This image comes from the official website of a Louisiana-based record label, Valcour Records.
Click the image itself if you do not believe me.
Now, I’m almost certain that the vast majority of you read this without batting an eyelash.
Meanwhile, I was cringing in my Home Furniture, on sale-item couch, wondering if I was more uncomfortable because my pillows are on the other side of the room (ummm I did some cleaning, since I’m going to be showing the place to get rented out next week), or because of that introduction to an identity and culture that has existed in the Americas since before the United States gained independence from England.
If I counted each time I read or heard someone say that “In Louisiana the word Creole is a tricky one,” with an inevitable ethno-racial quagmire to follow, I would have been able to bail Edwin Edwards, the beloved Cajun Governor of Louisiana, out of prison a long time ago. Unfortunately, our bilingual Louisiana currency, the Piastre de la Louisiane, the Louisiana Dollar, lost its value some time ago and well, Louisiana Creoles, at the cultural level, never have been too interested in capitalism, anyways. But for many, mais, dat money talks!
Here’s the thing: these “definitions” of créolité (creoleness) are always in English and they discomfort me because they posit the contours of Louisiana identity on race, or, if you prefer, the more chic, groovy way of saying race – ethnicity. And therein always lies controversy. A controversy we inherited in Louisiana after the U.S. Civil War, by the way. It’s no wonder folks are sooooo weird about identifying as and with Creole in Louisiana!
We are not alone, though. English-speaking folks from the U.S. and the UK are taking to picking apart Boricualidad (Puerto Ricanness), Brasileiridade (Brazilianness), also. Somehow, these folks imagine that the race, or, pardon my English, ethnicity, tells you everything about the culture of that same person or people perceived as sharing same or similar racial features.
So, for instance, only in the U.S. folks mention folks “dressing white” and “speaking black” or the common expression “I could tell s/he was white by the way s/he talk.”
We’ve that kind of deciphering of illusions in Louisiana, too. By locals, mostly towards other locals and towards non-Louisianians, just the same.
Now, when I hear this, I always ask the same questions: their intonation is the exact same as yours, you use the same expressions, your gait/mannerisms are the same, how do you manage to racialize any of this? I never do get a response.
And then there’s the common expression from Northerners in regards to Louisianians: you’ve the blackest white people here and the whitest black people, I’ve ever seen.
When I moved to Lafayette from New York City, I too marveled over all the blonds shaking their booties to NOLA Bounce and how everyone dances to the same music but often in segregated clubs (e.g. Bâton-Rouge … very segregated! eeeery).
Hmmmm
So, here’s how I avoid the illusive racializations when describing Louisiana Creoles and their culture in the most all-inclusive (and most accurate) fashion:
Louisiana Creoles (n.) are practitioners of Latin-based Louisiana culture. Latin Louisiana culture hinges on languages whose lexical and/or grammatical origins stem from Latin (i.e. Louisiana Creole, Louisiana French, French, Louisiana Spanish, Spanish).
The culinary recipes, ballades, courrirs de mardi gras, call-and-response chants of Mardi Gras Indians, sugar cane harvest, shrimping, rice harvest, Zydeco and Cajun music of Louisiana have all been made possible through one or more than one of Louisiana’s Latin-based languages, spoken by everyone (in previous years).
Ancestral origins are irrelevant (in any culture), in so far as anyone can and does assimilate among, and marry into a population whose culture differs from that of the newcomer.
Louisiana Creole people, therefore, can, and do, identify with any number of ethno-racial identities, including, but not limited to, White, French, Cajun, Black, African-American, Mixed-Race, Native American, Lebanese, Syrian and all have ancestries that span the globe, but usually call Louisiana, home and prefer a Louisiana Creole dish like gumbo or beans-and-rice, over New England Clam Chowder or British beef stew.
Out of many cultures, we are one – Louisiana Creole culture – and perhaps, many “people.”
Related posts:
WHAT IS CULTURE?
RACE AIN’T GOT NUTTIN’ TO DO WIT’ IT
WHERE OUR ANCESTORS ARE FROM
DISCOVER LATIN LOUISIANA
Mais Christophe! stir it! I do claim to be Cajun because most of my ancestors do come from Acadie, however, i do have some that come from France. So there is the All Time Question. What is a Cajun? Well if you say that Cajuns have to have 1…00% Acadian blood, I would challange all to prove that and i would venture to say that the % of people that have !00% Acadian blood would be slim. Now With that said, what are these people called as myself that have blood from Acadie and from France and possibly native indian blood? That means i aint Cajun if that is the facts and/or label!…I am no brain at all…But i do believe that where you come from and what genes you have can define you as a person, but your way of live and visions and mentality is also key…We all identify with certain things in life so that we feel as if we are a part of something. Although i agree that Louisiana at this point and time is Creole…I will always i dentify myself as CAjun. I think mainly because i consider it to be a way of life surrounded by like things and like people and like customs…thats my little piece of my puzzle….
