Josué M González. Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. Editor: Josué M González. Volume 2, Sage Publications, 2008.
The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that has never adopted an official language or languages. In the late 1970s, a movement began in Miami, Florida, that soon spread across the country, calling for the formal adoption of English as the sole and exclusive language of the country. The first organized effort was a voter initiative later overturned in the courts. It consisted of a poorly crafted ban on the use of public funds in Dade County for any expense in a language other than English and any culture other than “the American culture.” The voter initiative passed handily, despite much opposition and warnings that it would not survive a court challenge. The ordinance passed, but later was successfully challenged in court.
In some cases, the focus for making English official and exclusive has been limited to an official language used for conducting the work of government agencies. Other versions of the demand for official English have been more encompassing: an order that the county, state, or federal government limit itself governmentally and socially to communicating in only one language in all spheres, including cultural and social institutions such as museums, libraries, and schools. Harsh measures are not common, but they are plausible in the political climate found after 2000. An English-only voter initiative adopted in Arizona in 2000 imposed a 5-year blacklisting on school administrators who willfully violate the English-only mandate of Proposition 203. Some advocates of official English have gone as far as to propose that radio and TV station licenses be limited to stations that broadcast only in English. The constitutionality of such a measure has yet to be well tested in the courts. In the case of Miami, when the first English-only measure was adopted, the results were tame and uninspired. The ordinance ended a variety of minor county services in other languages: bus schedules, health care brochures, and Latin signage on animal cages at the county zoo. The press editorialized that the new ordinance seemed to have no clear purpose other than to remind speakers of other languages that those languages were subservient to English.
The motivations that drive proponents of an official language designation are often muddled. Advocacy messages favoring official language legislation are often interlaced with anti-immigrant sentiments. It is not unusual to hear proponents of an official language simultaneously protest bilingual education, Spanish-language tests for obtaining driver licenses, and curtailment of immigration from the Spanish-speaking world. Some proponents have claimed that the English language is in danger of being overrun by Spanish. If English is not protected by granting it legal status, they claim, Spanish will someday displace English as the lingua franca of the nation. This position seems somewhat alarmist in that it ignores the fact that English is rapidly becoming the most commonly used language in the world and that no countermovement exists to supplant it with any other language.
In this entry, in broad terms, the question of adopting an official language is reviewed, specifically English in the case of the United States, and some of the allegations and positions on both sides of the issue. To further clarify the controversy and to examine in more detail the views of groups that oppose the concept and those who favor it, see Appendix E, Official English Legislation, Opposed. The issue is also discussed elsewhere in this encyclopedia.
What Does “Official Language” Mean?
Generally speaking, the designation of official implies that the item (or person) in question has had a special status bestowed on it by a government and that status makes it in some way more important than other items similarly situated. The extra measure of prestige or power may be truly meaningful or purely symbolic. A person wearing a military uniform is an official warrior of a particular government who is licensed by that government to kill others on its behalf. He or she is subject to special laws and a separate code of justice that differs from that which applies to civilians. But the designation of being in some way official may also mean much less. Thus, the officially designated state flower of Texas or the official bird of Indiana hold no particular status among their peers. Their function, by legislative action, is to serve as symbols of the beauty of the flora and fauna of a given state. The eagle, on the other hand holds a higher patriotic status in the eyes of most Americans than any state bird, including the turkey, the bird with which it competed to become the official symbol of the United States.
Perhaps the most ubiquitous use of the concept of official is in conjunction with currency. Most countries have an official currency that represents the wealth of the country and its citizens and the way that wealth will interact with other currencies around the world. Another common application of official relates to legal documents. A legal document emanating from a court or government agency is much more than an informative piece of paper. It contains a decision, an announcement, a measurement, or an order that must be obeyed. Violating the official nature of such a document can lead to a fine or some other civil punishment. In the United States, the deed to one’s house is one of the most valued of official documents, because it guarantees shelter for its owner even when the owner has declared bankruptcy.
