306 ANALYZING DATA
counterproposals and a never-ending evolution of new terms and acronyms for the underlying
ideas and approaches. Pluralists, for example, want language policies that aim at both English-
language acquisition by non-English speakers and support and respect for the maintenance of
additional languages that they see as fundamentally part of the “American” ethno-linguistic land-
scape. They want to see both the country and its peoples as fluent as possible in at least two
languages. Thus, pluralists support bilingual education programs in the schools and linguistic
access policies that enable all Americans to vote, interact with their governments, and make use
of their civil and political rights in languages other than English.
Assimilationists, in contrast, want language policies that channel non-English speakers toward
a language “shift” to English, particularly in public places, and they are especially determined
that governments and public agencies provide no incentives for people to retain non-English
languages in the public domain. For this reason, they oppose bilingual education and non-English
ballots and voting materials, and they have sought official English language policies for both
symbolic and substantive reasons. In any case, outlining the basic policy positions taken by pro-
tagonists in response to their understanding of the context of the issue prepares the way for the
next step in the analysis, to which I now turn.Step Three: Describing the Arguments and the Core ValuesThe third step in my approach to value-critical policy analysis is to describe the central arguments
made by the protagonists on behalf of their main policy proposals and the core values that underlie
those arguments. And this is not just a matter of “recording” what the protagonists are saying; rather,
it involves a reiterative process of sifting through a variety of arguments made by a diversity of
partisans in overlapping public policy debates. What is needed here is a distillation of the primary
arguments being made, and this requires the analyst to see past the details to patterns of argumenta-
tion that may be found across a variety of specific policy debates. The aim is to accurately and
concisely represent the central arguments in the debate and the core values underlying those argu-
ments. One helpful approach to making this distillation is to use the “raw materials” gathered through
one’s research to develop a list of key arguments being made in response to specific issues or ques-
tions. Then, organize the distillation around these key issues or questions.
It is also crucial at this stage to explicitly distinguish between conflicts that are articulated as
factual disputes revolving around issues of cause and effect, and those that are articulated as value
disagreements that involve disputes over interpretations of meaning and significance (see Grant
2002 for an excellent discussion contrasting these two frames of reference for understanding social
and political realities). This is important because some disputes might be resolvable through meth-
ods of cause/effect analysis (and thereby amenable to value-neutral policy analysis), while others—
those being highlighted in this chapter—involve issues in which value conflicts lie at the heart of the
debate. Distinguishing between these two kinds of argument can be indispensable for determining
the kind of analysis needed to clarify what is at stake in the dispute under study.
Returning once again to language policy for purposes of illustration, why do assimilationists
want policies that promote language shift to English-only, and why do pluralists want policies
described as “English-plus”? What are their central arguments? What are the core values that
underlie these arguments? Often the protagonists articulate their arguments using “factual” (e.g.,
“cause and effect”) statements. Assimilationists, for example, have suggested repeatedly that the
continued presence of limited-English-speaking children in bilingual classrooms beyond one or
two “transitional” years is “proof” that bilingual education has “failed.” By the same token, some
pluralists have argued that the “fact” that limited-English-speaking students who have been placed