CREOLES AND CAJUNS:
A PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE
SY LVIE DUBOIS
BARBARA M. HORVATH
Louisiana State University
University of Sydney
You know I was raised in a community where we had black and white together
at that time. It was bad to call a white person a Cajun, because if you wanted to
Ž ght with another boy, you’d just call him a Cajun. Cajun was a dirty word at
one time in the South. That’s why I admire them so much now because, the
fact that, and even us, they came a long way from being a Cajun. Cajun was
considered low class, dirty and that kind of stuff. And, you know, the same as
black, Cajun was discriminated against, not like us, but, they was also discriminated against because they were, you know, they were Cajun.
—An elderly Creole African American from Parks, Louisiana, 2000
Cajuns are descendants of Acadians from the province of Nova Scotia
in Canada who originally settled in Louisiana between 1765 and 1785.
They were French-speaking white people who had to struggle economically
to survive and culturally to gain acceptance. They maintained their coherence as a separate ethnic group until the mid twentieth century, when they
began to assimilate into the Anglo dominant culture. Today, their economic status has improved and the so-called Cajun Renaissance has awakened in them a pride in their ancestr y and in their contribution to the
unique character of Louisiana.
The ethnic identity of the black people in our study is in  ux—as it has
been from the earliest times. Almost all of them nowadays identify as
African Americans (Dubois and Melançon 2000), but this ethnicity includes three historically distinct groups of people (Brasseaux, Fontenot,
and Oubre 1994, 110). In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries in
Louisiana, persons of African ancestr y were divided by skin color, wealth,
land ownership, education, and even language, but these distinctions
became blurred by the turn of the twentieth century. The Ž rst of these
three groups were the Colored Creoles. Their ancestors were the offspring
of white and black unions, were ofŽ cially recognized as the children of
these unions, and were free before the Civil War. Colored Creoles were
socially and economically stratiŽ ed: a small number were wealthy planters,
many were farmers, both landowners and tenants, and many were laborers.
American Speech, Vol. 78, No. 2, Summer 2003
Copyright © 2003 by the American Dialect Society
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The second group were the Black Creoles, who also had ancestors who were
the offspring of black and white unions, but who were slaves freed by the
Emancipation Proclamation (111). After the Civil War they constituted an
illiterate poor population of tenants and sharecroppers. Finally, the third
group consisted of the descendants of unions between the French-speaking
Colored Creoles or Black Creoles and English-speaking former slaves whose
ancestors were brought to Louisiana from the Upper South between 1830
and 1860 during the expansion of the cotton industry. The term Creole in
this essay speciŽ cally refers to African Americans who have some French
ancestry, however remote. Not all of those who have French ancestr y call
themselves Creoles, but most agree that someone designated a Creole
should have parents or grandparents who were Creoles and who spoke
French. The consultants in our study speak French. Some refer to themselves as Creoles while others refer to themselves as African Americans. We
will thus use the term Creole African Americans, and we will call the variety
of English they speak Creole African American Vernacular English
(CAAVE).1
Brasseaux, Fontenot, and Oubre (1994, 117) mention that the Creole
African American priorities of “religion (Catholics), family (both nuclear
and extended), family values, and hard work mirror the values of neighboring Cajuns.” However, their similarity goes beyond cultural attributes.
Before the Civil War, Colored Creoles and Cajuns were farmers or Ž eldhands
in rural communities, whose incomes were both low and uncertain. Both
groups were similarly economically stratiŽ ed: both included a small number of wealthy planters (the “Genteel Acadian” elite and the Colored
Creole elite), some landowning farmers, and many tenant farmers,
Ž eldhands, and laborers. Following the Civil War, Cajuns and Colored
Creoles, as well as the freed Creole and English-speaking slaves, were
forced into tenancy and sharecropping. Subsequent changes in agricultural practice, especially mechanization and land consolidation, led to
widespread unemployment that sent many to urban centers in search of
work. In the 1950s, Cajuns and Creoles beneŽ ted from the development of
industry in southern Louisiana, including oil and gas, chemicals, and
textiles.
