Date of Completion

4-28-2015

Embargo Period

4-27-2015

Keywords

language appropriation, language (re)appropriation, Francophonie, Caribbean Region, Haiti, Daniel Miller, language ideology, Haitian Creole, Francophone literature, Caribbean literature

Major Advisor

Professor Roger Celestin

Associate Advisor

Professor Anne Berthelot

Associate Advisor

Professor Jacqueline Loss

Field of Study

Literatures, Languages, and Cultures

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Open Access

Open Access

Abstract

The development of the subject depends on whether the subject re-appropriates his/her creation or remains alienated by it. In Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Daniel Miller describes the challenges and perspectives for the subject to re-appropriate his/her creation and what happens when he or she remains alienated by it. Miller combines the work of Hegel, Marx, Simmel, and Munn in an attempt to frame his theory of culture. The key concept that reverberates throughout Miller’s reflection on Hegel, Marx, Simmel, and Munn is his notion of “objectification;” however, an analysis of his work suggests that perhaps Miller’s greatest achievement is the way he theorizes the process of re-appropriation itself, and its implications for the development of the subject. This study examines linguistic forms and practices as taking shape via what Daniel Miller has described an exercise of reappropriation as part of “a dual process by means of which a subject externalizes itself in a creative act of differentiation, and in turn reappropriates this externalization through an act which Hegel terms sublation” (Miller, 28). While Miller bases his theory of material culture on the notion of “objectification” that he abstracts from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, this thesis draws on the notion of reappropriation, per se applying it to the context of the speech community of the francophone Caribbean region.

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