Francophone Louisiana Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Nel libro sono narrate le vicende di esploratori come i Caboto, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, Robert Cavelier de La Salle e la ricerca del mitico passaggio a Nord-ovest. Vi sono gli indiani, Irochesi e Uroni, e i luoghi della Nuova Francia. Vengono descritti l'organizzazione politico-amministrativa di quei territori, la società, l'economia - in particolare il commercio delle pellicce e la pesca del merluzzo -, il ruolo della Chiesa e degli ordini religiosi. C'è il sogno imperiale francese costellato da scontri, alleanze e trattati fino al 1763, anno in cui, dopo un conflitto dalle dimensioni mondiali-la guerra dei Sette anni-l'impero del Giglio sarà destinato a dissolversi nei flutti della storia. Un'opera vasta sull'impero francese nordamericano che risponde a un bisogno conoscitivo non solo degli specialisti, ma anche di un pubblico più ampio.

- by Giuseppe Patisso
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- Québec History, Francophone Canada, French colonialism, Acadian French

As the United States descended into civil war, New Orleans’s century-old community of French-speaking free people of color — wealthy, educated, and influential — struck back against increased racial hostility and erosion of their rights. Their chosen weapon was newsprint. L’Union: mémorial politique, littéraire et progressiste appeared in 1862, succeeded by La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans in 1864. Collected here for the first time, the poems printed in the newspapers bring to light a network of intimate connections and vibrant dialogue. In verse modeled on French Romantic poetry, more than twenty activist authors wrote poems back and forth to each other before a public audience. Differing in important ways from the tone of the newspapers’ prose, the poetry expands our understanding of the close-knit, politically progressive community of Creole gens de couleur and recovers their contributions to the fight for civil rights in the United States. The original French poems appear here alongside Clint Bruce’s sensitive English translations, mindful of meaning, meter, and sound. A comprehensive introduction, biographies of the poets, and extensive annotations immerse the reader in Civil War–era Louisiana.

Louisiana Creole (aka “Kouri-Vini”) has been continuously spoken for over 250 years in what is now the modern state of Louisiana as well as in other communities of the Gulf South region and elsewhere in diaspora settings where Creoles have migrated. This book represents the first modern publication concerning the language, and it is unique in its orientation to the everyday language learner.

- by Nathan Wendte and +2
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- Language revitalization, Creole languages and education, Francophone Louisiana, Louisiana Creole

Detey, S., Racine, I., Kawaguchi, Y. & Eychenne, J. (éds) (2016). La prononciation du français dans le monde : du natif à l’apprenant. Coll. Références. Paris : CLE international, 263 p. ISBN 9782090382419 - With CD-Rom. Preview of the... more

- by Sylvain Detey and +1
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- Second Language Acquisition, Languages and Linguistics, Phonology, Language Acquisition

This book analyzes how the word Creole is defined as an ethnic and a linguistic label among those who self-identify as Creole-speaking Creoles in Texas. These individuals are often ignored in discussions of the Creole population of the Gulf South because they no longer reside in Louisiana. Debate over the exact definition of Creole has been ongoing for over a century. Rather than promote some new definition, this book displays the paradoxes of Creoleness by presenting the words of Creoles themselves without any attempt to regularize the incongruencies that appear. The book is divided into two parts. The first part develops the concept of ethnolinguistic identity, indicates the historical uses of the term Creole in Louisiana, and traces the migration routes that led Creoles to Texas. It wraps up with a discussion of contemporary understandings of the word Creole based on fieldwork among Texas-resident Creoles. The second part presents and offers commentary on a sample of Creole translations for seventy-five English sentences. These translations, drawn from interviews with Texas Creoles, illustrate the wide variety of language forms that go by the name Creole in Texas. Collectively, this work demonstrates the challenges migration poses to ethnolinguistic identity.