Excellent Christophe ! I love being a Creole woman a Louisiana Creole living in California !
@ Brandon: Rock on! You’ll notice in how I avoid the racializing of culture, which allows for greater and more natural fluidity in self-identification, but more importantly, greater unity under a local umbrella term.
Everyone enjoys Brazilian cultures, Mexican cultures, Greek and Italian cultures, and the people there don’t wish to be from anyplace else, proud of their local cultures and identity, but can in the same light tell you that their ancestors came from this place and that place. The ancestors’ experience is secondary, not primary, because they recognise the difficulty in quantifying the experience of ancestors, since you don’t know what it was like to literally walk in their shoes, but you know what it is to walk in your own.
Cajun, quite clearly, is an ethno-racial term, rooted in white Latinness from Southwest Louisiana, that came about at a very specific period in time and which was not open to everyone – a white only club. That said, as an alternative to, or even synonym for white, Cajun ranks among expressions and identities such as Black, African-American, Native American, Mixed-Race, and on and on.
This is a surface-level identity. It doesn’t, in reality, change anything about your actual lifestyle. So, for instance, lots of white-identified or Cajun-identified eat gumbo, jambalaya, beans and rice, listen to chank-a-chank music and shake their booties, all elements that are way far field of the cultural blueprint of ANYPLACE in Canada. Does their white identity prevent them from that?
Culture is something we are prescribed and ascribed before birth.
We don’t have a choice about the foods we eat or the music we enjoy or the pep in our step.
We are conditioned/taught to perform in all of these ways by our parents, caretakers, family, friends, teachers etc.
When we reach the age where we are fully cognizant of all of this, say, our late 20s, early 30s, by then, most of us have our own kids now and are repeating most of the same upbringing (culture).
The thing, though, is that, for me, Acadians are not the same people as Louisiana Creoles with Acadian roots, also sometimes known as Cajuns. Acadian culture is entirely different, their surroundings are, as well, the air they breathe is different. Same thing for the French, Spaniards, Senegalese, Lebanese, Alsatians, Germans etc from whom many in the U.S. descend (in part or in whole). New Yorkers who identify as Guidos because they have one great-grandparent from Italy does not make them Italian, at all.
Usually when folks use their genealogy to identify a certain way (only found in the U.S., by the way), it is because either a) they’re uncomfortable with the local identity, b) the place of origin at a given point of a specific group of ancestors proves to be more exotic than the local identity can offer.
In other words, in the U.S., folks will choose a single branch of a family to espouse and begin to assume the identity of that branch, if only superficially, disregarding all others (completely disinterested in them, in many cases, otherwise, indifferent to them), assuming that something about these people espoused can be blueprint copied into their lifestyle, their being.
But culture, it doesn’t really work like that.
In the end, Louisiana Creole identity, the all-inclusive *cultural* and *originating* term it is, allows folks to essentialize the ancestors they wish or/and espouse the race/ethnicity they desire, but one cannot deny that the food, music, history, social interaction, religious profiles, temperament, swagger, speech intonation and cadence and languages, can *only* be found, as we enjoy it and know best, in Louisiana, and no place else.
That’s makes it undeniably, creole.
– At first I didn’t bat an eyelash, then I batted a few because the _first_ people born in the New World were Asian-descended Native Americans.
I get it that you are frustrated with everything coming down to race, though.
– AARGH! When did ethnicity start to mean race? I’m out of the loop. My impression is that you’re using the word to mean race because that’s how other people are using it, but maybe you should be prescriptive with us about that, too.
– BREAKTHROUGH!!!! LIGHTBULB!!!! JACKPOT OF $100 PIASTRES!!!! RE-EVALUATION!!!
Okay, some of us whitish-colored people are feeling defensive because it’s like we’re hearing you say that we need to ditch claiming Acadian/Cajun and acknowledge that we are Creole.
