Although French remains the language of ethnic symbolism for many of Louisiana's Acadians, English is the language of day-to-day business. This study is (1) an investigation into whether the English dialect of south Louisiana has taken on significance as an ethnic marker among people who self-identify as Cajuns; and (2) a test in using a combination of methodologies--including oral histories, close phonetic analysis, and quantitative analysis--in a language-centered microethnography constructed to illuminate larger cultural questions This dissertation summarizes this combination of approaches as well as discussions of theory and methodology, Cajun ethnicity, the history of the area, and an analysis of the regional/ethnic English. The first approach was participant observation and data collecting during a year and a half of fieldwork in Terrebonne Parish, and formed the basis of a linguistic analysis of flat speech, the regional dialect The second approach involved analyzing language case studies of people representative of the community based on recorded oral histories. Excerpts from each oral history are included, allowing members of the community to present their lives and views of ethnic identity in their own words. 'Normal' speech was compared to instances of speech about ethnic issues to look for register shifts tied to ethnic identification. In a final approach, a quanititative matched guise study measured group attitudes toward Cajun ethnicity among area seventh-grade students In summary, the results show that for certain people register shifts can be linked to expressions of ethnic identification in certain speech genres. In other cases, consultants either showed no register shifts, whatever the subject matter, or the shifts showed little consistency. Humor, however, is clearly linked with flat speech and, in some cases, with ethnic identity. Student judges rated flat speakers as lower in economic characteristics, but did not note any difference in solidarity characteristics between accented and standard English speakers. A language-centered approach, using a combination of methodologies, is effective for addressing subtle cultural questions when extensive ethnography is already in place, and reveals a greater richness of data than any one methodology used alone / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_23788 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Contributors | Walton, Shana L (Author), Maxwell, Judith (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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