- by Nathan Wendte
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- Ethnolinguistics, Francophone Louisiana, Translocality, Louisiana Creole Culture

A global study about the history of French varieties spoken in Louisiana, and the language policies in that US State

Southwest Louisiana Creoles underwent great change between World Wars I and II as they confronted American culture, people, and norms. This work examines that cultural transformation, paying particular attention to the processes of cultural assimilation and resistance to the introduction and imposition of American social values and its southern racial corollary: Jim Crow. As this work makes clear, the transition to American identity transmuted the cultural foundations of French- and Creole-speaking Creole communities. World War I signalled early transformative changes and over the next three decades, the region saw the introduction of English language, new industries, an increasing number of Protestant denominations, and the forceful imposition of racialized identities and racial segregation. Assimilation and cultural resistance characterized the Creole response, but by 1945, southwest Louisiana more closely resembled much of the American South. Creole leaders in churches, schools, and the tourism industry offered divergent reactions; some elite Creoles began looking to Francophone Canada for whitened ethnic identity support while others turned toward the Catholic establishment in Baltimore, Maryland to bolster their faith. Creoles were not the only distinct community to undergo Americanization, but Louisiana Creoles were singular in their response. As this study makes clear – in ways no historian has previously documented – Louisiana Creoles bifurcated as a result of Americanization. This study also contributes to, and broadens, the literature on Acadian identity. Previously, scholars simply assumed that whitened Latins in Louisiana had always identified with Acadia and their black-racialized brethren with Haiti. This thesis, however, suggests that Cajun and Creole are not opposites. Rather, they derive from the same people and culture, and their perceived and articulated difference emerged in response to Americanization. Through a critical analysis of that bifurcation process, this thesis demonstrates how Acadianized identity and culture emerged in the first half of the 20th century.

- by Christophe Landry
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- Race and Racism, Migration, Critical Race Theory, Identity (Culture)
- by Karin Speedy
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- Contact Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, French Studies, Sociolinguistics

The Louisiana Creole dialect formerly spoken along the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Tammany Parish has been recognized as somewhat divergent from other varieties of the language (Klingler and Dajko 2006). Northshore Creole–referred to elsewhere as St. Tammany Creole–does not benefit from a full grammatical description. On the basis of a sample of previously unanalyzed data, this paper gives a preliminary account of some linguistic peculiarities of the dialect and compares them with the better described Louisiana Creole dialects of Bayou Teche (Neumann 1981) and Pointe Coupee Parish (Klingler 2003). The data come from interviews conducted by Dr. Thomas A. Klingler in the mid-1990s. The audio was extracted from the interviews (originally recorded on Betamax tapes) and transcribed by Creole community members thanks to a grant from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (NOCGS).

in The Journal of Transatlantic Studies

- by Andrew N. Wegmann
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- Colorism, Race and Ethnicity, Francophone Louisiana, New Orleans

The first codes of Louisiana (1808 and 1825) were written in French and translated into English. The revised Civil Code of 1870 was written in English only. Recent revisions, all in English, aim at promoting a civilian vocabulary, markedly distinct from the common law vocabulary. This article discusses the translation of the Louisiana Civil Code from English into French in the context of the steep decline and limited revival of French language usage in Louisiana. It features the purpose and the step by step implementation of the translation project, identifying linguistic and legal challenges and resources relied on. The aim is to produce a truly Louisianan translation. Translators therefore resort to original French sources whenever the text has not evolved or was simply reproduced. The process may then be described as retranslation, aiming at reviving the original language. Where texts have been substantially rewritten, yet still reflect civilian logic and style, the translation aims at echoing the spirit of the Code. However, in the several occasions where the drafters borrowed common law substance and style, the civilian spirit may no longer vivify the translation, as it is obscured by an overabundance of language.

This article examines the process of ethnic self-identi cation. Utilizing data on Louisiana Cajuns, it proposes that contemporary Cajuns' self-image is rooted in stereotyped descriptions given by outsiders. Content analysis of popular depictions over two centuries shows the features and structure of the image to be quite stable despite considerable economic and social change. The meaning of the depiction, though, has evolved as those who consider themselves Cajuns have taken up and re-worked the stereotypes of outsiders, re-valuing negative portrayals as positive traits. Building on Herbert Gans's symbolic ethnicity argument, we propose that this development highlights the oft-neglected role that outsiders' de nitions play in ethnic identi cation, and that it suggests a possible answer to the question "What is symbolized in symbolic ethnicity?".

