Cajun is dead: Long live Cajun

Sylvie Dubois & Megan Melançon

Sat. 4:00-5:40 C

Researchers have reported an evolution, or change in progress, of the Cajun identity, though their intuitions have not been confirmed empirically. Many speakers who have only a passive competence of the language identify themselves as Cajun; others claim to belong to the community by virtue of their genealogy or cultural heritage, yet they do not speak the language at all. Some individuals with neither Cajun ancestry nor linguistic ability in Cajun French (CF) also identify themselves as Cajun, giving rise to the claim that everyone living in southern Louisiana is somewhat Cajun. Several researchers based the delimitation of the Cajun community on an attitude towards life (the (in)famous Cajun joie de vivre), music (all Cajuns can play the fiddle) or more humorously on cooking ability (a true Cajun is somebody who can look at a rice field and tell you how many people a gumbo will serve). The traditional membership borders, therefore, of what a community consists of no longer apply in the case of Cajun. Instead, in tourism brochures, posters and books, it is claimed that every restaurant serves 'traditional Cajun cuisine', every bar serves 'Cajun martinis', and seemingly every small Cajun town was the first original Acadian settlement. This propensity to label everything Cajun covers the entire cultural spectrum.

It would be reasonable to expect that the linguistic and cultural assimilation processes which prevailed for many decades combined with the more recent renaissance of Cajun identity would change the traditional boundary markers of the Cajun community. It is not really known, however, to what extent these processes have affected traditional definitions. Some researchers suggest that the rapid shift from French to English within the Cajun community has blurred social boundaries. Because bilingual speakers constantly shift back and forth to suit communication needs, simple language-based criteria of what a Cajun is are no longer valid; others argue that the community has become so diffuse that is almost impossible to come up with clear criteria. Dormon claims that it is necessary to analyze the Cajun ethnogenesis in terms of class distinctions, and that this distinction continues to play a role in Cajun maintenance.

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 1440 individuals stratified by age and sex from four communities. The values and attitudes of Cajuns as well as those of other individuals who live in the same areas have been examined. The goals of this study are to determine what types of individuals identify themselves as Cajuns and what, if any, are the objective indices of a 'true' Cajun identity. Although the Cajun renaissance has led to a superficial redefinition of the Cajun community as including almost everyone in South Louisiana, another hypothesis is that the Cajun community is less diffuse than many think, and that its boundaries, albeit involving a wide 'grey zone', are revealed by the self-definition of its members and the neighbors and the neighbors with whom they live.

Our preliminary 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. We note, however, that it is the youngest generation of native speakers and semi-speakers who show the strongest Cajun identity. The middle-aged respondents choose to self-identify as Cajun-American, regardless of the LAB index (Linguistic Ability and Background), while the respondents with Cajun background but no CF language ability have the strongest American self-image.

In general, respondents claim that the necessary criteria to be considered Cajun are just those criteria that they themselves satisfy. Thus, for the two most important criteria, Cajun ancestry and Cajun French-speaking parents or grandparents, there is a clear distinction between those with Cajun background and those without. In addition, the ability to speak CF, to speak some form of French, or to have learned CF as the first language is seen as essential most often by fluent speakers, followed by semi-speakers, then by those in the passive category, and least often by individuals of Cajun ancestry with no ability in French.

We will demonstrate that there appear to be two "paths" to take insofar as the Cajun community identity in Louisiana is concerned: 1) maintenance, albeit tenuous, of a Cajun French speech community; and 2) the survival of only the Cajun culture, i.e. the preservation of an interest in the Francophone heritage (surnames, cuisine, music, etc.), but in which the members not only no longer speaker the language, but also consider it to be a minor aspect of identity. This dichotomy obviously has not been established or maintained without creating considerable tension between members of the cultural Cajun community.