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Sociolinguistic research with endangered varieties: The case of Louisiana French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2017

Darcie Blainey
Darcie Blainey*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
darcie.blainey@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

This article outlines the differences in goals, methods and results that variationist researchers may encounter when exploring and/or documenting a threatened language variety, and underscores special considerations and aspects of the research program that linguists must work to control for when working with endangered varieties of Western languages. In particular, it examines questions and strategies for dealing with sparse data for longitudinal studies; fewer speakers for stratified samples; the inverse relation between linguistic fluency and age; social network constraints in small speech communities; literacy-centric exercises in oral language communities; and larger project protocols designed for stable linguistic communities. Throughout the paper, the collection and analysis of Louisiana French liaison data from 1939, 1977, and 2010 provide an application of the proposed methods.

Résumé

Cet article fait état des éventuelles différences – en matière de buts, de méthodes et de résultats – que peuvent rencontrer des variationnistes au cours de l'exploration et la documentation de variétés linguistiques menacées. L'article souligne les facteurs particuliers et les aspects d'un programme de recherche que le chercheur doit s'efforcer d’équilibrer, dans le cas de recherches relatives à des variétés menacées parmi les langues occidentales. Il examine notamment des questions et des stratégies en vue d'aborder les défis suivants : le manque de données robustes dans des études longitudinales ; le manque de locuteurs pour des échantillons stratifiés ; la corrélation positive entre l’âge des locuteurs et leurs compétences linguistiques ; les contraintes du réseau social dans des communautés langagières de petite taille ; les exercices nécessitant l'alphabétisme dans un contexte de transmission exclusivement oral ; et le besoin d'adapter un protocole de recherche conçu à l'origine pour des enquêtes auprès de communautés linguistiques stables. Le cas de la liaison en français louisianais, fondé sur la collection et l'analyse de données provenant de 1939, de 1977 et de 2010 sert d'exemple pour l'application des méthodes proposées à un projet de recherche actuel.

Keywords

fieldworklanguage obsolescencevariationist sociolinguisticsLouisiana Frenchliaisonle travail de terrainl'obsolescence linguistiquela sociolinguistique variationnistele français louisianaisla liaison
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 62 , Issue 4: Variation at the Crossroads: Advancing theory by integrating methods/La Variation: Faire progresser la théorie par l'intégration des méthodes , December 2017 , pp. 576 - 595
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2017 

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Footnotes

This research is funded by SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship #756-2014-0131. I would like to thank Roland Cheramie and the Louisiana French speakers of lower Lafourche Parish who shared their homes, stories, culture and time with me. Thank you also to Naomi Nagy, Sali Tagliamonte, Anne-José Villeneuve, and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and feedback. Any remaining errors are my own.

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