Perhaps the most sacred of all legal (official) documents in the country are the papers attesting to the fact that a person is a citizen of the United States. Citizenship, more than anything else, offers the person the greatest status and privilege over other residents. A person who enters the country without the benefit of official documents is considered an illegal alien and is subject to punishment and deportation. Although it failed in the Senate and never became a law, a bill to make illegal aliens guilty of committing a felony by their presence here was introduced and approved by the House of Representatives on December 16, 2005 (HR 4437). Interestingly, depending on the circumstances, citizenship can be easy or difficult to obtain. It is difficult for foreign-born adults to acquire American citizenship. However, for example, a child born to a tourist mother who is temporarily in the United States can become an American citizen without difficulty. The only requirement is that the baby be born on U.S. soil, even if the mother’s presence here was incidental.
Why Didn’t the Founding Fathers Adopt an Official Language?
The historical record is unclear on this point. It would seem likely that the founders discussed the matter, but historians provide little explanation for lack of original sources. Some historians assume that the drafters of the Constitution simply had too many items to discuss and that the question of language was overlooked. Still other historians believe that the presence of a large number of German speakers in the Continental Congress would have made it difficult to adopt an official language if the choice was between English and German. Their assumption is that the drafters chose to avoid an internal confrontation over language in an effort to gain consensus on other contested points. German played an important role in the early colonies, but it never achieved official status. The myth that German missed becoming the U.S. official language by one vote is only that, a myth. A separate entry in this encyclopedia explores this point in greater detail.
Arguably, the most important point here is that for over 200 years, the absence of an official language was not an obstacle in the development of the country as a world power. Calls for designating English as the official language did not begin until the last quarter of the 20th century, when the hegemony of English was firmly established and its dominance as the lingua franca was unchallenged.
There are two situations under which the adoption of an official language is most important. The first is at the birth of a country when several languages prevail and the founders wish to clarify, for posterity, what their intentions are. The second is the point of emancipation of a country from the control of another, such as the decolonization of African nations from European powers. The first of these conditions did not exist in the territories that were to become the United States. Many languages existed, to be sure, including almost every European language and a multitude of Native American languages. But representatives of those groups—with the notable exception of German speakers—were not invited to join the deliberations leading to the unification of the European settlements under a new flag. Even French and Spanish speakers were absent from this conversation, although they occupied large segments of land in North America. In addition, both France and Spain had contributed men and other resources to help the English-speaking colonies wage their war of independence from England.
The exclusion of speakers of all language groups other than English and German from the discourse leading to the creation of a new nation could be the subject of much speculation. For these purposes, it suffices to note that the framers of the Constitution and the English colonists may have taken for granted that English would be the common language of the new country and that no formal steps needed to be taken in this regard. As opposed to the colonies of Africa, the 13 colonies of the Atlantic Coast were not seeking to create a new culture and language and social institutions totally different from those of England. The colonists were not uncomfortable in their English-speaking skins. Indeed, many had fought the mother country only reluctantly. Many were reluctant to abandon a monarchical form of government. The use of English for all of the documents surrounding independence and the writing of the Constitution attests to that.
There is little question that had the founders adopted English as the official language of the country, there would have been an immediate reaction: The German speakers who predominated in Pennsylvania, also known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, would have objected—how vehemently, we do not know. Given the bold nature of their revolt against a great European power and the difficulties of founding a new nation, it is likely that the organizers of the new republic did not feel they could take that chance. Subsequently, as the nation expanded, steps were taken to underscore their commitment to English, but these efforts did not rise to the declaration of an official language. Most of this activity was directed at Native Americans and new immigrants from countries outside Western Europe. As Ronald Takaki details in his book, the push to Americanize was directed at the darker-skinned people of the Mediterranean and African and other racial minorities. It is not clear whether the primary cause of concern was that these people spoke other languages or that they simply looked sufficiently different from the White European colonists so as to cause the specter of racism to emerge.
What Problems Does Official Status Solve, and What Issues Does It Create?