BUT Acadian/Cajun is useful and meaningful identity for our humanity to a certain point. We fought hard to claim it with pride and reconnect with our Canadian relatives, from whom we have much to learn and share. Some of us were called “white trash” or “backwards Cajuns”, etc., so it is just fine that we counter that and be proud of our whiteness and of our Acadian origins. We also get to do the work of noticing that society gave us certain priveleges when we were proclaimed white, and the racism that we have witnessed and perpetrated.
BUT it’s not an either/or proposition. I remember one of cher defunt Richard Guidry’s more fils de putain comments to me was, “So how does it feel to be half Cajun?” He said this because my mother was of Anglo descent. I found the question both infuriating and absurd. We all claim and act on our heritages to varying degrees. None of us lives out 100% of our ancestors’ culture. It has only been useful for me to fully claim all of my heritages and work on throwing out the elements that don’t make sense as a human. Or some of the foods that would clog my arteries.
SO FINALLY what makes sense for me, based on what you’ve been saying Christophe, is that “white” Cajuns need to actually claim being 100% Creole, and claiming all Creoles as our people. I don’t think we have to drop anything that is useful about being Cajun to do that, we just need to figure out how to be out there about being Creole.
Where it gets scary for me is
1) it is frightening to always speak up and interrupt racism.
2) I fear social rejection from many Creoles because of my raised poor/working class heritage. I fear it from lots of people, not just Creoles.
Now, my question for the Creoles (the more longstanding ones, not the recent Cajun converts).
Are Creoles ready to claim “white Cajuns”? Is it scary or infuriating because of the “whitewashing” of the culture that the term “Cajun” has been associated with and the racism that Cajuns have perpetrated? Are they ready to claim ALL of the Cajuns, the rich ones with oil money and SUVs and the poor ones with missing teeth who show up in all the swamp documentaries and hurricane news coverage?
Then there’s the piece that we do have blood ties, across Cajun and Creole lines. Another reason to fully claim each other.
Christophe, you fought hard to reclaim your Landry name. What’s up with that?
Merci, Christophe, pour ton blogue et tout ca tu fais!
Bingo!
Mais, that’s why I say, Cajun is an ethno-racial identity, rather than a cultural/historical one and that, like African-American-identified, Native-identified, you can use your ethno-racial identity if you a) believe in ethnicity and race and b) if it is important to you.
The catch is that, as you astutely mentioned: one must acknowledge that at the cultural, historical and geographic level, one is a Louisiana Creole.
This makes lots of sense, however, I feel that, like you, the biggest challenge is not educating and informing, but courage. Courage to face misinformation, bad judgment, bigotry, and hypocrisy.
Mais bien merci à toi pour tout ça tu fais et t’as déjà fait aussite.
Tout le monde est important dans la vie! On peut pas exister tout seul.
@ Brandon – Merci a toi, aussi, pour tes commentaires!
Hey cher,
I’m actually surprised that you reacted this way to that post, because essentially you and valcour are saying the same thing. They, too explicitly state that “Créole” is not associated with race. (Jolene, Valcour was giving the definition of Créole, which are the native born of Foreign parents, as I’m sure you are aware). I think what happened is that people are not taking into consideration the meaning of what is actually stated. Christophe, I know that is something you do, because you have done it with me. Rather than actually trying to understand what is being said, you take things at face-value. The two of you are actually positing the same thing.
I think once again, you also make the assumption that Cajun= Acadian; which is does not. I think we are all in agreement that Cajun (Cadien) culture is indeed a créolization of ALL the cultures that the Acadian émigrés found once they arrived in Louisiana. No one is arguing with you on that. This is precisely why, as you state AND as Valcour states, our culture is so rich.
Another thing you fail to mention that explains WHY the word Cajun was popularized, is during that CODOFIL movement in the late 60’s and continuing today, a large portion of the funding that was recieved to do promotion was granted by the Canadian and French gov’ts. So there’s no surprise that the ties that were highlighted were the ones that were Canadian and French in origin.
My point is that you and Valcour are actually saying the same thing….no need to create the division that you are trying to erase.
Where to begin?
1. Valcour records racializes through and through. There’s no mistake in words. Words exist for a reason. So do idiomatic expressions. The website repeatedly speaks to “black Creole” this and that. Example: Louisiana’s Black Creole roots go back to West Africa and to many of the 6000 slaves shipped to Louisiana between 1717 and 1721 of which 2000 survived. In the Caribbean chain, Louisiana was but the last link of the Middle Passage giving Louisiana’s Creole culture and music an unbroken link to West Africa.”
