The Economics and Politics of Louisiana’s Latest French Renaissance

Jérôme Degrave

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Multilingual Education and Policy Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies Linguistic Variation and Morphology

Abstract

Louisiana French is dying.With fewer than 160,000 speakers and an extremely limited trans-generational transmission, the language of the Cajuns 1 is fast disappearing although the main facets of their culture -food and music -continue to enjoy international fame.This paradox is not the only one: Louisiana is the only state in the USA which took the trouble to endow itself with a public agency meant to defend and diffuse a minority language, namely French.Created in 1968 by an act of the Louisiana Legislature, CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) has proven unable to hinder the decline of the language it was supposed to champion 2 , a decline that may be regarded as irreversible. 2A recent spate of laws voted unanimously by the Louisiana Legislature may yet prove the contrary and underline the extraordinary resilience of a language that has been spoken in Louisiana in various forms since 1699 (the first Acadians, now called Cajuns, settled in 1765).Act 679, introduced by Senator Eric LaFleur 3 from Louisiana's 28 th district in 2010, tackles some of the most obvious problems affecting French in Louisiana, including the chronic inefficiency of CODOFIL and its lack of accountability.It defines the new mission of CODOFIL as well as its structure.Act 212 completes Act 679 in that it deals specifically with one of the new missions of CODOFIL, namely the expansion of French immersion programs.As for Act 106, adopted one year later in 2011, it seeks to establish a French Language Services Program and thus turn a heritage language into a utilitarian one all over again.Two more laws were voted in 2012 to confirm this new legislative activity around the French language: Act 851, which paves the way for the creation of a world language immersion school at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Act 202 which establishes French as the official language of CODOFIL.

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1990What is reversing language shift (RLS) and how can it succeed?1997Cajun is Dead – Long Live Cajun: Shifting from a Linguistic to a Cultural Community 1988A Perspective on Teaching the "Problem Language" in Louisiana 1997Enclave Dialect Contraction: An External Overview of Louisiana French 1996French in South Louisiana: Towards Language Loss 1993The social consequences of writing Louisiana French 1993Academic Achievement through Japanese, Spanish, or French: The First Two Years of Partial Immersion 1999Poverty, Race, and Foreign Language Immersion: Predictors of Math and English Language Arts Performance.

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