Language, Decoloniality, and Social Justice in the Caribbean

This edited volume includes seven essays on language policy, linguistic identity, and social justice in five Caribbean nations: Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Curacao. The contributions explore how bilingualism and multilingualism intersect with cultural identity and language policy issues, including education, the status of Creole languages, and how efforts at language planning have often maintained social segregation based on race, gender, and sexuality. By reconfiguring their environments and creating new spaces that transcend geographically and symbolically bounded spaces, these nations unsettle colonial discourses that influence all spheres of societal life, including spatial configuration, cultural production, politics, and the economy. This volume rethinks and broadens new paradigms of the Caribbean experience and draws from interconnected academic perspectives, such as sociolinguistics/creole studies, cultural studies, and decolonial praxis. It includes contributions from scholars from, and familiar with, each Caribbean nation included in the work. Though most of the essays focus on language and educational policies, cultural and literary productions are also discussed as they relate to linguistic and social justice.