As they did in the past, Creole African Americans and Cajuns today live
in close proximity, often in the same communities, as in St. Landr y and St.
Martin Parishes, where our study is centered. Both ethnic groups live in
close-knit communities, maintain strong kin group ties, and are proud of
the fact that they help each other out in times of need. They came into
contact with English-speaking groups at the same time and began to learn
English under the same conditions. The elite within each group rapidly
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switched to English, while the illiterate maintained French longer. For both
groups, French gradually came to be used primarily within the family.
Creole African Americans and Cajuns have the same intergenerational
patterns of language shift: the old people are bilingual; the middle-aged
are bilingual but English-dominant, and the young by and large do not
speak French.
The divide between mainstream Louisianans and the Cajuns and Creole African Americans was both physical and psychological. Creoles and
Cajuns often lived in separate rural towns, and the dominant Louisianans
depicted both groups as illiterate, uncultivated, lazy, and simple-minded.
Community elders talk about the similarities in the way they were treated as
well as in their daily occupations (e.g., working in the Ž elds and being
poor). They did not use Cajun and Creole as either identity or language
labels, as is done today; they were simply Frenchmen who spoke French.
However, since World War II Cajuns and Creole African Americans are no
longer as separated from the English-speaking population as they were
before, either socioeconomically or psychologically. The predictable cultural revival that is often seen to follow the demise of an ethnic community
is now in full swing in Louisiana. Both Cajun and Creole African American
identities are positively perceived, and aspects of their culture, such as
music and food, enjoy an unprecedented popularity among the young
within the community as well as with Louisianans in general and tourists.
Cajuns and Creole African Americans did develop separate variations
on cultural themes. For instance, in music Creoles have zydeco, while
Cajuns have Acadian music. Their foods are similar, but food preferences
differ—it is a stereotype that Creoles are more likely to want red beans and
rice, while Cajuns prefer jambalaya. Card games are popular for both
groups, but Creoles play Pittypat and Cajuns play Bourré. Despite similarities, Creoles and Cajuns were and still are divided by a single powerful
factor: race (Maguire 1989).
While wealthy Creole African Americans were slowly excluded from
the elite social and economic positions they had occupied before and after
the Civil War, the Cajun elite maintained their status. Continued racism
after the Civil War forced many Creole African Americans to  ee. Jim Crow
laws in force through the 1950s affected only the Creole African Americans. Because they were white, Cajuns by deŽ nition were part of the
dominant group, even though they were at the bottom of the social scale.
There is no evidence that Cajuns resisted the racist laws, and there is
instead evidence of the periodic eruption of violent interracial discord
between Cajuns and Creole African Americans (Brasseaux 1996). Creole
African Americans without hesitation identify Cajuns as whites, while Cajuns
identify Creole African Americans as blacks.
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195
Comparing CAAVE and CVE is one of the important goals of this study.
The rural speech communities reported on here provide a strong case for
comparison, because they share many characteristics. Our research design
calls for bilingual speakers, who were found for all age groups except for
the young, who have become at best emblematic French speakers (Poplack
1980). The sociohistorical background of Creole African Americans of
Parks in St. Martin Parish and Opelousas in St. Landry Parish is described
in Dubois and Horvath (forthcoming). That article describes for male
speakers only a distinctive linguistic characteristic of CAAVE: the absence
of a glide in the vowels [i, e, o, u] and in the diphthongs [ai, au, oi]. All of
the CAAVE speakers in the analysis, from the oldest to the youngest, show a
high rate of glide absence for all of these vowels. Unlike the isolated African
Americans in Hyde County (Wolfram and Thomas 2002), where younger
generations have abandoned local forms and moved toward either the
supra AAVE norms or the more standardized Southern norms, persistence
of the local norms marks Parks and Opelousas.