- by Emilie Urbain
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- Sociolinguistics, Francophone Louisiana, Acadie

Dans la Louisiane d’avant la guerre de Sécession, les textes dénonçant l’esclavage sont extrêmement rares en raison des lois limitant la liberté d’expression. Cet article se propose d’étudier une exception frappante mais discrète, à savoir le feuilleton « Un pirate » (1853), signé par Michel Séligny, homme de couleur. En tenant compte de l’ambiguïté de la situation des gens libres de couleur, il s’agira de mettre en lumière les enjeux et stratégies de la mise en fiction de l’histoire locale, plus particulièrement des corsaires négriers, à l’effet de contester le rôle de ces derniers dans la mémoire populaire. Ces stratégies comprennent notamment la réécriture d’une nouvelle du romancier français Eugène Sue.

- by Clint Bruce
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- History of Slavery, Caribbean Studies, Francophone Literature, Francophone Louisiana
- by Sophie White
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- Amerindian Studies, Torture, Francophone Louisiana, Louisiana history

This chapter explores the question what the first generation of French settlers of the Louisiana Gulf Coast and New Orleans knew about hurricanes, and how they and later generations of creoles and newcomers adapted to the recurring hurricane hazard. The article starts out with a snapshot of French Louisiana’s first group of settlers in order to establish the state of early hurricane knowledge in the colony. The hurricane and flood hazard, which both affect the city – the former less frequently than the latter – are juxtaposed and adaptation measures compared before diving into three hurricane case studies spanning the French as well as the Spanish colonial period of New Orleans. The case studies show that the city’s societies remained vulnerable to hurricane impacts throughout the eighteenth century and that disaster migration was resorted to in particular after back-to-back hurricane events.

- by Eleonora Rohland
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- History, American History, Historical Anthropology, Historical Demography

This study employs 1990 U.S. Census data to examine possible sources of a high rate of endogamy among Louisiana Cajuns. It suggests that a continuing high level of in-group marriage in this ethnicity is surprising, given the group's long residence in the U.S., the ethnic diversity of southwestern Louisiana, and the group's cultural assimilation. The study uses logistic regression to examine predictors of endogamous or exogamous marriage patterns among Louisiana couples containing at least one Cajun partner. The findings suggest that ethnic endogamy is promoted in part by socioeconomic homogamy among members of this group.
Marriage perpetuates recognizable groups of people and maintains distinctions among them. The descendants of two groups whose members intermarry on a large scale will form a single group. Thus, in Kennedy's (1946) classic "Triple Melting Pot" perspective, marriage patterns maintained Protestants, Catholics, and Jews as the three "pots" into which immigrants to the U.S. were melting.
There has been a strong tendency toward out-marriage among most American minorities. Even Kennedy's three pots have leaked substantially into one another: marriages of Jews to non-Jews, for example, have been rising sharply since the 1970s and some researchers have maintained that a majority now marry non-Jews (Kosmin et al. 1991; Sandberg 1974). Exogamy continues to be rare for African Americans, but this very rarity is evidence of the continuing socially constructed boundaries between black and white Americans. A high rate of endogamy is a phenomenon that demands explanation. When a high rate of endogamy is found among members of a minority who bear no traits of appearance that distinguish them from the majority, the phenomenon is especially curious.
This curious state of affairs is precisely the case, the evidence indicates, among those in southwestern Louisiana who identify themselves as Cajuns (Arceneaux 1982; Esman 1985; Henry & Bankston 1999). In this study, we will present data from the 1990 U.S. Census that suggest that members of this white ethnic group show a surprisingly high rate of in-group marriage. We will then examine census data in greater depth to attempt to explain this phenomenon. In our view, this inquiry can help us to understand how marriage patterns serve to maintain group boundaries, as well as offer greater understanding of an American ethnic group

- by Carl L Bankston
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- Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic Identity, Ethnic Identities, Francophone Louisiana

Defining Creole Eschewing a discussion of the historical development of the term's semantics, suffice it to say that Creole has enjoyed a long legacy of use as both an ethnic and a linguistic label in Louisiana and the Gulf South region. However, the exact meaning of this ethnoglossonym has been-and is today-highly context dependent (Klingler 2003). For linguistic analytical purposes, I use the acronyms LC (Louisiana Creole) and LRF (Louisiana Regional French) to distinguish between the two primary French-lexified speech varieties in use in Louisiana today. This is not, however, meant to imply that my use of these terms matches the labelling practices of participants themselves.

