Through art, Benoit showed that Creole culture is not a hashtag; it is a way of life and a symbol of existence and remembrance 💜💚💛.

#CreoleCulture #CreoleStudies #Louisiana #BlackStudies

“Our neighborhood was founded by my great-grandparents over 125 years ago, and I grew up surrounded by my elders and extended family along the Mississippi River levee.”
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#journalist #louisiana #creolestudies #blackstudies #womenshistorymonth

“Our community of Wallace was established as a ‘Freetown’ community by people who self-emancipated, fought in the Civil War, and purchased land to establish their communities,” Dr. Joy Banner said.
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#journalist #louisiana #creolestudies #blackstudies #womenshistorymonth

The Descendants Project is a nonprofit org committed to uplifting the stories of the River Parishes’ AA & Creole descendants of those who were enslaved, as well as demanding action against social injustices ✊🏾💜💚💛.
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#journalist #louisiana #creolestudies #blackstudies #womenshistorymonth

Get 🫵🏾 a physical copy of 64 Parishes’ Winter Edition today 🫶🏾.

We are on pages 10-12‼️

Purchase here: 64parishes.org/magazine
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#journalist #louisiana #creolestudies #blackstudies #womenshistorymonth

In 2024, Dr. Joy and Jo Banner, through their organization The Descendants Project, purchased Woodland Plantation, making them the first Black owners of the property in its more than two-hundred-year history.

#Louisiana #LouisianaCreole #CreolesofColor #BlackStudies #CreoleStudies

Historians estimate from varying eyewitness accounts that between one hundred and fifty and five hundred people participated in the rebellion, making their way down the Mississippi River towards New Orleans armed with cane machetes, axes, and other weapons ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾.

#LouisianaHistory #CreoleStudies

On January 8, 1811, the largest slave revolt in North American history began at Woodland Plantation (formerly Andry Plantation) in St. John the Baptist Parish, led by multiracial enslaved driver Charles Deslondes.

