The middle-aged generation

The industrialization process and the consequent process of language shift was in full swing with the middle-aged speakers in our sample (aged 40-59, the majority were born just before or during WWII). They were educated in English and reacted most vigorously to the denigration of both Cajun French and the Cajun way of speaking English. It is this generation that begins to use English extensively in the home in raising their children. When they were young, even the speakers who were raised bilingually started to speak English at home with their siblings. They were aware quite early of the stigma attached to both French and CajVE. Not only did they begin to sound like any other English speaker from south Louisiana, they also abandoned French. The dropping of many of the CajVE features is the attempt to attenuate the stigma of being Cajun for themselves and especially for their children. There are many pressures on this group of men and women to change in the direction of the dominant group. We find no gender distinction between middle-aged men and women but a rather uniform pattern of the adoption of an external norm for speaking English.