This paper compares the variable pronunciation of the interdental
fricative (D) as the dental stop [d] as well as the reduction or absence of the
glide in (ai) for both CVE and CAAVE in order to determine whether CVE
and CAAVE are similar and to compare the intergenerational patterns of
variability for each ethnic group. The GoldVarb analyses of the variables
show the persistence of local forms for Creole African Americans across all
generations; only speakers with higher education show some change toward the standard pronunciation of (D) and the diphthongal pronunciation of (ai). The Cajuns, on the other hand, exhibit another kind of
persistence; while the middle-aged men show clear signs of abandoning
local forms, the young men use the local forms at the same rate or
sometimes even at a higher rate than the oldest speakers in the sample. The
Ž nal sections of this article interpret these results and address the question
of whether or not the groups we have studied in St. Landr y Parish (Creole
African Americans and Cajuns) and St. Martin Parish (Creole African
Americans) are examples of enclave communities.
SAMP LE AND DATA
The Creole African American corpus is made up of 42 speakers who were
born, raised, and still live in their home parish. Only age and gender were
incorporated in the design of the sample, although we have also been able
to investigate other social factors, such as the level of education and early
language learning experiences (i.e., whether English, French, or both were
Ž rst learned in the home). The Ž rst set of interviews was collected in and
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a mer ic a n sp eec h 7 8 . 2 (2 0 0 3 )
around Opelousas (Washington, Plaisance, Bois Mallet) in St. Landr y
Parish and the other set in Parks in St. Martin Parish. 2 The subsample of
this study consists of 24 male speakers equally divided into four age groups:
old (born between 1915–20); senior (1932–40); middle-aged (1945–55);
and young (1966–80). The interviewers were Creole African American and
African American.
The phonological data for Cajuns are taken from a subsample of the
Cajun French/English Sociolinguistic Corpus. This whole corpus includes
120 bilingual Cajun speakers who were born, raised, and still live in their
home parish and is described in detail in Dubois (1997) and Dubois and
Horvath (1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2002). The subsample here consists of
interviews in English with 15 male speakers from St. Landr y Parish (Eunice,
Church Point, and Mamou) and is taken from the Ž rst interview in English,
lasting 45 minutes, and conducted by a native Cajun English speaker.
IN TERDENTAL FRI C ATIV ES AND DI PH TH ONG AL (a i)
IN C AJUN VERNAC ULAR EN GLI SH
Our study of interdental fricatives in Cajun English (Dubois and Horvath
1998a) presents an overview of the variant pronunciations of (T, D) in
English dialects. Historically two sets of alternates regularly substitute in
English for (T) and (D), with the voicing distribution being retained in
either case. The stops [t, d] are the most frequently reported substitutions,
and they occur wherever English is spoken. (See Dubois and Horvath
1998a, 247, for a list of varieties of English.) The labiodental fricatives [f, v]
are found in London Cockney speech (Wells 1982, 328), in Australia
English in all positions (Horvath 1985, 97), and in American dialects,
especially in Southern English in the speech of both blacks and whites. In
CVE, the stops [t, d] are the variants used (Rubrecht 1971); 47% of the
interdental fricatives are realized as dental stops by Cajun men. Only a few
instances of [f] for (T) in Ž nal position (with, both) were found, mostly in
grammatical as opposed to lexical words (Dubois and Horvath 1998a, 252).
