Lisa Abney

            In 2004, as part of the Linguistic Survey of North Louisiana and the Louisiana Folklife Center’s Share Your Stories project, narratives of Louisiana’s political arena became the focus of a number of ethnographic interviews.  These narratives address many topics in Louisiana politics, but almost all the narrators mention the Long family when they discuss Louisiana politics.  With the recent election of Gerald Long as State Senator, it is apparent that the Long family legacy remains intact.

            Stories of the Long family abound in Louisiana, but they are particularly common in North Louisiana since the Long family hails from Winnfield, a small town in North-Central Louisiana.  A specific set of images emerge when narrators speak about Huey Long, Earl Long while a different descriptions are employed when more recent Long politicians such as Russell, Jimmy, Speedy, and Gerald are the topic of discussion.  Huey is frequently depicted as an heroic figure or a villainous one depending upon family allegiances. Earl is often presented as an eccentric but brilliant character who only slightly resembles the existing popular and cinematic depictions.  More recent Long family politicians are depicted differently from the legendary Huey and Earl, and the imagery used to describe them becomes more event driven or anecdotal than those of the older Longs.

            In addition to the images which are used to create the Long identity, speakers also employ an array of significant linguistic features and discourse markers when sharing their stories.  The narratives illustrate a high number of adjectives and adverbs and lengthy descriptions.  Deixis often plays an important role in these stories, for locations become key in relating these kinds of stories. Further, the narratives  often demonstrate a pronoun shift in order to either include the listener in the story or to distance the speaker from topics which s/he finds uncomfortable by shifting from the first-person pronoun to the second-person pronoun, you.  Sometimes, this pronoun shift serves to generalize experience. These narratives provide significant information about the use of the you pronoun in narration.  Further, this research adds to the documentation and examination of the diverse linguistic elements of northern and central Louisiana.