Actually, Louisiana’s CREOLE (no need to racialize) roots, in part, do go back to West Africa. But West Africa is far from homogeneous. Just within Sénégal alone, the Wolofs have one cultural blueprint, the Mandingas in the east, have another. Add to that the Fulbe, Ewe, Fon, Ibou, Mele, Mande, and the many others from West Africa and you’ve a complex blueprint. And that’s only northern west Africa. The Congo region provided nearly all slaves during the Spanish period, and like northern West Africa, is not a region of a monolithic people.
Why do I mention this? Two reasons. Firstly, because music among all of these peoples within the two regions I mentioned is NOT the same. The musical culture, rhythms, histories, sounds, lyrics, and languages in those regions all represent very diverse origins. Secondly, because folks LOVE to generalize about what they know very little and throwing in West Africa akin to Africa (as if everyone and everything is the same there).
We all share a piece of the West African pie. The idea here, though, is that, “black Creoles” inherited more because of the perceived relationship with ancestry, which makes saying “West Africa” for “black Creoles” more legitimate, clearly an egregious error.
That said, Zydeco, which has roots all over the place, can’t be heard anyplace natively outside of LC populations in the U.S. Nor can the two-step of either Zydeco or Cajun be heard in France, Canada, the Caribbean or West Africa. That’s what makes it Louisiana Creole music and not French, not Acadian, not Wolof, not Togolese. The ballads common to Zydeco and other “black Creole” music, like Swing-out (which we borrowed from Anglos in the South and adapted to our tastes), cannot be found natively in any point in West Africa. But the assumption, erroneously so, is that because you perceive these folks as Black, that the music they like, which u assume has nothing to do with yours, comes from Africa, someplace. Swingouts, or slowdancing, you’ll find in Europe quicker than in West Africa. If you ever find it in West Africa.
The problem I have with this idea is that, what does perceived ancestry (because clearly no human knows his entire genealogical lineage. Science cannot even detail it.) have to do with culture practiced? “Yall have the whitest black people and the blackest white people” my friends from NYC and Connecticut often says about Louisiana. They’re on to A LOT. They are, on the one hand, speaking about phenotype (blond hair black-identified, and brownER-complexioned white-identified), and on the other hand, speaking to culture (white people who can wobble and drop it like it’s hot, which they code as a “black person’s rhythm” and black folks who run around in cowboy hats and ride horses, which they code as a “white person’s” pastime).
2. I tell folks that Cajun ≠ Acadian. How could i possibly conflate the two if I explain to others that it isn’t the same? The issue is that everyday self-identified Cajuns conflate the two, which is why you’ve thousands of native Louisianians from the Lafayette region who write-in being ACADIAN and speaking ACADIAN FRENCH on the American Community Survey.
My position on this is expressly stated in the now numerous articles on this website. There’s no mistake in my position, at all.
When I peruse the website of Valcour Records (and numerous others), there is a conceptual connection (rather than an actual one) between Cajun and Acadian, as if Cajuns and Acadiana were extensions of Acadie. It is implied rather than explicitly stated.
Example: “Bonsoir Catin’s Kristi Guillory is taking Cajun and Creole music reviews virtual. With her content-rich blog, the Cajun and Creole Music Spectator, featuring musician and artist reviews, editorials, intriguing accounts of Acadian history, and even a “Spectator Store,” Kristi is providing Louisiana music-lovers worldwide with a central resource for staying up on the culture.”
And these are the subtle (more often they are explicit in everyday usage here) associations with Cajun and Creole and Acadian that folks make which is why both locals here and outsiders conflate Cajun (and Creole, too, for outsiders – it just happened to me yesterday with a Texan) and Acadian.
3. CODOFIL wasn’t mentioned in my article, nor any of my responses. I’m not sure I see the rapport. But if you’d like to go there, we can. Politcally, there is Canada, then there is Québec. There is no mistake in the politics of Canada, Acadie, which isn’t a geopolitically demarcated space, is part of the maritime provinces. However Québec offers whatever to Louisiana in their own provincial name, not representing Canada, per se.
But what does that have to do with the popularization of Cajun and CODOFIL?
I think you just conflated Cajun with Canada yourself, because no one at that point was even talking about Cajunness in CODOFIL, to my knowledge. And Domengeaux especially seemed to be disinterested in Cajun anything.
Also, by mentioning government aid (funding) for CODOFIL, are you suggesting that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and other maritime provinces in the 1970s provided more teachers of French and financial aid to CODOFIL than Québec, France, Belgium or Switzerland?
