Linguistic description of Cajun Vernacular English

CajVE has changed dramatically over three generations against a complex and changing social and linguistic background. Although some of the sociolinguistic variables that are characteristic of CajVE are also well-known variables in Southern American English (Rubrecht 1971; Scott 1992; Cox 1992; Eble 1993; Walton 1994; Cheramie 1999), we have argued that the origins of these sociolinguistic variables lie within the Cajun community and cannot be attributed solely to interference from French or to the spread of these features from the surrounding English dialects. CajVE represents an innovation from within the Cajun community so that some of the Cajun variants which began in the accented speech of the oldest of the speakers in our sample have either been passed on to the next generation of speakers or have been recycled as markers of social identity by the youngest speakers.

Further background information on the Cajun community is available in Dubois (1997b) and Dubois and Melancon (1997). Sociolinguistic descriptions of a number of phonological and morphological variables can be found in Dubois and Horvath (1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003). A description of the entire sample and data collection procedures are given in Dubois, Gautreaux, Melançon and Veler (1995) and Dubois (1997a).