A government may make laws declaring one language to be the official
language of the nation, but the facts indicate a different reality. This is true
of every country in Europe and the world. It is true of the United States.
Every few years a wave of protest washes over us, and a subset of the
people demand that English be acknowledged as the country’s one true
language. In some cases it seems that people actually believe that such a
thing is possible, and all it will take is a law to render us monolingual.
Such laws are primarily symbolic, of course. The demand for an English
monolingual U.S. is akin to saying: We’re first. We’re best. Everybody
needs to acknowledge that, and unwillingness to do so is... un-American!
There are no rational arguments for this position. English-Only proponents
can only appeal to majority rule, but even that can be challenged by
invoking the Bill of Rights, and in any case, numerical superiority is
slipping away in many places.
The U.S. is a multilingual nation, and our two most prevalent languages
are English and Spanish. Whatever laws we pass, whatever language
planning documents we write, those facts are undeniable. In the end,
language will not be legislated.
Discussion Questions and Exercises
Listen to Andre Codrescu’s essay “Arizona Education
Loses the Accent of America” (2010) on National Public
Radio. Does his perspective change your thoughts about
anything in this chapter? How is it relevant to the chapter –
and book – in a broader sense? Radio link is available at:
http://goo.gl/xGErO.
Davila (Davila et al. 1993) undertook a preliminary,
explorative statistical analysis of earnings by three groups
of workers in the U.S.: Mexican Americans, German
Americans and Italian Americans who speak their heritage
language at home (and thus, Davila et al. postulated,
spoke with an accent). In fact, the analysis indicated that
those of Mexican ancestry earned significantly less than