#LouisianaHistory #CreoleHistory #CreoleStudies #Journalism #SlaveRevolt

What is a creole anyway? Probably to my detriment, I like to join communities that discuss linguistics on social media. I don’t mean following others who conduct linguistic research — I do that, too — but rather communities where linguistics is discussed by anyone who happens to be interested in discussing it. I figure, “What’s the use of all the stuff I learn if I don’t share that with others, including the general public?” One online space that I peruse for this is reddit, and one topic that comes up there from time to time is that of creoles. This is great, because I love talking about creoles and know a lot about them. However, it’s also not great, because I find that what I have to say is often disregarded or even unwanted (_i.e._ , I get downvoted a ton). When creoles come up, there is almost always a misunderstanding about what they are that’s implicit in the questions people ask, and it seems that people don’t like it when I clarify what creoles are. What’s more, the misunderstanding goes beyond more casual forums such as reddit and even finds its way onto tightly run Q&A sites like Linguistics Stack Exchange (such as here and here). They do a bit better in the latter community, but still rely on the dated idea that creoles develop out of pidgins. Even among those who have taught at least an introductory linguistics course, it appears to be common that this is how creoles are conceptualized (Bancu _et al_. 2024). So, I thought a post here would be a good place to clarify what creoles are for those who are curious out there. To start, let’s talk about what creoles aren’t. First, creoles do not develop from pidgins. This was indeed a common theory in the not terribly distant past, enough so that it found expression even in the writings on pidgins on creoles carried out be pre-eminent linguists from up to at least the 1980s (_e.g._ , Halliday 1964/1968:143; Romaine 1988:38; Todd 1974/1990:2). It was so embedded in the minds of creolists at that time that Thomason & Kaufman (1988:148) and Arends (1994:15) still felt the need to add it as a type of creole even while acknowledging the sociohistorical definition of creoles that makes far more sense. There have been a number of solid arguments made against the pidgin-first theory (Mufwene 2001:7-11), a major one being the wide admission that there is no textual evidence of a pidgin stage for any known creoles (Aboh & DeGraff 2017:413). Additionally, this theory also obscures the overall picture. To accept that a pidgin must develop first and then gain native speakers raises all sorts of questions about what it means to be a native speaker, how many native speakers count, _etc_. Perhaps the biggest obscuring caused by the theory is that pidgins have traditionally been defined as coming out of the context of trade and creoles, as we’ll see, have not been defined that way, so the sociohistorical picture is muddied by combining these two categories. The pidgin-first theory is what those with some knowledge but who are not experts often go to. Another faulty approach, though, is to define creoles structurally, which tends to be the preferred method of laypeople and a very select few linguists. By select few, I mean almost exclusively McWhorter (1998) who argued that there were three linguistic structures that justify classifying creoles as a distinct type of language: no inflectional affixation, no tone, and semantically regular derivation affixation. The problem is that he himself pointed out that even the creoles that he chose as his prototypes had exceptions to some of these structures, leading him to implicitly argue that they simply need to be close enough to meeting these structural descriptions, but then what is “close enough”? How do we quantify that in any way that isn’t arbitrary? It’s a fine needle to thread, and unsurprisingly this approach has been heavily critiqued by other creolists. The definition of creoles that experts actually use is that a language can be classified as a creole if it was born out of a specific sociohistorical context, namely that of the subjugation and exploitation of one people by another (_i.e._ , slavery or slavery-like conditions). Because of the popularity of pidgin-related and structure-related definitions of creoles, this may appear to be a new theoretical approach, but it’s really not. Perhaps the earliest scholar who could be called a creolist embedded this sociohistorical context into how he defined creoles (Reinecke 1938). This focus on the sociohistorical continued from there (Ansaldo & Matthews 2007:8; Baker 1990, 1994; Bartens 2013:65; Meyerhoff 2018:279; Mintz 1971:481; Winford 2003:308). Even for someone like Bickerton (1988), who is infamously attached to structural arguments about creoles, still relied on sociohistorical context to classify creoles. It is quite difficult, actually, to find a creolist whose definition of creoles does not refer to sociohistorical context. There was a tendency in the early 20th century to speak euphemistically about slavery, but the point is always clear once you see it. For those who do mention slavery explicitly, it still can seem uncomfortable for them at times, either on social or theoretical grounds. Hence, you also find scholars hedging their definitions a lot, stating that creoles “usually” implicate slavery or something along those lines. However, examples of creoles that don’t implicate slavery are not then produced. For instance, Thomason & Kaufman (1988) highlighted slavery but did not believe it was present in all cases where a creole developed. They actually did give an example, that of Pitcairnese (148). This creole came out of a mutiny in 1790 on an English ship that had enlisted the help of Tahitians. After the mutiny, the crew settled on Pitcairn Island to avoid repercussions, after which the creole developed as the English crew and the Tahitians learned to communicate with each other. Thomason & Kaufman (1988) described their habitation as “egalitarian”, but they failed to note that the Tahitians were treated like property to such an extent that there were eventually murders committed in their small society in retaliation, painting a picture much closer to slavery and thus not the counterexample that Pitcairnese was supposed to be. So why does this matter? It matters because the way we define our object of study leads us to ask very different questions and can prevent us from elucidating answers that we’re looking for. Defining creoles as coming out of the sociohistorical context of slavery leads us to ask sociolinguistic questions about power, race, colonialism, _etc_. Definining creoles as coming out of pidgins leads us to spending a lot of time on trying to answer questions about how a pidgin becomes a creole, something that we can’t answer if it doesn’t happen, or simply obscures our abililty to understand creoles _or_ pidgins. Even worse, defining creoles in terms of structure is a form of exoticizing these languages and, by extension, the people who speak them, people who are often stigmatized to begin with. This exoticizing or exceptionalizing is something that DeGraff (2003, 2004) has spoken out against for quite some time but, unfortunately, has been slow to filter through to all relevant parties. **References** Aboh, E., & DeGraff, M. (2017). A Null Theory of Creole Formation Based on Universal Grammar. In I. G. Roberts (Ed.), _The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar_ (pp. 401–458). Oxford University Press. Ansaldo, U., & Matthews, S. (2007). Deconstructing Creole: The rationale. In U. Ansaldo, S. Matthews, & L. Lim (Eds.), _Deconstructing Creole_ (pp. 1–18). John Benjamins Publishing Company. Arends, J. (1994). The socio-historical background of creoles. In J. Arends, P. Muysken, & N. Smith (Eds.), _Creole Language Library_ (Vol. 15, pp. 15–24). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.15.06are Baker, P. (1990). Off Target? _Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages_ , _5_(1), 107–119. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.5.1.07bak Baker, P. (1994). Creativity in creole genesis. In D. Adone & I. Plag (Eds.), _Creolization and Language Change_. De Gruyter, Inc. Bancu, A., Peltier, J. P. G., Bisnath, F., Burgess, D., Eakins, S., Gonzalez, W. D. W., Saltzman, M., Yourdanis, S., Stevers, A., & Baptista, M. (2024). Revitalizing Attitudes Toward Creole Languages. In A. H. Charity Hudley, C. Mallinson, & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), _Decolonizing Linguistics_ (pp. 293–316). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197755259.001.0001 Bartens, A. (2013). Creole languages. In P. Bakker & Y. Matras (Eds.), _Contact Languages: A Comprehensive Guide_ (pp. 65–158). De Gruyter Mouton. Bickerton, D. (1988). Creole languages and the bioprogram. In F. J. Newmeyer (Ed.), _Linguistic Theory: Extensions and Implications_ (Vol. 2, pp. 268–284). Cambridge University Press. DeGraff, M. (2003). Against Creole Exceptionalism. _Language_ , _79_(2), 391–410. DeGraff, M. (2004). Against Creole Exceptionalism (Redux). _Language_ , _80_(4), 834–839. Halliday, M. A. K. (1964/1968). The users and uses of language. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), _Readings in the Sociology of Language_ (pp. 139–169). Mouton. McWhorter, J. H. (1998). Identifying the Creole Prototype: Vindicating a Typological Class. _Language_ , _74_(4), 788–818. https://doi.org/10.2307/417003 Mintz, S. (1971). The socio-historical background to pidginization and creolization. In D. Hymes (Ed.), _Pidginization and Creolization of Languages_ (pp. 481–496). Cambridge University Press. Mufwene, S. S. (2001). _The Ecology of Language Evolution_. Cambridge University Press. Reinecke, J. E. (1938). Trade Jargons and Creole Dialects as Marginal Languages. _Social Forces_ , _17_(1), 107–118. https://doi.org/10.2307/2571156 Romaine, S. (1988). _Pidgin and Creole Languages_. Longman. Thomason, S. G., & Kaufman, T. (1988). _Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics_. University of California Press. Todd, L. (1974/1990). _Pidgins and Creoles_ (2nd ed.). Routledge. ### Partager : * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * ### _Related_

