Speaking French in Louisiana 1720–1955: Linguistic Practices of the Catholic Church by Sylvie Dubois et al. (review)

Scholarly accounts of language shift—the process whereby a community gives up its traditional language for a socially more advantageous one—are almost always accompanied by some discussion of what role religion played, at least as one social context among others. This is as true of accounts of the shift from French to English in Louisiana as it is elsewhere. This new volume is unusual, though, in the nature and extent of the written documentation it marshals to shed light on the language practices of the Louisiana Catholic Church and the role such practices appear to have played in societal language shift. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans were temporarily relocated to Baton Rouge, rendering them easily accessible to the three coauthors: Dubois, a linguist with an extensive publishing record on both Cajun French and Cajun English; Leumas, Director of Archives and Records for the Archdiocese of New Orleans; and Richardson, a professor of English whose research has generally dealt with archival corpora in Chancery English. For much of the time period covered, namely the years 1853–1918, the Archdiocese of New Orleans was almost synonymous with French-speaking Louisiana, covering virtually the entire southern half of the state. Its archives include three main sources of data: first, sacramental registers, which recorded baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages, and burials of individual members of local church parishes. Even though the language of such records is not necessarily the language in which the ceremonies actually took place, the authors reasonably hypothesize that "the language used in the sacramental registers reflected, to a large extent, the status of the French language in the Louisiana parishes" and "the Church's different levels of perception of the language's utility in the local community" (11). The second archival collection included more than 9,000 personal letters making up the Antebellum Correspondence to and from bishops and priests (1803–1859). The most important element of the third collection consisted of parish visitation records, or reports prepared by local priests characterizing their congregation, including observations on parishioners' language skills, in preparation for the bishop's visit. These reports, though not compiled scientifically and sometimes contradictory, nonetheless provide a compelling source of data to track the language shift that was playing itself out at the local parish level rather than by any mandate from higher ecclesiastical authorities. The book explores how the switch from French to English in written records often correlates with the immigration of German, Italian, and Irish Catholics, who were integrating into Anglophone America rather than into the local Franco-phone population, and how priests' change of language may have sought to counter the rise of Protestantism in Louisiana, among other factors. The final chapter masterfully seeks to contextualize language change in the Church with the bigger picture of language shift in Louisiana. This carefully researched and well-edited volume deserves a place as an important contribution to scholarly discourse on language shift in Louisiana.