Review of Nichole E. Stanford’s Good God but You Smart! - Language Prejudice and Upwardly Mobile Cajuns

Oct 15, 2026

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Editorial review of Nichole E. Stanford’s Good God but You Smart! argues that attitudes toward Cajun English (CE) are sustained by economic power relations and reinforced through cultural misunderstanding. The review highlights stereotypes in popular media, the resulting linguistic insecurity, and how Cajuns censor CE features to pursue professional success. It also emphasizes Stanford’s synthesis of memoir, archival research, and survey evidence, situating the study within composition pedagogy debates and code-meshing approaches.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time6 min

AccessFree to download

Composition Forum 37, Fall 2017

Review of Good God but You Smart!

Cajun English, stereotyping, and economic power

Legitimate language and linguistic capital

Standardization, assimilation, and schooling

French ban and effects on Cajun culture

Current Issue From the Editors Weblog Editorial Board Editorial Policy Submissions Archives Accessibility Search Composition Forum 37, Fall 2017 Review of Nichole E. Stanford’s Good God but You Smart!: Language Prejudice and Upwardly Mobile Cajuns Amanda Sladek Stanford, Nichole E. Good God but You Smart!: Language Prejudice and Upwardly Mobile Cajuns. Utah State UP, 2016. 303 pp. I began reading Nichole E. Stanford’s Good God but You Smart! as I graded the final projects from my English for Academic Purposes course. Knowing that the course attracted a high percentage of multilingual writers, I’d attempted a translingual approach and encouraged students to code-mesh to whatever extent they chose. While most of my students responded positively and code-meshed freely in their literacy narratives, I found that most students didn’t extend it to their other projects. Despite my attempts to honor students’ diverse language resources, the more “academic” projects seemed to trigger linguistic insecurity. Several students said that they weren’t “good” at academic writing in English, and all but one eventually asked me to mark their “nonstandard” usage. I understood their reasoning, of course, as “correct” English is valued in other courses and the job market. Still, as someone who grew up speaking a dialect close to the one expected by the academy, I know I can never truly understand the positions that many of my students find themselves in. For me, that is what makes works like Stanford’s so illuminating. Stanford, a Cajun scholar, provides an account of how attitudes toward Cajun English (CE) perpetuate and are perpetuated by an economic system designed to maintain unequal power relations. While non-Cajun Americans are interested in what they see as Cajun culture, Stanford explains that most misunderstand what “Cajun” means, conflating the terms “Cajun, Creole, Louisiana, and New Orleans”(57) . While Cajuns themselves are an ethnically diverse group determined primarily by cultural identification, modern-day Cajun culture was established by the descendants of Acadians who settled in South Louisiana (36-7) . Despite increasing interest in certain aspects of Cajun culture, Cajuns themselves are still subjected to stereotyping, misunderstanding, and discrimination. Reality shows like The History Channel’s Swamp People and CMT’s Party Down South often portray Cajuns as drunks, hillbillies, fools, or sex objects. As explained in Stanford’s introduction, this stereotyping extends to bias against speakers of CE, leading many Cajuns to censor CE features from their speech to achieve professional success. Throughout her book, Stanford skillfully combines memoir, family history, archival research, and survey data to explain to a general audience how Louisiana’s history of linguistic and cultural discrimination has led to current attitudes toward Cajun culture and CE. This is perhaps most evident in the introduction, which interweaves literature review and literacy narrative. Stanford situates her text in the history of language issues in composition pedagogy, including Students’ Right to Their Own Language and more recent code-meshing pedagogies. Because this is the first book-length study of CE in rhetoric and composition, these connections establish the text’s significance for non-specialists and provide useful context for the rest of the book. The first chapter examines stereotypes surrounding Cajun culture and language. Though CE emerged as an identity marker during the “Cajun Renaissance” of the 1970s, most speakers still censor Cajun features from their speech due to widespread public perceptions of the dialect. Stanford describes this complex dynamic in economic terms: ... Cajun ways of speaking aren’t worth much in this economy. The pop culture representations of Cajuns ... reveal hegemonic attitudes toward Cajuns as—well—not exactly CEO material So trying not to sound Cajun, especially in high-stakes situat

FAQs

What does the review say Stanford’s book explains about Cajun English (CE)?

It explains how attitudes toward CE are perpetuated by an economic system tied to unequal power relations and by widespread misunderstanding of what “Cajun” means.

Why do many Cajuns censor CE features, according to the review?

Speakers internalize stereotypes and often comply with standardized English in high-stakes contexts to achieve professional success.

What research methods does Stanford use, according to the review?

Stanford combines memoir, family history, archival research, and survey data, weaving these into a rhetoric and composition-focused study for general readers.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by jay