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#linguistics #sociolinguistics #creolistics #creolestudies #creoles #creole #pidgins

To understand Louisiana’s cuisine, one must recall significant contributions and history from Creole of Color chefs.

Enslaved West Africans and Creoles of Color forcefully cooked and cleaned for white families for extensive, gruesome hours.

#Louisiana #ColonialHistory #Slavery #CreoleStudies

City officials and white locals did not allow Creoles of Color to participate in the Downtown festivities.

So, they created krewes, Black Masking Indian Tribes, pageants, rituals, Regalias, and floats in their communities. 

#CreoleHistory #CreoleStudies #BlackHistory

Like Voodoo, treating was demonized & weaponized, from the 18th-20th centuries.

Traiteurs in South Louisiana faced persecution, arrest, public humiliation, & imprisonment.

Today's traiteurs may choose to be contemporary or traditional, orthodox or unorthodox we have a choice.

#CreoleStudies

Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes and Alice Dunbar-Nelson explored the complexities of what it meant to be a Creole of Color in Colonial Louisiana and America throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.

#CreoleStudies #CreoleHistory

Desdunes deeply loved the Creole culture and his race as a Black person.

He highlighted and uplifted Black people globally for their morale, determined work towards humanity, and critiqued those who selfishly forgot about their people.

#BlackHistory #Louisiana #CreoleStudies #CreoleHistory

Portrait photo of Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes

Born in New Orleans on November 15, 1849, Desdunes was a Free Person of Color of Haitian and Cuban descent.

As an author, advocate, journalist, and civil rights activist, his understanding of Blackness and Kréyolité was transnational and extended beyond colonial boundaries.

#CreoleStudies

Copy of a genealogy and family history book titled, “Auzenne, Donato, Frilot, Lemelle, Meullion” by Conrad A. Auzenne. Special copy located the university of Louisiana at Lafayette at the Edith garland dupre library.

A screenshot of a page from the book mentioning the Meullion, Lemelle, Donato, and Auzenne families.

Photo of Rev. Donald Hebert’s Southwest Louisiana Records books showing Valerien Auzenne, my 5x Pawpaw as a Free Mulatto of Pointe Coupée.

To help the exhibit’s impact, St. Landry Parish residents donated photos, artifacts, and their family stories.

Prominent FPOC in St. Landry Parish descended  from the Donatos, Lemelles, Ozennes, Meullions, and other Creole families.

#CreoleHistory #CreoleStudies #LouisianaCreoles #StLandryParish