Although English was not adopted as an official language early on to the exclusion of any other, there is considerable evidence that from the outset, the founders of the new nation envisioned a homogenous society composed primarily or exclusively of White, English-speaking people. In pursuit of this ideal, the colonial government passed the Naturalization Act of 1790. Thomas Jefferson, one of its proponents, believed that the act would create a nation in which citizens spoke a common language that would better link them to a democratic form of government. With the passage of this law, citizenship was reserved exclusively for Whites. Benjamin Franklin argued that any deviation from English was a danger to a pure, White race, and, in 1828, Noah Webster sought to improve the chances of achieving a common language with the publication of his dictionary.
While the nation did not adopt an official language, the close nexus between English and the preferred national identity was clear from the outset. The idea of a nation composed of White, English-speaking people was openly supported by several of the so-called founding fathers. Some went even further and proposed that the new nation should limit certain privileges and opportunities only to White citizens who were born in America. Election to the presidency, for example, is reserved for persons born in the United States. A willingness to embrace English and abandon other languages of origin soon became a symbol of national loyalty by immigrants. This early ideology may be compared to that of those who fear large-scale immigration today and advocate for ending it by building walls along the southern border of the country.
It is not difficult to see how the concept of a cultural and linguistic “melting pot” arose a few decades later and grabbed the imagination of the majority. It is also not difficult to see how these proclamations and actions would be viewed with distrust by those who were not White and English speaking. The cases of Irish and Jewish immigrants and others are prime examples of groups that were not initially welcomed to these shores. Time and space limitations preclude a detailed examination of the many examples of exclusion and oppression on the basis of language that were visited on certain immigrants to the United States, even without the benefit of an “official language.” The accumulated history of these efforts makes contemporary language minorities wary that new instances of exclusion and linguistic restrictionism might not be far behind the adoption of English as the official language even today.
Like immigrants, American Indians have also experienced language chauvinism under the guise of helping them adapt to the American way of life. Their relationship to English may have been even harsher and more oppressive than it was for most immigrants. There were great pressures exerted on American Indians to learn and embrace English. The first step in this direction by the federal government was the Dawes Act of 1887. The act allotted plots of land to American Indian families and specified that if the families were able to work the lands productively for 25 years, they would then be eligible to receive title to that land. In addition to conveying land, the Dawes Act required that American Indian children be educated in English. Many were sent to boarding schools, distant from their parents and other family members; they were allowed little contact with their homes for fear that the Americanization process would be truncated.
The historical record is clear that Indian education policies from the 1880s through the 1920s focused on the forced assimilation of American Indians to non-Indian ways and the teaching of English at the expense of native tongues. One mechanism for making this goal work as intended was land granted in exchange for having the children of the family moved away, with the express hope that they would abandon the ancestral languages and become “less Indian.” It seems clear that for the half century that this policy was in effect, English was in fact the official language for educating American Indian children and youth, even though the term official was not used.
Sensing the negative impact of designating a national official language 250 years after the founding of the country is far easier than identifying the benefits or advantages of such a measure if it were to be adopted today. Many observers reject the arguments commonly advanced by its proponents: that English is threatened and must be rescued, that national unity can be ensured only if all citizens are forced to speak the same language, and that social stability is not possible in a polyglot society. History does not lend credibility to these claims. The opposite seems to be true. Many societies rely on several languages and have done so for generations without conflict. Social bilingualism and diglossia have been studied and documented by linguists around the world.
In those countries where conflict has arisen over language, it appears to be linked to the desire by one group or another to set its language above all others, to be the chest-thumping king of the hill. A well-intentioned, rational, and tolerant approach to the existence of several languages seems to solve most problems associated with multilingualism. Declaring one language to be above all others—by action of the state—sets the stage for resentment and conflict. By design or not, languages are identified with specific cultures, and the designation of one language as the official language of the nation also gives a higher prestige to the culture represented by that language. In short, it creates categories of speaking and being.
