This paper considers the sociopolitical transformation of the Haitian-Dominican border region by exploring speech practice representations and linked linguistic policies of the Dominican state which aimed at bilingual and multicultural communities in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 20th century, Dominican politicians and philologists agreed to promote Spanish and forbid the usage of Haitian Creole. Was linguistic difference in the case of the Dominican-Haitian frontier in the 20th century, rendered in metalinguistic talk, to generate a Dominican identity especially via discrepancy ?