The use of monophthongal [a:] for the diphthong (ai) in such words as
hide [ha:d] and try [tra:] is one of the most salient and common features of
Southern American English. Some studies report the predominant use of
the monophthongal variant for the South as a whole, while others highlight
its use in speciŽ c places in the South: Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama,
Missouri, and Texas (see Dubois and Horvath 1998b). Two patterns of
variation are identiŽ ed by Thomas (1997, 311). The Ž rst is the presumably
old Southern pattern in which /ai / becomes a monophthong in prevoiced
C reoles a nd Ca juns: A Port ra it in B lac k and W hite
197
(bind) and word-Ž nal (my) contexts but remains a diphthong in prevoiceless
contexts (night). African Americans usually display this pattern, and whites
who live in parts of the South where a plantation culture once developed
do so as well. The second pattern is the post–World War II pattern in which
the monophthong [a:] is used in all positions, though Thomas (2001) does
not report the quantitative variation in the linguistic conditioning. In our
CVE study (Dubois and Horvath 1998b, 179), we have reported an overall
rate of 70% monophthongization for Cajun men for a total of 950 tokens
of (ai).3
There is a V-shaped distribution across the age groups for CVE men for
both the dental stop variants of (D) and the monophthongal variant of (ai).
The older generation uses more of these vernacular variants than the other
age groups, and the middle-aged generation uses them dramatically less.
However, the younger generation increases the use of these variants so that
their frequency almost equals or even exceeds the proportion found in the
speech of the older generation. For the dental stops, Cajun men with open
networks lead the change. We have called this process recycling. This
pattern is found for other variables (Dubois and Horvath 1999), and we
attribute it to the increased social status that Cajuns have enjoyed in recent
times, as both a cause and an effect of the Cajun Renaissance. These
English linguistic variants signal their membership in the ethnic group.
The gender differentiation in the use of several CVE features in the
younger generation can be attributed to the fact that what is presented as
Cajun culture to outsiders mostly concerns traditional male activities, such
as boating, Ž shing, and hunting. Usually, men participate in the traditional
“courir du Mardi Gras” and guide tourists on trips up the bayou. Even
Cajun cuisine is displayed as part of the male domain, with Cajun women
cooking only for sustenance. Music is also dominated by young men. More
men than women are involved in Cajun advocacy organizations or report
listening to Cajun radio programs. (For a fuller discussion of these issues,
see Dubois and Horvath 1999.) Young Cajun men have taken on the role of
torch-bearers; they have more reason than young women do to associate
themselves linguistically with the current public version of Cajun identity.
C OM PA RATIV E ANALY SI S O F C AAV E AND C VE
FO R (D ) AND (ai) 4
In the CAAVE corpus, dental stops account for 82% (1,021 out of 1,240) of
the realizations of (D).5 The GoldVarb results are displayed in table 1 (age,
parish, and the type of word were considered). The two oldest groups are
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table 1
Contribution of SigniŽcant Linguistic and Social Factors to the Probability
of Realization of Interdental Fricatives as Dental Stops in CAAVE
Weight
Type of Word
this/that
Grammatical Words
Lexical Words
total
Range 71
Age Group
Old (1915–20)
Senior (1932–40)
Middle (1945–55)
Young (1966–80)
total
Range 59
Tokens
.750
.501
.037
551/580
404/462
66/198
1,021/1,240
95.0%
87.4%
33.3%
82.3%
.780
.624
.503
.185
276/300
203/233
308/369
234/338
1,021/1,240
92.0%
87.1%
83.5%
69.2%
82.3%
Input .911; p < .000.
the most likely to use the vernacular variant. However, even for the young,
where the probability weights indicate that the variants are disfavored, the
rate of [d] is still very high. The factor group for word type is separated into
the words this and that, other nonlexical (grammatical) words, such as these,
those, them, and then, and lexical words, such as mother and father. The two
words this and that are the most favorable for dental stop substitution,
followed by other nonlexical words. Lexical words clearly disfavor substitution of stops for interdental fricatives.6
Table 2 shows that in CAAVE the dental stop is virtually categorical for
this/that for all speakers except the college-educated young speakers. In the
other nonlexical words category, the dental stop is 90% and higher for the
table 2
Crosstabulation of Percentage of [d] for Word Type by Age for CAAVE
this and that
Old
Senior
Middle
Young
Young + college
99%
95%
98%
100%
78%
Other Nonlexical
Words (them)
100%
95%
90%
81%
54%
Lexical Words
(brother)
52%
36%
38%
9%
0%
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C reoles a nd Ca juns: A Port ra it in B lac k and W hite
three oldest generations. With the young group of speakers and the college-educated, however, use the vernacular variant begins to diminish. All
CAAVE speakers use of considerably fewer vernacular variants in lexical
words, and the young use hardly any or none at all. This linguistic conditioning mirrors what we have found for CVE.
