This past weekend, I attended Unité et Diversité: A Conference on Louisiana French, held in scenic Natchitoches, LA. It was sponsored by the Cane River National Heritage Area, the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, and the Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State University.
You could not have asked for a better group of people; a bunch of francophone ethnolinguistic communities were represented—Tunica-Biloxi, Houma, Cajun, and Creole. Those last two terms are contentious, I know, but that is for those who identify as such to decide, not me.
The conference was aptly named—“Unity and Diversity”—but the time and energy spent validating the different origins and experiences of Louisiana’s francophone and creolophone groups did not extend as meaningfully to linguistic practice. Perhaps it is symptomatic of the speech communities in the area. Various presenters throughout the day encouraged us, the attendees, to focus on what was common to our heritage and to not be divisive. This included language. But what is lost when we erase linguistic diversity from the Creole story in Louisiana?
The older generation of Creoles can often tell you how such-and-such group over here spoke differently than this-and-that group over there. Surprisingly, however, most will also say that they all understood one another. This is not to say that all these groups were speaking the same way all the time. Rather, Creoles of earlier generations were often polylectal, speaking multiple registers/dialects of French-based language(s) depending on their audience and the context. A Creole family may be just as likely to speak a typological French as they are to speak a creole (e.g., Kouri-Vini). The degree of mutual intelligibility among native speakers of either variety in Louisiana is quite high. So should we even talk about Louisiana Creole as a separate language?
To name a language is a political act, not a scientific one. Where one language ends and another begins is largely arbitrary. However, it is true that asserting linguistic independence often goes hand in hand with asserting other basic rights. Because what is known as Kouri-Vini (Louisiana Creole) was historically the least prestigious variety, its speakers have suffered discrimination. That might be reason enough to champion it as a distinct language from Louisiana French—to legitimize it as a complete form of linguistic expression, not “broken” French.
It must be stated, however, that not all Creoles speak Kouri-Vini. Likewise, not all Cajuns speak Louisiana French. These terms are relatively new inventions, and they are not in a one-to-one relationship with people’s ethnic or racial identities. Sometimes a Creole speaks like a Cajun. Sometimes a Cajun speaks like a Creole. Sometimes two Creoles speak differently from one another. So if a single language did not unite Louisianans historically, what did?
I would argue that it was the shared repertoire of French-based languages/dialects that united them. Dorice Tentchoff’s work[1], for example, clearly demonstrates this polylectalism in action. Oversimplifying the situation does no one any favors and instead robs the whole thing of its beauty.
There will be more conferences like Unité et Diversité, and Louisiana lovers should welcome them. It is my hope that a renaissance of interest in all things Louisiana will unify us as well as encourage us to celebrate our differences—linguistic and otherwise—together.
– N.A. Wendte
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[1] Tentchoff, Dorice. 1975. “Cajun French and French Creole: Their Speakers and the Questions of Identities.” In The Culture of Acadiana: Tradition and Change in South Louisiana, 87–109. Lafayette, LA: The University of Southwestern Louisiana.
Wow. Nathan, along with the wonderful discussions I’ve enjoyed with you recently, I find this composition of the careful distillation of your observations and scientifically-guided assessments of our linguistic-cultural landscape to be a terse, but profoundly objective and honest snapshot of how we really are linguistically, in our remarkable “louisiane!”
It makes sense, and historically, it’s true that Europe exported a variety of francophonic dialectic varieties of herself to Louisiana-Austrian, Flemish, Rhinelandish, French, Belgian, and Canadian; then, West African, Spanish, Acadian, Islenos, 19th c French, German, Saint Domingue Creoles (without mentioning the early diverse Metis-creoles of the pre-Louisiana Purchase world) most of which peoples had no concept of an academic model or standardization of French. Adding African, Spanish and Germanic peoples to this Amerindian-franco-european cultural gumbo, we certainly have a hothouse of interrelated, and unrelated, but artificially added diversity; the
Francophonic-creolophonic “seedlings” (or DNA for a diverse potential linguistic) all transported to and placed in Louisiana soil.
And, for each community’s isolation-both geographically and culturally, as an independent community, its eventual maturation, and inevitable, if eventual, “cross pollination” (more or less, depending upon its openeness, accessibility, political identity strenght, and location), were assured, as a result of certain geographical, social, political and cultural crossroads. Necessarily, therefore, in some cases, where these communities intersected in more populated areas, such as around New Orleans, for example, were more likely to coalesce into an amalgam of one another; while others, further away from such cultural crossroads, would retain more distinctive features and stringer community and regional linguistic identities and “purity.”
This is one of the best sketches and explanations of how, what and why Louisiana’s diverse creole cultural mosaic or landscape has evolved as it has; in both it’s community diversity and it’s overall Cultural unity. Truly, it is the result of a broad creolization, or cultural and linguistic syncretism.
A great post with equally great points. However, there is no indication on this page who the author is. Who wrote this?