4. You cannot be serious with this statement: “I think we are all in agreement that Cajun (Cadien) culture is indeed a créolization of ALL the cultures that the Acadian émigrés found once they arrived in Louisiana. No one is arguing with you on that. This is precisely why, as you state AND as Valcour states, our culture is so rich.”
I think that you are the only individual I know that equates Cajunité to “a creolization of ALL the cultures found once they arrived in Louisiana.”
I, on the contrary, argue that Acadians arrived here and found a single local culture (Louisiana Creole) which had been brewing since the 1690s. That’s about 5 to 6 generations of native-born folks here.
And I don’t use ideas like “rich” to describe cultures. Why? Because all cultures are diverse in origin. Every one on Earth.
And, similar to my rants about quantifying ancestry and race, one cannot quantify cultural origins.
This never even registers in my mind, a “rich culture.”
5. Lastly, Valcour Records is perspicuously stating one thing and I argue another.
The division is therefore present, not because I want it to be, but because people imagine it to be present and undeniably, natural.
I will justify a few of your points that you are misinterpreting yet again:
“Bonsoir Catin’s Kristi Guillory is taking Cajun and Creole music reviews virtual. With her content-rich blog, the Cajun and Creole Music Spectator, featuring musician and artist reviews, editorials, intriguing accounts of Acadian history, and even a “Spectator Store,” Kristi is providing Louisiana music-lovers worldwide with a central resource for staying up on the culture.”
Positing that one is Cajun (Cadien…which by the way would be Cadiennité and not Cajunité) AND Créole is not fallacious. They are not mutually exclusive nor are they equivalent, as you state in your conversations with Jolene. So why does it pose a problem for you to mention the two in the same sentence referring to 2 musical styles when you’ve stated that there is indeed a difference (where there is no overlap) between the two?
“But what does that have to do with the popularization of Cajun and CODOFIL?”
If the money (there is a difference in the money coming in for the Immersion programs and the money used for cultural programming, you are absolutely right that there are other entities working miracles to continue to provide us with teachers) coming in to support the sustainment of the culture comes from Canada and France therefore those are the ties that get highlighted which is why the word “Cajun” is the one you hear the most since that words makes reference to the Acadians and French who found themselves in French Louisiana. (Once again, celebrating one facet of a culture DOES NOT deny the existence of other influences.)
4. You cannot be serious with this statement: “I think we are all in agreement that Cajun (Cadien) culture is indeed a créolization of ALL the cultures that the Acadian émigrés found once they arrived in Louisiana. No one is arguing with you on that. This is precisely why, as you state AND as Valcour states, our culture is so rich.”
I am ABSOLUTELY serious and stand by the statement. The reason Cadiens don’t eat rapure et fricot and why our music doesn’t sound completely Celtic is because of the créolization of what happened when they got here. Thankfully the influences of the Louisiana French, Spanish, Germans, and the Jews (some of whom were NOT here 5 to 6 generations before the Acadians arrived) who were here influenced the expressions of culture.
I think if you look at this on a macro level, you will see that Valcour precisely states that there is no racial link between Cajun OR Créole (as you clearly state the phenotypes of those who identify as speakers of LA French (who typically identify as Cajun) and Créole are varied in both categories)
I mostly agree with everything you state (with the exception of the Latin Louisiana concept) on your blog and repost on occasion to share your ideas, however, I feel that you do not actually listen or comprehend what others say before spouting out your own theories.
I prefer Cajunité, since “Cadien” didn’t exist until after Cajun was born and the entire thing is rooted in the so-called Anglos corruption of Acadian, which was in English, not in French.
What you’ve to understand is that we all process information differently. We’re humans, not robots and our mental processing is cultural, stems from our vantage points, it is not systemic.
Also, all of my theories are based on empirical data, research that I conduct myself. That research includes, but is not limited to, a thorough knowledge of works (Textual) that pertain to the research in question, in addition to interviews.
In order for me to even arrive at any conclusion, that is fair and equitable, I am forced to “listen or comprehend what others say.” Precisely listening and comprehending what others have to say, be it textual or vocal, is indispensable for arriving at my conclusions.
You’ve the right to use Cajun as you feel. You can include Black-identified folks in that if you’d like. Just know that you’ll be the only one from Louisiana doing so and the Black-identified, as a general rule, will not accept it, at all. You cannot deny the history of the entire concept of Cajunité which is and has always been rooted in marginalized whiteness and which has never been an all inclusive term, of any sort. That also means that Cajun, in the manner employed by the common Louisianian AFTER the 1970s, has always looked towards Acadie as place of origin, not France, nor Spain, nor Québec, Cuba, the Canaries, Senegal, Togo, Mali, the Congo, Bénin etc.