The claim that the English language is threatened by other languages in U.S. society is a particularly weak claim. Almost no one in the country denies the critically important role of English. Many immigrants endure long waiting lists to learn it. Indeed, English has the best chance of becoming the lingua franca of the world, not merely the United States. This does not deny that immigrant speakers of some languages may wish to continue to speak their original languages for worship, for family conversation, or in social gatherings of their own group. These uses of language do not constitute a threat to other languages. It is axiomatic among linguists that language usage tends to follow paths of least resistance and utilitarian patterns. Languages survive and endure when they serve a special purpose in the life of a collective. They rarely flourish when they are mandated by powerful forces. Even a cursory look at the consequences of adopting an official language at this point in the nation’s history suggests that it is variously too late, too meaningless, or too threatening to civic harmony to do so now.
How Official Does an Official Language Need to Be?
Technically, it is a simple act to qualify the degree of officialness of a language, although politically it can be quite difficult. A law designating English as the official language of a state could be limited to its usage in government matters such as the publication of laws in the Federal Register or holding hearings in Congress. Informally, that level of officiality already exists, since the U.S. Congress does not publish laws in any other language. A moderation of such a policy could specify that the official language should be used except in cases of eminent danger, in which case all common languages of the realm should be used to warn citizens of impending danger. Such a clause would require radio and TV stations, as well as all emergency warning systems, to issue emergency warnings in two or three languages in order to preserve life and property.
At an even higher level, the meaning of official could extend its use in social and cultural institutions, such as schools, libraries, and museums. This would be a difficult escalation because taxpayers whose taxes support those institutions may wish to have their languages used in the education of their children. Prohibiting the use of Chinese, Navajo, or Spanish in schools would in effect mean that millions of citizens would be precluded from having their languages passed on to future generations even though they support the schools with their taxes. A step very much like this has already been taken, by voter initiative, in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts, where bilingual education is prohibited. This is an odd departure from the concept of parental involvement in their children’s education and their participation in setting school policy. In these states, at least, the message is that participation has its limits. It can be argued that such steps constitute abuse of power by the majority in that such actions nullify the wishes of one or more language minorities.
How Can a Language Be Made Official Today?
The Constitution of the United States specifies that all powers not formally assumed by the federal government be reserved to the states. Since the Constitution is silent on the matter of official language, we can make the assumption that every state has the right to choose an official language and to define the breadth of the concept of official language by specifying the areas in which the language would be required and situations in which it might be optional. Many U.S. states have already declared English to be their official language, although few have specified what they intend by the designation of official status.
An alternative way for English to be declared the official language of the United States would be through adoption of a constitutional amendment, a rare and difficult process. In the history of the United States, the Constitution has been amended only 28 times. Measures to initiate the process of adopting a constitutional amendment to make English the official language have been introduced in almost every session of Congress over the last quarter century. The first of these was introduced by Senator S. I. Hayakawa, Republican of California, who introduced the first bill in 1981. His amendment proposal failed, as has every other attempt since then. The reason is that legislators are wary of opening up the process of a constitutional amendment and have it disintegrate into a morass of competing proposals that would mire the Congress for months or even years. Amending the Constitution requires that Congress pass the proposal by a two-thirds vote and that it then be adopted by a majority of state legislatures. In short, a constitutional amendment must be considered by both houses of Congress plus 50 other legislatures.
Prospects
Is the thrust to make English the official language of the United States motivated by linguistic necessity, cultural pride, or mere jingoism? Is the project doomed to fade away because it is a solution that seems to lack a consensual problem? Although the motivation of its proponents varies in its power to persuade, there can be no definitive answers to those questions. The project to make English the sole official language of the United States is likely to continue throughout this century as the immigration of speakers of other languages continues to exert linguistic and cultural pressures on the lingua franca. As long as political leaders regard immigration and the assimilation of immigrants as major problems to the maintenance of a national culture, they are not likely to abandon the notion of adopting official English as an organizing tool. Proof of this is that every time the issue has been put to the electorate, the vote is nearly always overwhelmingly in favor of making English the official language. The situation seems to call for more dialogue, introspection, and reflection. Collectively, we may decide that the key question is not whether English should be made the official language of the United States, but rather why? As the nation’s workforce grows older and the need to import workers becomes clearer, efforts will no doubt be made to differentiate the rights and privileges of those who have been here longer from those we are willing to grant to new arrivals. A vow of monolingualism in English may someday become another requirement for gaining citizenship in the United States.