This article argues that Haiti’s French-dominant school system is an impediment to the nation’s development, whereas Haitian Creole-dominant education will lay the foundation for long-term development. In that Caribbean country, 95% of the population is monolingual in Haitian Creole while the portion that additionally speaks French does not exceed 5% with an additional 5–10% having some receptive competence (Valdman 1984: 78; Dejean 2006). Even though French is the language of the school system, as many as 80% of Haiti’s teachers control it inadequately and only a minority of students completes school (Dejean 2006). Economic, historical, sociolinguistic, and demographic factors are a part of the explanation for Haiti’s low educational achievement. Another important but often ignored factor iseducational language policy. Data on educational language policy compared internationally show that the use of a second language in schools correlates with high illiteracy rates and poverty (Coulmas 1992). I reject arguments in favor of maintaining French-dominant education in Haiti (Lawless 1992; Youssef 2002; Francis 2005; Ferguson 2006, etc.) because the resources for it are woefully lacking. I argue that the progressive promotion of Haitian Creole throughout Haitian education will lead to improved learning, graduation, and Creole literacy, in addition to a more streamlined and coherent State, economy, and society (Efron 1954; De Regt 1984; DeGraff 2003; Dejean 2006). As Haiti rebuilds after the earthquake of January 12th, 2010, aid workers, government employees, and researchers who get involved in the recovery also unsuspectingly perpetuate French, English, and Spanish hegemony in development work (DeGraff 2010). The long history of suppressing Haitian Creole and promoting French in education and administration — and French, English, or Spanish in development work — form underlying obstacles in the nation’s struggle to produce an adequate class of educated citizens, to achieve universal literacy, and to make socioeconomic progress.

The findings for adverbs and adverbial phrases in a naturalistic corpus of Miami Haitian Creole–English code-switching show that one language, Haitian Creole, asymmetrically supplies the grammatical frame while the other language, English, asymmetrically supplies mixed lexical categories like adverbs. Traces of code-switching with an English frame and Haitian Creole lexical categories suggest that code-switching is abstractly BIDIRECTIONAL. A quantitative methodology that codes the language-indexation of the token in addition to the surrounding lexical items was used for all mixed (e.g. xYx/yXy, xYy/yXx, yYx/xXy) and unmixed (xXx/yYy) adverbs. Discourse position, especially the left-periphery, is found to be a significant factor in adverb code-switching. Sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic analyses which acknowledge the ‘low’ status of one language and the ‘high’ status of the other explain better the frequency of mixed English adverbs in a Haitian Creole frame and the rarity of mixed Haitian Creole adverbs in an English frame than a minimalist approach, such as MacSwan's (1999 and subsequent work), which uses phi-feature valuation and entails asymmetry without bidirectionality. While I provide confirmation for Myers-Scotton's (1993) Matrix Language Frame approach, I emphasize that trace bidirectional data need to be accounted for by a theory that is grounded in the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic realities.

Chapter 4 explores the history and content of the Gede Rite. Research on the social and theological characteristics of the Gede spirits and their representations, rituals, and services are examined. More than 40 spirits from the Gede family are introduced along with key linguistic and cultural features. The Gede spirits, especially Bawon Samdi and Grann Brijit, are analyzed in the context of the cemetery, the dead, magic, morality, and migration. The chapter includes 26 Haitian Creole and English facing-page songs by the contemporary Vodou group “Rasin Bwa Kayiman” that focus on Gede Rite themes and spirits, including Gede Nouvavou, Jan Simon Britis, Bawon Lakwa, children, Bawon Kriminèl, betiz (“vulgarity”), Gwo Wòch, Mazaka Lakwa, Gede Nibo, Kwa Marasa, Kwa Senbo, evangelicals, interreligious strife, sex-workers, AIDS, oral sex, genital secretions, chante pwen (“point song”), Mòpyon Lakwa, and Jipitè Lakwa. Vodou hermeneutics explicates the Gede Rite’s links to sexuality, healing, and death.

This paper argues that Scrabble can be used as a tool to help maintain and grow all levels of Haitian Creole literacy and it provides the technical details for developing the game. The rules of the English version are given to introduce the game’s basic structure. Haiti’s educational, sociolinguistic, and literacy conditions are presented in order to put in context the orthographic form proposed for the Haitian Creole version. An overview of game culture in Haiti shows Scrabble’s potential for success. Previous research on the adaptation of Scrabble into Latin by means of a quantitative corpus-linguistic method is examined. Difficult aspects of standard Haitian Creole orthography (IPN) are discussed in order to expose potential pitfalls in design. Quantitative analysis of a Haitian Creole textual corpus provides an empirical basis for the distribution of letter tiles and their point values. Problems encountered in test-games played by Haitian-American university students and Haitian elementary and high school students inform the final proposal. The paper examines the work necessary for the successful introduction of Haitian Creole Scrabble and it provides independent evidence of the game’s cognitive benefits. Haitian Creole Scrabble is argued to be a creative and special method for expanding and strengthening literacy in Haitian Creole and other creole languages.

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