- by Nathan Wendte
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- Morphology, Grammaticalization, Francophone Louisiana, Language contact
- by Katie Carmichael
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- Sex and Gender, Sociolinguistic Variation, Francophone Louisiana
- by Edouard Baraton
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- Québec History, Francophone Literature, Francophone Canada, Francophonie

An opinion piece about the Creole situation in the state of Louisiana.

The survival of the Cajuns, a French-speaking minority
that settled in Louisiana in the end of the 18th century, has always
been menaced by the influences coming from the USA. The only
way to preserve their peculiarities against the “Americanization”
was (and is still) represented by their rich tradition in music. It is
possible to describe the habits of this community through their
songs, which reveal the Cajuns’ humbleness, their conservative
attitude and their troubled past. This study gives a portrait of the
Cajuns following three themes which are developed in their songs:
the diaspora of the Acadians, the representations of Acadia and
Louisiana and the description of the Cajun identity.

- by Alessia Vignoli
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- Francophone Louisiana, Cajun, Louisiana history, Cajun music

Creoles of Color (Creoles, hereafter) have been present in Southeast Texas since the 1820s (Jordan-Bychkov 1981). This area can be loosely defined as the Golden Triangle (Orange, Port Arthur, and Beaumont) and the greater metropolitan area of Houston. Subsequent waves of migration following the oil boom and the rise of violent racism in Louisiana further augmented the number of Creoles living in the area (Chambers 2014). Many of these immigrants came from rural southwestern Louisiana and brought their language(s) with them. Yet as Klingler (2003b) effectively demonstrates, ethnic designation is no clear indicator of one’s language choices. Creoles have historically spoken Louisiana Creole, Louisiana Regional French, and in some cases, both. The situation is further complicated by the extremely close relationship between the French and Creole languages spoken in Louisiana, the internal variability within Louisiana Creole itself, and the high degree of language contact between the two varieties in many contexts (Marshall 1997, Valdman and Klingler 1997).
This paper presents an initial analysis of interviews with a small sample of self-identified Creoles living in Southeast Texas and, to the best of my knowledge, constitutes the first study of language use among this transplant population. I compare and contrast the linguistic codes that each participant uses as well as their differing attitudes towards language varieties and ethnicity.

- by Nathan Wendte
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- Texas History, Francophone Louisiana, Louisiana history, Louisiana Creole Culture
- by Jean-Marie Grassin
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- Cultural Studies, Canadian Studies, World Literatures, Anthropology

Language ideologies are perpetually in flux. Within Louisiana, it has been noted that ethnic labels like “Creole” and “Cajun” often serve as stand-ins for racial classifications which are then superimposed on the linguistic situation. This appears to be an instance of fractal recursivity, as defined by Irvine and Gal (2000). However, Creoles in Southeast Texas seem to be modifying their ideologies to encompass more variation and broader definitions both ethnically and linguistically. This may indicate an in situ occurrence of erasure (Irvine and Gall 2000) that complements the work of Dubois and Melançon (2000) among Creole communities in Louisiana. The present study is based on research among self-identified Creoles claiming to speak the Creole language. The preliminary interviews informing this study were conducted between November 2015 and March 2016 and included a sociolinguistic questionnaire, a translation task, and free conversation. My data consist of linguistic tokens and explicit attitudes from participants in Harris and Jefferson counties—two of the ten counties I define as Southeast Texas. As Mufwene notes in his foreword to Blommaert’s recent book, “static geolinguistics [is] clearly out of date” (Blommaert 2010: xi-xii). I hope that by expanding the view of francophone Louisiana to include its diasporic populations, we might arrive at a fuller understanding of linguistic and identity-creative practices.

