research
My research centers on language contact, migration, language maintenance, and all of the complicated emotions that can often accompany these things. My writings probe how state policies, varying levels of citizenship, and sociocultural processes affect the decisions that individuals and families make regarding the maintenance of their heritage language.
As a linguist interested in language contact, I aim to fully consider how migratory phenomena like population fluctuations, migrant support networks, and demographic factors influence language change and variation. Haitian Creole (Kreyòl) is the primary language that I work with. As large-scale emigrations from Haiti continue, the number of Kreyòl speakers outside of Haiti may one day start to approach the number of speakers inside the country. This makes it crucial for linguists to understand how or if the language is changing in diaspora, and how speakers across the world continue to use the language to maintain connections to Haiti. I have conducted extensive fieldwork with Kreyòl speaking populations in Haiti’s two neighboring Spanish-speaking nations: Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
My dissertation project — De los dos lados: Haitian migration and Creole language maintenance in the Dominican Republic — explores these questions on the island of Hispaniola. The Dominican Republic is home to millions of individuals of Haitian descent. My dissertation is the first-ever large scale documentation and description of their language, Kreyòl, across the country. On a linguistic level, the research seeks to uncover how the language structurally varies across geographic and social boundaries. On a social level, it discusses what these variations can tell us about the lived experiences of speakers, and how the language has influenced speakers access (or lack thereof) to public services and other essential rights.
Kendall Medford 