Interim Report: American Constitutionm, Official Language

Interim Report
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Abstract
Although there is nowhere in the American Constitution where English is declared the official language of USA, its dominance in the linguistically diverse country is unparalleled. Despite the supremacy the language enjoys in the country, the past few decades has seen the establishment of movements that feels the language is being threatened and for it to be protected and the unity of the whole country it should be established as USA’s official language.
An Outline to Prior Research
“Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation,” Angela Carter, Notes from the Front Line, in Michele Wandor (Ed.), On Gender and Writing, 1983.
Historically, the United States is known as a country of immigrants. Its linguistic mosaic has undergone constant changes due to the flow of immigrants into the country during different periods throughout history. Despite being an English-speaking nation that is comprised of people from diverse backgrounds, nowhere in its Constitution it is declared that English language is its official language and a symbol of American identity. In the American history, the last decade saw America experiencing the highest number of immigrants moving into the country. These demographic shifts have raised serious concerns among the country’s language policy makers and the public in general about the consequences this growing linguistic diversity may have on the nation.
This linguistic diversity is a phenomenon that has been in the country since the beginning of its history was not a major concern until start of the twentieth century. Wiley (1999) addresses the whole issue of language policies in the United States and his principal argument is how these policies are being used to influence social behavior of groups. Wiley observed that the increased number of immigrants between 1880 to 1920 triggered the Americanization campaign and language restrictionism in the country due to fears that the new immigrants will resist the assimilation into the American system and be unwilling to learn the English language. The emergency of new battles over language alongside language restrictionism brought language policy issues into controversial levels, a debate that exists up to the present.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century there has been a heated debate on making the English language the official language of the country based on the claims that linguistic minorities should abandon their native languages and assimilate into using English language. In the United States, English language is regarded as a dominant element of life and an indicator of “belonging to the United States.” However, other languages are only identified as foreign elements (Kloss, 1971:255).
The restrictiveness of language in the United States led to the resurgence of restrictive language movements during the earlier historical periods with English Only Movement being the only one that survived to the present. For nearly half a century, it lied dormant until when it resurfaced in the 1980s (Schimid, 2001).
In addressing the issue of English language use and language policies in the United States, historical and present policies in relation to language will be examined extensively. Also, it is important to have a broader analysis of language policy as well as its relationship with ideology. According toWodak (2006:175), language policy is “every public influence on the communication of languages, the sum of those ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ political initiatives through which a particular language or languages is/are supported in their public validity, their functionality and their dissemination.” According to Ricento (2006), the debates on language policies are more than language and language ideologies have significant effects on language policies. However, McCarty (2004) observes that language policies can be observed as ideological constructs that “reflect and (re)produce the distribution of power within society” (McCarty, 2004: 72).
The debate of language policy issue in the United States can be viewed from Schmidt’s perspective as a political issue that is divided into two groups; the assimilationists and pluralists. The assimilationists are in favor of the English language who view it as a force to strengthen the cohesiveness of the nation whereas the pluralists are against who view it as a struggle for racial equality in the country.
Language Ideology
Wodak (2001a), views language ideology as a concept that establishes and maintains unequal power relations. However, Santa Ana (2002:18), defines it as “the articulated social order to which people are normally oblivious”. In more detail Santa Ana describes it as:
Those contingencies that are never questioned, such as the background understanding about their social space, social beliefs, relationships, and identities that are established in the day, are also products of the discursive process of ideology. When, for example, it is just ‘common sense’ that ‘illegal aliens’ have fewer rights than citizens, or it is only ‘natural’ that students have disregard or deny their home world in order to be taught things by their teachers … then we are operating within the ideological assumptions of U.S. social order (2002).
From both views, ideology arguments are about language usage in the society and this can be applied to linguistically diverse nations such as U.S.A. This paper will utilize, Blackledge’s (2005) view on ideologies. While this brief literature overview is neither in-depth nor detailed, it will be important to position English and language policies in the United States to its historical contexts as well.
Research Question
In this paper, I will attempt to address two questions in relation to the use of English and language policies in the United States. First, I will ask what are the characteristics and consequences of official English language policies in USA. This study question will not only help in attaining a deeper understanding of the characteristics of the English language policies but also to establish the relations between group characteristics and likelihood of adopting the English language as an official language of the United States. Additionally, this question will help in identifying the factors that lead to the enactment of English policy decisions. Second, I will try ...