Language revitalization, race, and resistance in Creole Louisiana

Abstract

Ideologies of language can be leveraged to (re)construct and contest discourses and hierarchies of race and ethnicity. I intend here to scrutinize how this plays out in the context of language revitalization. Specifically, this paper interrogates the complex, contested and sometimes contradictory relationship between Louisiana Creole ethnic, racial and linguistic identities, taking as its lens the language revitalization movements which have emerged in Louisiana since the Civil Rights Act. My view of language revitalization is shaped by the understanding that ‘struggles over language actually are not centrally about language at all’ (Heller 2004). With this in mind, and in response to this volume’s focus on Louisiana Creole peoplehood, I attempt here to clarify how Creole-identified activists have established a form of Louisiana Creole languagehood which acts as a totem for broader social conflicts. By reifying Louisiana Creole as a language in its own right and emphasizing its distinctiveness from Louisiana French, activists seek to reclaim and rearticulate Louisiana Creole peoplehood on their own terms. This, I argue, is a form of resistance to discourses around preserving Louisiana’s linguistic heritage which have overwhelmingly foregrounded ‘Cajun’ French, a linguistic identity which can only be claimed by Louisiana’s white inhabitants. This focus on Cajun (i.e. white) linguistic identity has served to further marginalize Louisiana’s communities of color, through a language-ideological process of erasure.