Good God but You Smart! A Study of Language Legitimacy in Cajun Louisiana
Item
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Title
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Good God but You Smart! A Study of Language Legitimacy in Cajun Louisiana
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:81b4d2b7d18e:11521
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identifier
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11988
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Creator
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Stanford, Nichole E.,
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Contributor
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Rebecca Mlynarczyk
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociolinguistics | Pedagogy | Americanization | Bourdieu | Cajun | Cajun Vernacular English | composition | language prejudice
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Abstract
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Good God but You Smart! is the first dissertation-length examination of the educational/linguistic assimilation of Cajuns, a minority ethnic group in Southwest Louisiana. The Louisiana constitution of 1921 banned Cajun French in schools, bringing the language to near-extinction today. Like other internally colonized groups, such as Mexican Americans and Hawaiian Americans, many Cajuns have been "Americanized" but still speak a mixed English that makes it possible for them to both participate in the U.S. economy and maintain a linguistic cultural identity. This newly emergent Cajun Vernacular English (CVE) has been the subject of much recent linguistics research, but studies show that Cajuns abandon CVE in relation to their attempts at upward mobility. In this study, I ask and seek to answer the question, "Why do upwardly mobile Cajuns comply with the disappearance of CVE?".;Similar to Geneva Smitherman's explanation of Black English in Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, I present CVE to the field of Composition and Rhetoric through the lenses of linguistics, sociolinguistics, history, current pedagogical theories on vernaculars, and cultural memoir. Though I chart pedagogical movements within the field, I use Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the legitimate language to focus on the forces outside classrooms that have compelled Cajuns to self-censor. The first two chapters provide a background for understanding the status of Cajuns at the time of their forced assimilation beginning in 1921. Chapter one examines current stereotypes and representations of Cajuns in U.S. pop culture, and chapter two backs up to explain the British ethnic cleansing of Acadians from present-day Canada and their subsequent class status when they regrouped under the name "Cajuns" in Louisiana. The next two chapters describe pedagogical responses to Cajun languages: chapter three reports from previously unpublished historical archives the physical and psychological punishments that children endured for speaking Cajun French, and chapter four reports new data from my own pedagogical survey of English teachers across four Louisiana colleges to explain and critique the strategy of code switching. Finally, in chapter five I hone in on the hegemonic pressures for Cajuns to self-censor coming from language myths and family normalizing practices.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
