.\u00a0 The NYT articles also show that this ransom was orchestrated by France as one way to punish Haiti for having successfully defied white supremacy and having started the #BlackLivesMatter movement\u0097long before the hashtag era.\u00a0 This is the first time in history that an article in a major international newspaper was translated into Krey\u00f2l<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              \nIn turn, the NYT \u0093Ransom\u0094 articles raise questions that connect issues in all six\u00a0bullet points above. To start with, let\u0092s ask: \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              Why would the Haitian \u00e9lites in power in the early 19th<\/sup> century ever agree to, and even celebrate<\/em>, Charles X\u0092s ordinance for such an abominable ransom whose amount even included the \u0093property\u0094 value of the enslaved Africans that liberated themselves?<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              The answer is very complex, but my contention, as I follow the analyses of anthropologists, sociologists and historians such as Michel Rolph Trouillot, Jean Casimir and Alex Dupuy, is that such consent on the part of the Haitian State in the 19th<\/sup>-century was also a tacit consent to participate in white supremacy against the Haitian nation and the Haitian Revolution\u0092s promise of \u0093equality for all.\u0094 \u00a0This Francophile \u00e9lite did not recognize themselves in the language, culture and political and economic interests of the broader Krey\u00f2l-speaking population.\u00a0 Furthermore the racially motivated oppression against the Haitian nation is connected to the reasons why the 1982 Bernard Reform (for the benefit of the Krey\u00f2l-speaking majority in Haiti) has been such a challenge to implement, up to today, in spite of its robust scientific foundations in linguistics and education.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              In turn, the ambivalence toward Krey\u00f2l as language of instruction is connected to the psychological and social consequences of the brutal transatlantic slave trade that triggered the formation of Creole languages in Africa and the Caribbean, including my native Haiti.\u00a0 Some of my papers<\/a> have analyzed how the hierarchies of power embedded in this colonial, then neo-colonial, history have shaped certain scientific claims around Creole languages, from the onset of Creole studies, as early as the very first description of Creole languages by European scholars in the 17th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Understanding these socio-historical connections will help us look at analyses of Haitian Creole and other Creole languages in a broader frame for social justice<\/a> which can benefit<\/a> the speakers of the languages that we linguists so love to study.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              Indeed, the field of Creole studies is still discomforted by debates around the proper characterization of Creole languages and their formation\u0097debates around a host of questions such as:<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n