Cajun is Dead - Long Live Cajun

Shifting from a Linguistic to a Cultural Community

Bibliographic Data

ID3662889
AuthorsSylvie Dubois (0000-0001-6639-4063, Louisiana State University), Megan Melançon (Louisiana State University)
Year1997
Volume1
Issue1
Pages63-93
Publication date1997-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9481.00004
OpenAlexW2032304870
LanguageEN
Citations received21

Researchers have reported an evolution or change in progress in the Cajun identity, though their intuitions have not been confirmed empirically. The traditional membership borders of what a community consists of no longer apply in the case of Cajun. In order to understand these questions of identity and belonging, and to scientifically control the interpretation of the linguistic behavior of Cajun speakers, a general survey has been conducted on the linguistic attitudes and cultural identity of a sample of 929 individuals stratified by age and sex from four communities. Our results show that Cajun identity rests fundamentally in the linguistic ability of the speakers, regardless of the age group one is in: the more one has access to the Cajun language, the more one self-identifies as Cajun. In general, respondents claim that the necessary criteria to be considered Cajun are just those criteria that they themselves satisfy. We will demonstrate that there appear to be several 'paths' to take insofar as the Cajun community identity in Louisiana is concerned. However, this segmentation obviously has not been established or maintained without creating considerable tension between members of the cultural Cajun community

Aesthetics · Identity (music · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Order (exchange · Sociology · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy

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