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Cajun English: a Linguistic and Cultural Profile 161 CHAPTER 11 CAJUN ENGLISH: A LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL PROFILE katie CarmiChaeL Louisiana’s cultural and linguistic heritage has always presented a gumbo of mixed influences (Picone and Valdman 2005; Melançon 2006), with the un- deniable role of French, among other languages, playing a part. The influence of French is particularly apparent in the varieties of English spoken through- out Acadiana, or francophone Louisiana. Acadiana consists of twenty-two Louisiana parishes (the equivalent of counties) that exhibit “strong French Acadian cultural aspects” (Louisiana House of Representatives 1971) (fig. 11.1). The number of fluent French speakers in these regions of “French” Loui- siana is dwindling, though there is evidence that the cultural and linguistic uniqueness of these areas carries on through English (Trépanier 1991; Dubois and Horvath 2000; Carmichael 2013). This chapter provides an introduction to Cajun English as a distinctive linguistic entity in its own right as well as an element of Louisiana’s cultural heritage. Cajun English interests linguists in part because of the particular linguistic patterns that have emerged as a result of long-term contact between French and English. And indeed, as more speakers shift to English, documenting these features becomes all the more urgent. Studying the structural effects of this historical contact and current linguistic shift can inform theories about how languages are organized in the brain and how social and political forces can affect linguistic choices and patterns (Winford 2003). Linguists also study Cajun English because of its role in the cultural revival of Cajunness, as both French and English have become commodified in the process of revalidating all things Cajun in Louisiana (Bankston and Henry 1998; Dubois and Horvath 2000). Commodification represents the transformation of cultural and linguistic heri- tage into sellable goods, a process that can sometimes produce problematic results for the language or culture in question. Finally, Cajun English represents 159 160 katie CarmiChaeL Figure 11.1. Par- ishes of Acadiana. Map from Wiki- media commons: https://commons .wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Acadiana_ parishes_map.png. a dialect with connections to both regional and ethnic identities within Loui- siana, making it worthy of examination in terms of how individuals express parts of their identity linguistically. THE FRENCH UNDERPINNINGS OF CAJUN ENGLISH Historically, the presence of French in Louisiana preceded English. (And of course, Native American languages such as Houma and Tunica were spoken in the region before any European languages.) (For the history and develop- ment of Louisiana French, see Dajko, this volume; Klingler, this volume.) Lin- guists have recognized at least three varieties of French spoken in Louisiana, of which only two varieties—Cajun French and Louisiana Creole—currently survive, and both are in severe danger of disappearing in the next generation or two (Trépanier 1991; Rottet 2001; Klingler 2003; Dajko 2009; Carmichael 2017b). Most modern-day French speakers reside in Acadiana, particularly along the eastern edge of the Atchafalaya Basin, in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, and in southwest prairie communities surrounding Lafayette. Addi- tional speakers live outside of Acadiana in Louisiana and into Mississippi and Texas (Blyth 1997). Prevailing ideologies suggest that Cajun French speak- ers are white, while Louisiana Creole speakers are black (or Creole, mean- ing mixed race in this context), though this assumption does not bear out. Cajun engLish: a LinguistiC anD CuLturaL ProfiLe 161 For example, many Native Americans and self-identified Creoles speak Cajun French (Carmichael 2017b; Dajko 2009) and a number of white Louisianans, who generally identify as Cajun, speak Creole (Klingler 2003; Picone and Valdman 2005). Despite the racial associations with Cajun French and Loui- siana Creole, these varieties of French in fact encompass a broad population of speakers across demographic backgrounds, with speakers tending to label their language in accordance with their ethnic and/or racial self-identifica- tion (Klingler 2003). An additional complication is that these two varieties of French are very similar to each other, making it difficult to tease apart the influence of one variety versus the other (Klingler, this volume). Given these issues, in this chapter I use Cajun French in the same way speakers do: to ref- erence French of any variety when spoken by people who identify as Cajun. Though French was once widely spoken across south Louisiana, these regions are now dominated by English. The Shift from Francophone to Anglophone Louisiana The decline of French in Louisiana