The graph in Ž gure 1 compares the rate of the dental stop pronunciation of (D) for both CAAVE and CVE by age group. To facilitate comparison, the old and senior Creole African Americans are grouped together
since no such division was used in the analysis for the CVE. The age
distributions are as follows: old Cajuns (born before 1935), old Creoles
(born before 1940), middle-aged Cajuns (1937–57), middle-aged Creoles
(1945–55), young Cajuns (1958–78), young Creoles (1966–80). The young
Cajun generation is divided by closed and open networks, whereas level of
education (college or high school) differentiates the young Creole speakers. Those with open networks and those who are attending or have
completed college obviously overlap; for comparative purposes we designate closed network/high-school–educated as Young 1 and open network/
attending college as Young 2. Unlike the V-shaped pattern that we found
for CVE, the CAAVE speech community shows a strong pattern of persistence across generations with only the beginnings of a decrease in the use
of the vernacular variant which is, as would be expected, more apparent
with the college-educated speakers.
The results of the GoldVarb analysis of monophthongal (ai) are given
in table 3; the absence or reduction of the glide is the vernacular variant.
An overall rate of 72.2% (643/890 tokens) of the monophthongal (ai) was
found. The constraint hierarchy associated with the age of the speakers
figure 1
Percentage Distribution of [d] for (D) for CVE and CAAVE Speakers
100
Percentage
80
Creoles
Cajuns
60
40
20
0
Old
Middle-Aged
Young 1
Young 2
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table 3
Contribution of Linguistic and Social Factors Selected as Significant
to the Probability of Monophthongal (ai) for CAAVE
Weight
Following sound
Liquid
Nasal
Voiced Obstruent
Voiceless Obstruent
Pause
total
Range 19
Age Groups
Old (1915–20)
Senior (1932–40)
Middle-Aged (1945–55)
Young (1966–80)
total
Range 21
Tokens
.59
.58
.50
.46
.40
43/53
112/144
129/180
256/361
103/152
643/890
81.1%
77.8%
71.7%
70.9%
67.8%
72.2%
.54
.56
.55
.35
180/238
166/215
168/218
129/219
643/890
75.6%
77.2%
77.1%
58.9%
72.2%
Input 0.746; p < .000.
(bearing in mind that education has not been considered separately in the
GoldVarb analysis) shows no differences in the use of the vernacular variant
for the three older groups but does indicate that some changes are being
introduced by the young. Following nasals and liquids promote
monophthongal (ai), as many observers have noted; however, in CAAVE
there is very little difference in the effect of a following voiced or voiceless
obstruent. The expectation would be that Thomas’s older pattern, the one
associated with plantation culture and found in the speech of both blacks
and whites, would be found for CAAVE. However, it is not, and in fact the
only conditioning is whether a consonant follows or not. Dubois and
Horvath (1998b) show that this same pattern describes the old CVE
speakers. However, for the young Cajuns, the linguistic conditioning of
monophthongal (ai) is changing. The monophthongal variant is conditioned by voiced/voiceless obstruents, with more glide absence before
voiced obstruents.
As Ž gure 2 shows, for CAAVE the same pattern of persistence found for
the (D) variable appears with (ai), while the CVE speakers exhibit a strong
V-shaped pattern. Again, the distinct linguistic behavior of college-educated CAAVE speakers is evident.
