Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
Small groups gather regularly to listen to storytellers. The
social status of French and Creole helps define the Haitian
social and cultural dilemma.
Language serves as a complicating factor in interactions
between members of the elite and the masses. Haitians of all
classes take pride in Creole as the national language. Nevertheless,
some Haitians regard Creole as a non-language, claiming
that "it has no rules" in contrast to the high-status mystique of
French. At the same time, most bilingual Haitians harbor
ambivalent feelings about French. In Creole the phrase "to
speak French" means "to be a hypocrite."
Fluency in French is more important than skin color as an
indicator of elite social status. Public use of French tends to
exclude the Creole-speaking majority from political discourse,
government, legal documents, the judicial system, and intellectual
life. Bilingual families use French primarily on formal and
public occasions. Creole is a language of open self-expression,
informal gatherings, storytelling, slang, and jokes. Haitian
French generally lacks these relaxed, informal qualities. Monolingual
Creole speakers avoid formal situations requiring the
use of French. In certain social contexts, some monolingual
Creole speakers use French-sounding phrases to impress their
audience. Middle-class bilinguals in Port-au-Prince frequently
encounter social situations where French would be appropriate,
but imperfect mastery of the language may betray lowerclass
origins. Because of the defining social role of language,
middle-class use of French is often stiff and self-conscious in
comparison to its use by upper-class speakers.
The origins of Creole are still debated. Some scholars
believe it arose from a pidgin used for communications
between French colonists and African slaves. Others believe
that Creole came to the colony of Saint-Domingue as a fully
developed language that originated as a maritime trade language.
Whatever its origins, Creole is linguistically a distinct
language, not a French dialect. The Creole lexicon is derived
primarily from French, but Creole grammar is not like French,
and the two languages are not mutually comprehensible.
There are regional and class variations in Creole. Regional
variations include lexical items and sound shifts, but the grammatical
structure is consistent throughout the country. Bilingual
speakers tend to use French phonemes in their Creole
speech. The Port-au-Prince variant has attained special status
and influence as the emerging standard form of the language.
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