For this reason, when Cajun comes to the minds of people living and breathing in Louisiana today, there is no immediate association with France, at all.
And besides, the general public does not even know that CODOFIL exists, nor who Jimmy Domengeaux, Jules Daigle, David Chéramie or Warren Perrin are.
If folks have absorbed Cajunité and Cajun supremacy today, it is not a result of CODOFIL, whatsoever. It is a result of the Tourism Bureaux, which operate independently of CODOFIL.
That is, unless I have missed something in the operations of all of this.
And finally, looking at this from all angles is essential, be it macro or/and micro. A painting is incomplete if it only exists in thought. It is, however, complete, once that thought is executed on canvas, which requires the perfect blend of thought, perception, locomotion of the brush and combination of all colors and angles necessary to paint the picture intended.
First of all it’s not me that Identifies anyone as Cajun or Créole. That’s an individual assertion. And once again, I agree with you we all process things differently, that’s something I completely understand as it is the root of why we can’t seem to communicate properly with each other. Since, on many points, we actually agree.
The cultural phenomenon of “Cajun” was promoted in Festivals (ie the CMA’s) and funded heavily by outside agencies through CODOFIL. While the events were not necessarily CODOFIl sponsored, it did contribute to the visibility of the word.
If you continue to perpetuate an English-vulgarization-turned-French, go right ahead, but it’s misrepresentative. Cajun in French is Cadien, therefore if you wish to use it in a French context, use the French word, as you do in all your other examples. That’s all.
Looking from a macro perspective includes the micro…it’s not solitary. (Just as you posit that Créole includes Cajun)
What does anyone knowing who Warren Perrin or David Cheramie have to do with CODOFIL’s involvement in Louisiana French? two individuals are not the agency nor the accomplishments/faults of said agency. They are just agents of the agency.
I simply feel that you often misconstrue things that are stated and misrepresent (me) individuals. And for that reason, I will cease to give you fodder to misconstrue me.
I’ve lost the original purpose of your response.
I initially understood it to pertain to the article on Valcour Records, which I treated in the article here.
But now it’s becoming more personal. This “First of all it’s not me that Identifies anyone as Cajun or Créole. That’s an individual assertion.” is very alarming, in so for as in none of this discussion, nor in the article’s body, do I speak about you.
And because it is taking a personal offense turn, it is losing cogency.
The words and phrases I use in my writing are always intentional. And for this reason alone, I have very specific reasons for my word choices.
That said, I elect to use Cajun in English, because it originates in the English language, and while all of us theorize about how Cajun (the noun) and cajun (the adjective) came about, none of us really know for sure. Two things I do know, though, given a thorough study of Louisiana authors and visitors writing on Louisiana is that a) No form of Cajun existed in Louisiana literature until the middle of the 20th century (except maybe one mention in 1921, after the first world war and a result of Anglos calling that to non-Anglophone Louisiana soldiers) and b) in Francophone Louisiana literature, no form of Cadien, of any kind, did not exist until after the middle of the 20th century.
These are reasons that are clear enough for me to associate the word with English language and not with French. For me, it is clearly an English language phenomenon and the development of the identity followed that, in much of the same ways that Black-identified utilize a term that was given to them by others and not initially by themselves.
Finally, none of what I do targets individuals nor groups for debate, just for the heck of it. I’ve very specific instances where I rant about something said by an individual or something written by an individual. This article is an example of writing. I’ve that right to my interpretation of the text, as do you and everyone else.
You do not have to agree with what I say. But this I can assure you: I will never tell you or anyone that they are “misconstruing” anything, because the idea behind the verb is that there is a correct message that is being intentionally or even unintentionally misunderstood. It is the idea of a “correctness” that bothers me. Because it assumes that my way is right and yours is wrong. That’s not engaging in dialog. That’s being utterly defensive and emotional, not rational.
A sure way to avoid eliciting that kind of reaction is to say: I simply disagree with your statements and here’s why and build dialog from there.
Words have an extremely important function in language and their place in sentences are equally important. This is why thinking before speaking can prove amazingly useful and getting a 2nd, 3rd and 4th eye (of varying penchants) in writing prove unequivocally rewarding and fruitful.
Christophe Landry Christophe Landry Online