C reoles a nd Ca juns: A Port ra it in B lac k and W hite
201
figure 2
Percentage Distribution for Glide Reduction/Absence for (ai)
for CVE and CAAVE Speakers
100
Percentage
80
Creoles
Cajuns
60
40
20
0
Old
Middle-Aged
Young 1
Young 2
P ERSIS TENC E O F LO C AL FO RMS
The story that has to be told of the black and white French-speaking
populations of Louisiana is one of both change and persistence. The most
important change is, of course, their switch from French to English. We
argue elsewhere (Dubois and Horvath forthcoming) that this switch was a
long time coming. It began when the Cajun and Creole elite saw the writing
on the wall with the arrival of English speakers after the Louisiana Purchase
in 1803. It continued up to the Civil War with the massive in ux of Englishspeaking Southerners and their English-speaking slaves from 1805 to 1860
(Bailey 2001, 58). The switch to English received institutional support early
in the twentieth century when the state government made it unlawful to
use any language other than English in school and in the law. This change
from French to English is shared by both Creole African Americans and
Cajuns.
The story of persistence is the development of CVE and CAAVE, the
vernacular variants of English that distinguish these speakers from their
fellow Southerners. When we compare the oldest speakers of both varieties,
the phonological variables we have studied thus far as well as others, such as
unglided long stressed vowels and several morphosyntactic features currently under examination, show no difference. Cajun and Creole old men
spoke the same English vernacular, and the only reason to speak of two
vernaculars is social—it is a recognition of their own understanding of the
important social division between them.
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Current differences between CVE and CAAVE are responses to the
newfound status of the French heritage populations. As Ancelet (1996,
142) points out, while Creole African Americans were immersed in the
Civil Rights struggle and issues of race and equality after World War II,
Cajuns had the luxury of becoming “interested in preserving their culture
and language.” Cajuns have clearly beneŽ ted more than Creoles from the
ethnic revival; almost all of the highly prized aspects of the French Louisiana culture are designated as “Cajun”—to the dismay of some Creole
African Americans. (As one of our speakers says: “Far as making everything
Cajun sausage, Cajun ice, Cajun ya know, stuff that’s made in this area, you
know, you gonna Ž nd the Cajun name on it.)7 The novels and children’s
books depicting the history of French Louisiana are usually about Cajuns
(Dubois and Horvath 2002). However, the Southwest Zydeco Festival held
in Opelousas was started by Creole African Americans and is now very
popular with locals and tourists alike, so Creoles are not entirely left out of
the renaissance of French heritage (Melançon 2000).
The linguistic responses to the cultural renaissance have not taken the
same paths; only time will tell whether the substitution of stops for interdental fricatives and monophthongal (ai) indicate a lead/lag relationship
between the two ethnic groups or whether they will continue on separate
paths. The Creole African Americans show what might be expected of small
rural communities, the persistence of local forms across generations. But
the Cajuns also show peculiar kind of persistence; after the almost wholesale adoption of an external norm and the abandonment of local forms by
the middle-class men and by almost all of the middle-class and young
women, the young men are returning to the vernacular of their grandfathers. Race is the most obvious explanation for the current differences
between the youngest speakers of CVE and CAAVE. Cajuns and Creole
African Americans entered the era of economic and cultural boom of the
1950s on much the same footing; they were both rural and poor. However,
it was the Cajuns who found jobs Ž rst, who began to expand their social
networks and to participate socially with a wider spectrum of people. It was
the young Cajun men who took pride in their Cajunness and returned to
local speech forms as a badge of that pride. Creole African Americans did
not participate equally in the economic advances in southern Louisiana. By
and large the CAAVE community is still impoverished. Only higher education, not pride in French heritage, can offer Creoles economic prosperity.
