French in South Louisiana: Towards Language Loss

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the ethnolinguistic vitality of the French community in Louisiana. After a brief overview of the history of French Louisiana and of a model of bilingual development based on the ethnolinguistic vitality framework, the present vitality of the French community in Louisiana is analysed in terms of its demographic, economic, political, and cultural capitals. The aforementioned provide the background of a study in which 403 high school students participated. Four groups of students were formed on the basis of the proportion of francophones in their families. Measured contacts with French through the social network, the media, and schooling were low for all student groups. Except for schooling in French which was uniformly low for all groups, the above results on social and media contacts with French, as well as the scores on self-rated oral French competence, use of French, French identity, and beliefs indicative of the desire to integrate the French community, covary as a function of the proportion of francophones in the family. Nonetheless, the average scores for even the group with the strongest proportion of francophone family members are only in the moderate to low range. This is hypothesised to be due to the generally low contacts with French, even when the proportion of francophones in the family is high. Overall, the results show that the present generation of youths of Cajun and French descent is one which will not be able to transmit the French language to its children.