The Unlinking of Language and Puerto Rican Identity: Reflection of the Power of the Diaspora

Brenda Domínguez-Rosado

Author and Associate Professor of English

University of Puerto Rico, Bayam├│n

Dr. Brenda L. Domínguez-Rosado was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and is the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother from Cayey, Puerto Rico and a Mexican-American and Indigenous father from Texas. She has a B.A. in Secondary Education in English (TESS=Teaching English to Spanish Speakers), an M.A. in American and British Literature, and a Ph.D. in the Language and Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean, all from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Rio Piedras campus. She has been an educator for thirty-six years, has won awards for her teaching, and is currently a very active professor of English at the UPR, Bayamón campus. She has presented multiple conferences and workshops both locally (Puerto Rico and the U.S.) and internationally in countries such as Aruba, Barbados, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Portugal, St. Kitts, and Spain. The Hispanic Cultural Society invited her to present her book The Unlinking of Language and Puerto Rican Identity: New Trends in Sight (2015) at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on the topic of language and identity. Her most recent publication focuses on her research in literature and is entitled Sufism as Lorna Goodison’s Alternative Poetic Path to Hope and Healing (2019). Her other publications include “Barbados and Its ‘Çolony’ South Carolina: Historical, Cultural, and Linguistic Connections,” “Tú, Vos, Usted, or You? The Curious Case of Differences in the Use of Second Person Pronouns in Costa Rican Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, and English,” “Creoles and Acts of Identity: Convergence and Multiple Voicing in the Atlantic Creoles,” and “After the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’: St Kitts Creole English and the Birth of Pitcairn/Norfolk Creole English,” among others. She has also been a linguistic consultant for the Emmy award-winning educational travel show Isla y Vuelta produced for the Puerto Rican government TV channel WIPR, collaborating editor/translator for several academic journals, and is happily married and the proud mother of four and grandmother of four. Her interests include sociolinguistics, bilingual and higher education, reading, and traveling the world.