Hello! - Hello!

​

After emigrating from the Dominican Republic to the United States with my family in January 2009, I realized that it was essential to keep our culture alive, even though we were far from our country of origin. One way I learned to keep my Dominican essence inside my home in the United States was not to lose my “Dominicanness” by expressing myself. Years later, I realized that this form of expression that falls under "incorrect", "funny" or "confusing" was a type of expression called Jargon. Jerga, as mentioned in Spanish, is an essential tool to maintain the Dominican diaspora and my Caribbean essence. My digital storytelling project, La Jerga del Caribe , represents the dialectal area of the Caribbean that includes the island territories of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. This digital project emphasizes slang as a pedagogical linguistic approach to present a broader context and dynamics of the Caribbean and to illustrate its origin in an interactive way according to the local knowledge of these Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. Caribbean slang  integrates the jargon found in literary and non-literary writings, music, cinema, poetry, among others, creating a linguistic corpus in the form of an interactive dictionary. At the same time, digital maps provide a geographical understanding of the lexicon, while timelines offer historical context.  

​

After immigrating from the Dominican Republic to the United States with my family in January of 2009, I realized that it was essential to keep our culture alive, even though we were far away from our country of origin. One way in which I learned to keep my Dominican essence within my home in the United States was by not losing my “Dominican-ness” when expressing myself. Years later, I realized that this form of expression that falls within the “incorrect,” “comical,” or “confusing” was a type of expression called Jargon. Jerga, as referred to in Spanish, is an essential tool for keeping the Dominican diaspora and my Caribbean essence. My digital storytelling project, The Jargon of the Caribbean , represents the dialectal zone of the Caribbean that includes the island territories of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. This digital project emphasizes jargon as a pedagogical linguistic approach to present a broader context and dynamics of the Caribbean and illustrate its origin interactively according to the local knowledge of these Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. The Jargon of the Caribbean integrates jargon found in literary and non-literary writings, music, film, among others, creating a linguistic corpus in the form of an interactive dictionary. At the same time, the digital maps provide a geographical understanding of the lexicon, while the timelines offer historical context.