began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. While Louisiana had been under Spanish rule for a brief period leading up to the purchase of the territory by the United States, Spain did not push residents to learn Spanish, so this change in power had little linguistic effect (Griolet 1986). In contrast, when Louisiana achieved statehood in 1812, the United States expected English to become the primary language (see Camp, this vol- ume; White, this volume). During early statehood, waves of anglophone set- tlers descended on Louisiana, constituting 70 percent of Louisiana’s popula- tion by 1860 (Brasseaux 1992). In addition, the prohibition on the importation of enslaved Africans meant that any newly arrived enslaved people in the state would be coming from anglophone areas within the South (Picone 2003). By the end of the Civil War, most of the upper crust of French-speaking Louisi- ana had been ruined financially, thereby ensuring their assimilation into an- glophone society since they could no longer afford trips to France to retain connections with their French-speaking ancestry (Picone and Valdman 2005). French retained some strongholds in rural Louisiana until 1921, when the state constitution was revised to make English the sole language of instruction in schools (Blyth 1997). Many students during this era encountered harsh discipline if they were overheard speaking French. This policy led rates of French fluency to drop precipitously during the first half of the twentieth century (Lindner, this volume). The 1960s and 1970s brought the Cajun Revival, which began to gain mo- mentum with the establishment of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) in 1968 (CODOFIL 2009). The revaluing of all things 162 katie CarmiChaeL Cajun has had positive effects on the cultural preservation of traditions but may have come too late to save the French language, which has continued to decline in usage. That said, the presence of French in Louisiana has clearly affected the varieties of English throughout the state and particularly Cajun English (Dubois and Horvath 2000; Eble 1993). VARIETIES OF ENGLISH IN LOUISIANA While this chapter focuses on Cajun English, speakers of this language variety are in contact with speakers of other dialects such as African American Eng- lish, Southern English, and New Orleans English(es), among other language varieties. A closer look at the geographic and demographic distribution of these dialects helps situate Cajun English within the region as a whole. Very little research has examined African American English in Louisiana, and most research to date has centered on varieties spoken in New Orleans (Brennan 1983; Charity 2007; Casey 2016)1 despite the fact that the vast major- ity of black Louisianans live outside the city limits (US Census Bureau 2010). Evidence shows both that New Orleans African American English is more vernacular—or nonstandard—than other regional varieties of African Ameri- can English (Charity 2007) and that it does not differ significantly from white varieties of English in New Orleans in terms of certain linguistic features (Bren- nan 1983; Casey 2016). These studies suggest that white dialects of English in New Orleans may also be particularly vernacular. Creole African American English as described by Dubois and Horvath (2003a) is similar structurally to other varieties of African American English, with some distinctive Creole French–influenced qualities, such as glide reduc- tion on vowels (pronouncing /o/ and /e/ in a shorter or “purer” way, without the off-glide) and nonaspiration of initial /p, t, k/ (pronouncing word-initial /p, t, k/ without the puff of air typical in most varieties of English). Some features that Creole African American English shares with both African American English and Cajun English include th-stopping (pronunciation of this thing as dis ting), r-lessness (pronouncing car as cah), and monophthongal /aɪ/ (deleting the final portion of the /aɪ/ sound, such that time is pronounced more like tom) (Dubois and Horvath 2003a; Wroblewski, Strand, and Dubois 2009). Southern White English is spoken primarily in north Louisiana and the Florida parishes north of Lake Pontchartrain. The defining feature of this dia- lect is participation in the southern vowel shift (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006), the set of vowel characteristics found throughout the American South that gives the “Southern drawl” its distinctive flavor. In addition to the southern vowel shift, north Louisiana features significantly less French influence than Cajun engLish: a LinguistiC anD CuLturaL ProfiLe 163 Table 11.1. Varieties of English in Louisiana Dialect Who speaks it Sounds like African American African American residents of Louisiana African American English English from throughout the state spoken throughout
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