SHIFTING LAND, SHIFTING LANGUAGE

Abstract

Chapter One provides an overview of the themes of the book and introduces the reader to the people whose lives will be profiled in the coming chapters. It details the disappearance of the French language as well as the ongoing destruction of the land. It also discusses the link between place and language, and the use of language variation to express identity. The residents whose stories will be highlighted throughout the book appear in this chapter; these include Toot Naquin, whose tie to the land is so strong that she proudly notes that despite the flooding that now reaches the house she lives in (which her father built high above the flood lines when she was a child), she was born on this bayou (Pointe au Chien), she was raised on the bayou, and she will die on the bayou, and there is no hurricane that can take her.