Biography
Nathan Wendte is a linguistic anthropologist residing in New Orleans with his wife and son. He received his PhD from Tulane University in 2020 and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia. His research concentrates on the complex relationship between language and identity, especially in contexts of language contact, language shift, and migration. He has worked closely with Creole and Cajun populations in Louisiana and Texas as well as with the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. He has also been closely involved with the revitalization movements for both Louisiana Creole and Tunica.
Research
The Northshore and Grand Isle: Eroding Linguistic Landscapes
The words we use matter; the way we use them matters. This project is a bold challenge to popular discourses surrounding land loss via related discourses of language loss. Both of these phenomena are often talked about as though they were inevitable, which has major effects on the ways in which we do (or do not) act in response to them. In this project, I specifically look at the issue of language loss in two ecologically vulnerable communities of Louisiana (i.e., Grand Isle and the Northshore). But instead of framing the issue in terms of deficit, I endeavor to frame it in terms of benefit. By digitizing, transcribing, archiving, and analyzing two existing corpora of Louisiana French (Grand Isle) and Louisiana Creole (Northshore), I seek to validate these communities, their linguistic practices, and their histories of adaptation and resilience in the face of hardship. In doing so, I shift the focus from the inevitability of loss (of both land and language) towards the positive actions that can be taken in the face of a changing Gulf South. Results of this project will be made freely available to the communities and to the larger public.