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203
ENC LAV ES: W HERE P EOP LE TAL K TO PE OP LE
WH O TAL K LI KE TH EM
Sociolinguists interested in dialect origins (Poplack and Tagliamonte 2001;
Wolfram and Thomas 2002) are addressing some of the fundamental
concerns of historical linguistics, but this time against the considerable
background of quantitative description of language change in progress and
an understanding of the social motivation of change. When persistence
rather than change is the focus, then enclave communities rather than
urban communities are studied. Thus, to establish the origins of American
English, the early linguistic atlas projects looked to the small town, male
resident who was not too well educated or too interested in matters outside
of his community. Enclaves are usually described as having lengthy settlement history, minimal in-migration, and a strong sense of their own continuity as a population. In the usual case, enclaves are rural and frequently
geographically isolated. Persistence or change in language is thought to
re ect persistence or change in the community. Dialect enclaves are expected to be stable over time and to show linguistic persistence or very slow
change, while urban communities are expected to be in  ux and to show
“observable” language change in progress.8
Are the Creole and Cajun communities to be regarded as enclaves? On
the face of it, the communities in St. Landry and St. Martin Parishes studied
here look like enclaves: they are rural, geographically remote, and socially
isolated from the mainstream, have lengthy settlement histories, and have a
sense of their own continuity as a population. However, language changes
that have taken place historically and that are now taking place give a
dynamic rather than a static impression. These communities  uctuate over
time and are busy crossroads during good times and isolated enclaves
during bad times. The linguistic consequence in these communities is both
change and persistence.
Between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War, Cajun and Creole
communities were clearly not enclaves, as there was a high rate of inmigration from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. South Louisiana was a frontier state where contacts were intense between races, different levels of society, ethnicities, and speakers of English and French. Many
Native Americans as well as migrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy were
assimilated into the Creole and Cajun communities. A long period of
economic decline from the Civil War until World War II caused Cajun and
Creole communities to become much more isolated. People moved away in
great numbers, and those who remained stayed poor and illiterate, barely
able to sustain a living by working in the Ž elds. With the onset of industrial-
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ization, agricultural mechanization, and the oil and gas developments in
the 1950s, the communities emerged from this “enclave” status. Geographically, Creole and Cajun communities, like most places in the
United States, are no longer “remote,” becoming connected by newly
constructed roads and bridges as well as by other communication technologies. Intermarriage, linguistic assimilation, migration, and economic changes
have gradually eroded the residents’ sense of themselves as Creoles and
Cajuns, and nowadays more and more think of themselves as Americans.
These two communities began as dynamic places, went through a
period of isolation and insularity, and emerged once again as dynamic
communities. The dynamism of the Creole and Cajun communities reminds us that places, like language, go through periods of rapid change as
well as periods of quiescence. For instance, a community may be a vibrant
crossroads until a bypass is built. The Creole and Cajun communities in
southern Louisiana are not unique.
Geographic concepts like enclave communities, insularity, or remoteness as well as sociological concepts like social networks have allowed
sociolinguists to begin to see what effect these kinds of places and communal structures might have on language change. However, these concepts
need Ž rst to be translated into the language of sociolinguistics. What is the
importance of closed networks or insular communities for how people use
language and for whether persistence or change results? We suggest that
these situations mean that people talk to people who talk like themselves.
Creole African American and Cajun communities as well as similar groups
show linguistic persistence when the speakers are not confronted in their
everyday lives by others who do not speak the same dialect, who misunderstand them, or who socially evaluate the way they speak. The linguistic
consequence of an enclave or a closed network is that no linguistic accommodation to another is needed; there is no social motivation for change, so
linguistic persistence rather than change results. Language change happens when people begin to talk to people who do not talk like them. The
Cajuns took advantage of the economic upturn and began working with
people who were not their kin or neighbors, going to college, and otherwise interacting with speakers of other dialects. As the places where they
lived became less insular, the language changed. Changes toward the
regional Louisiana variety of English are taking hold in CVE as well as the
recycling of more local forms. We suspect changes to “relic” or local
features as well as to standard forms are the result of contact with people
who do not talk like them. We also suspect that the retention of a reduced
local form as an emblematic symbol of ethnicity happens when the loss of
the ethnicity is imminent. The Creoles, who also live in places that have
C reoles a nd Ca juns: A Port ra it in B lac k and W hite
205
become less insular, continues to live apart as a result of the racial divide
that marks these communities, and they continue to talk to people who talk
like themselves. For Creoles, we Ž nd persistence rather than change. A
quantitative sociolinguistic approach allows us to relate explicitly every
instance of dialectal persistence or change to what is happening in the
community itself and within each generation of speakers.
