VALUE-CRITICAL POLICY ANALYSIS 307in English-only classrooms often score below average on standardized English literacy exams is
“proof” that they should be in bilingual classrooms. But both of these arguments, articulated in
the form of cause-and-effect “factual” statements, beg a number of underlying questions requir-
ing interpretation and judgments of value. In writing my book, much of my own analytical work
involved uncovering and articulating those underlying questions, to subject them to critical analysis.
Thus, after a great deal of such analytical work (reading, discussing, reflecting, thinking, re-
flecting more, rethinking again), I reached the position that there were three central arguments,
revolving around two core values, at the heart of the U.S. language policy debate. The two core
values are justice and the common good. The two arguments about justice involve two different
disputes about the implications of disparate understandings of equality in relation to language
policy, while the argument about the common good centers on the relationship between language
policy and national unity. And each, I think, can be best understood in relation to a central ques-
tion that drives the debates. I will briefly summarize the arguments here.
Argument 1 (“justice” issue): What kind of language policy can best help “disadvantaged”
language minorities achieve greater social equality in U.S. society?
This first argument has to do with the relationship between language policy and social mobility
(i.e., higher levels of educational attainment, better jobs, more income and wealth, more prestige,
etc.) for language minorities in the United States. There is not space here to develop more than a
cursory overview of the arguments. So, very briefly, assimilationists believe that since the United
States is an English-speaking country, it is very obvious that the path to greater social equality for
“disadvantaged” non-English speakers is to adopt policies that provide strong incentives for them
to master English and provide no incentives for them to avoid mastering English. Pluralists, on
the other hand, reject the assumption that the United States is “simply” an “English-speaking
country,” though they do recognize that access to English is crucial for social mobility. Because of
the country’s long history of racialized domination, however, pluralists also believe that true so-
cial equality cannot be achieved until the languages and cultures of dominated groups are ac-
corded more respect and standing in public policy. Further, they believe that mastering a second
language works best when it is “added” to a person’s native language, rather than “substituted”
for that person’s first language.
To summarize, the two sides are in disagreement about whether assimilationist or pluralist
policies are more likely to result in greater social mobility for language minorities in the United
States. At first glance, accordingly, this argument looks like a dispute about causality, and there-
fore it should be amenable to settlement through the methods of positivist social science. My
analysis, however, claims that there is no way to disentangle “cause” and “effect” through “stick-
ing to the facts,” because one’s interpretation of the relationships among “identity,” ethno-linguistic
memberships, and the meaning of U.S. nationality is completely intertwined with one’s under-
standing of both “cause” and “effect” in this dispute. As such, this seemingly factual dispute must
be addressed interpretively if it is going to be analyzed accurately and without distorting the
“facts” through the presuppositions of one’s analytical framework (see note 2).
Argument 2 (“justice” issue): What kind of language policy is necessary to meet the
requirements for “equal rights” in the United States?
This question is more obviously normative in nature, and it is one pressed most fully by pluralists,
who argue that the rights of language minorities are trampled or denied by language policies