"Nobody ain't never gonna find the code," Big Chief Larry Bannock once defiantly argued about the secrets of the Mardi Gras Indians. Famously described by Henry Rightor in 1900 as bands running along the streets on Fat Tuesday "whooping, leaping, brandishing their weapons and, anon, stopping in the middle of a street to go through the movements of a mimic war-dance, chanting the while in rhythmic cadence an outlandish jargon," the Mardi Gras Indians' performances are, indeed, among the most enigmatic traditions of New Orleans's annual carnival celebration. Due to the lack of historical sources, it is tempting to relate these "black Indians" to Buffalo Bill's touring Wild West shows. Although I do not wish to deny that these late nineteenth-century shows have been part of the stream of influences that shaped the Mardi Gras Indians, the fact that similar traditions developed in places where Buffalo Bill's shows were never performed makes it more likely that New Orleans's "black Indians" represent a specific variant of a broader phenomenon rather than a uniquely Louisianian product. In fact, Léon Beauvallet observed in Cuba in 1856 how some blacks in a parade in honor of a king "had transformed themselves into South American savages, Red Skins, or Apaches," and in his description of a carnival celebration in Trinidad in 1847, Charles Day noticed that some black "Spanish peons from the Main . . . daubed with red ochre" had been brought over to the island from Venezuela to participate in the parade as Indian warrior bands with stick fighters, kings, queens, chiefs, medicine men, ambassadors, and other dignitaries. One way of approaching the existing scholarship with new theories despite the paucity of historical sources is by using a comparative perspective. Barbara Bridges, Samuel Kinser, Michael P. Smith, Ned Sublette, and others have broken new ground in the analysis of the Mardi Gras Indians by making connections to a series of Caribbean traditions. This article owes much to their pioneering work but tries to make further progress by adding new research materials from Brazil to the analysis. The first three sections serve to highlight parallels between New Orleans's "black Indians" and the many variants of dances, parades, and paratheatrical performances known in Brazil as "Mouros e Cristãos" (Moors and Christians). In section four, it is argued that this connection does not represent a singular case but rather a broader pattern that may also apply to New Orleans. This claim is supported by three theories―each corresponding to a different "transformation" of St. James―that could explain the remarkable parallels between Louisiana's Mardi Gras Indians and Brazil's Moors and Christians.

- by Nathan Wendte
- •
- Francophone Louisiana, Translocality, Ethnolinguistic Identity, Nexus Analysis

Drawing on the example of the Louisiana Cajuns, an ethnic group that has been enjoying a wave of popular revival in recent years, this study suggests that changes in the perception of an ethnic identity are related to socioeconomic transformation. We identify the festival as a key aspect of the Cajun revival since the 1960s. An examination of the history, activities, and contemporary spatiotemporal organization of festivals reveals similarities to other aspects of a society of mass consumption. Niche marketing, the structuring of recreation around the modern work week, and the establishment of personal identity through the purchase of symbolically rich commodities are all embodied in present-day Cajun festivals. At the same time, the consumption of ethnic commodities is linked by the consumers with a sense of tradition and descent from a mythic past. The festivals of southwestern Louisiana are, in this sense, ''invented traditions'' and, paradoxically, a measure of the assimilation of this particular ethnic group into American culture.

- by Carl L Bankston
- •
- Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Ethnic Studies, Festivals and music
- by Anne Malena
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- Francophone Louisiana, Louisiana history, Louisiana Creole Culture
- by Karin Speedy
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- Contact Linguistics, French Studies, Pidgins & Creoles, Linguistics

L&#x27;émergence des identités francophones: le problème théorique et méthodologique Jean-Marie Grassin En associant les deux notions de francophonie et d&#x27;identité, cet ouvrage pose la problématique de l&#x27;émergence paradoxale de littératures de langue française hors de l&#x27;espace français ...

- by Jean-Marie Grassin
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- Critical Theory, African Studies, World Literatures, Diversity

Poster presented at the American Dialect Society, 2020

- by Nathan Wendte
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- Loanword Phonology, Francophone Louisiana, Language shift, Louisiana Creole

The Louisiana Creole community in New Orleans went through profound changes in the first half of the 20th-century. This work examines Creole ethnic identity, focusing particularly on the transition from Creole to American. In "becoming American," Creoles adapted to a binary, racialized caste system prevalent in the Jim Crow American South (and transformed from a primarily Francophone/Creolophone community (where a tripartite although permissive caste system long existed) to a primarily Anglophone community (marked by stricter black-white binaries). These adaptations and transformations were facilitated through Creole participation in fraternal societies, the organized labor movement and public and parochial schools that provided English-only instruction. The "Americanization of Creole New Orleans" has been a common theme in Creole studies since the early 1990's, but no prior study has seriously examined the cultural and social transformation of Creole New Orl...

"Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): How to protect yourself" (US CDC, 20 March 2020), Louisiana Creole translation