NOTE S
We acknowledge the generous support of the National Science Foundation (BSR0091823) as well as the dedicated work of our two research assistants, Vicky Polston
and David Herrell.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
For a more detailed discussion of ethnic identity in this speech community, see
Dubois and Melançon (1998, 2000) and Dubois and Horvath (forthcoming).
For more details on the methodology and content of the interviews, see
Dubois and Horvath (forthcoming).
When we compared the overall rate of (ai) before voiceless stop in CVE
(Dubois and Horvath 1998b, 174) to its frequency within the word night by
Texans who have lived all of their lives in rural areas (Thomas 1997, 315), we
found that monophthongal (a:) is relatively high in Cajun English, with 47%
for Cajuns (women and men) and only 39% for Texans. More striking, the
older Cajuns show an overall rate of monophthongal (a:) in voiceless stop
environments which is over twice (70%) that of Texans of the same age (32%).
Even the middle-aged Cajun speakers show a higher rate of monophthongal
(ai) than Texans. Only young Texans produce more monophthongal (ai) than
young Cajuns.
Basic descriptive statistics were calculated using the statistical package Statview,
and variable use analyses were carried out using the logistic regression application GoldVarb. The impressionistic coding was done by the same coder for
both CAAVE and CVE; spectrographic analyses of (D) and (ai) were also
carried out.
The variant [D] makes up close to 70% of the overall distribution of the data;
[D] also is more frequently stopped than [T]: 80% for [D] compared to 43%
for [T], as in CVE. Only Ž ve tokens of [f] realizations were found in the
database, all of them for the word both.
An overlap between type of word and position of (D) within a word prevents
further study of the independent effects of these two factors. The voiced
interdental fricative [D] is in initial position in this/that and other nonlexical
words like then and the but never occurs initially in lexical words like think and
thatch. Thus in lexical words [D] occurs only in medial and Ž nal position.
The new interest in Creole culture and ethnic revival is illustrated by the
Houma Today newspaper article:
206
a mer ic a n sp eec h 7 8 . 2 (2 0 0 3 )
There’s a new cultural sticker on the block. The Department of Agriculture and Forestry has announced plans to launch a “CertiŽ ed Creole”
logo for Louisiana product manufacturers to use in their marketing
strategies. The movement to implement the new classiŽ cation came from—
who else—a proud Creole: Terrel Delphin whose Creole heritage goes
back to the mid-1700s in the Natchitoches area, and does much more
than carry a cultural badge. According to Delphine, the Creole population plays an important role in the rich history and tradition of Louisiana
and deserves such a distinction. “Our other product logos, the CertiŽ ed
Louisiana and CertiŽ ed Cajun, have enjoyed wide usage across the state
on everything from seasonings and Ž sh batters to wines and cooking
utensils. I’m sure the Creole logo will be just as popular,” State Agriculture
Commissioner Bob Odom said. “We’re proud to be a part of this and are
excited that we could offer something to help identify authentic Creole
products to those people outside of Louisiana who may not know the
difference between Cajun and Creole,” he said. [ Jeremy J. Alford, “There’s
a New Cultural Sticker on the Block,” 30 Nov. 2002]
8.
For instance, Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001) see the oldest generations in
these places as speakers who grew up in an earlier time when the community
was an enclave. Since no changes have taken place during the time of the
enclave, the inference is that the dialect is unchanged from its place and time
of origin. However, Poplack and Tagliamonte do recognize that the communities (Samaná or Guysborough) are no longer enclaves. Their work, particularly in their concern for the constraint hierarchy, certainly points the way for
sociolinguists interested in the historical reconstruction of dialects to address
the traditional assumptions with sophisticated quantitative methods.
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