Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US (Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights)

Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University, Denmark Consulting Advisory Board: François Grin, Université de Genève, Switzerland Kathleen Heugh, Human Services Research Council, South Africa Miklós Kontra, Linguistics Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary Masaki Oda, Tamagawa University, Japan The series seeks to promote multilingualism as a resource, the maintenance of linguistic diversity, and development of and respect for linguistic human rights worldwide through the dissemination of theoretical and empirical research. The series encourages interdisciplinary approaches to language policy, drawing on sociolinguistics, education, sociology, economics, human rights law, political science, as well as anthropology, psychology, and applied language studies. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University, Denmark

Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US Edited by

M. Rafael Salaberry

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US/Edited by M. Rafael Salaberry. Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights: 6. 1. Education, Bilingual–United States. 2. English language–Study and teaching– United States–Foreign speakers. 3. Second language acquisition–United States. 4. Language and languages–United States. I. Salaberry, M. Rafael. LC3731.L34 2009 370.117’50973–dc22 2009017379 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-178-1 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-177-4 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2009 M. Rafael Salaberry and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by The Charlesworth Group Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Group.

Contents Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi 1

Language Allegiances Rafael Salaberry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Language Attitudes and Linguistic Outcomes in Reading, Pennsylvania Almeida Jacqueline Toribio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3 A Sociolinguistic View of Speech Sciences Nancy Niedzielski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 4 Linguistic Profiling: The Linguistic Point of View Dennis R. Preston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5 The Bilingual’s Hoarse Voice: Losing Rights in Two Languages Sandra Del Valle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 6 Problems with the ‘Language-as-Resource’ Discourse in the Promotion of Heritage Languages in the US Thomas Ricento . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 7

English Hegemony and the Politics of Ethno-Linguistic Justice in the US Ronald Schmidt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

8 Livin’ and Teachin’ la lengua loca: Glocalizing US Spanish Ideologies and Practices Ofelia García . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 9 Bilingual Education: Assimilation, Segregation and Integration Rafael Salaberry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

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Contributors Sandra Del Valle is a civil rights attorney. She was an Associate Counsel at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund for 14 years where she specialized in language rights, bilingual education, issues in urban education and the rights of day laborers. She is currently a Senior Staff Attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest where she works on behalf of individuals with mental illness and children with special educational needs. She is the author of several articles on language rights and a book entitled Language Rights and the Law in the United States: Finding Our Voices (Multilingual Matters) Ofelia García is Professor or Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has also been Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University´s Teachers College, Department of International and Transcultural Studies, and at The City College of New York, and has been Dean of the School of Education in the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. Her latest books include Bilingual Education in the 21st century: A Global Perspective (in press); Imagining Multilingual Schools (with Skutnabb-Kangas & Torres-Guzmán); A Reader in Bilingual Education (with Colin Baker); and Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua Fishman’s Contributions to International Sociolinguistics (with Peltz & Schiffman). She is a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa, and has been a Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the US National Academy of Education. Nancy Niedzielski worked for several years as a speech scientist for Panasonic Technologies, Inc., on automated speech recognition and speech synthesis, and she received three US Patents during her tenure with that company. Currently she is a faculty member in the department of Linguistics at Rice University. She is currently a consultant to the Houston FBI and other agencies on issues pertaining to voice identification, and to NASA on the Robonaut project. She is the co-author of Folk Linguistics with Dennis Preston, and is currently working on Sociolinguistics and Speech Perception for Erlbaum. vi

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Dennis R. Preston (Professor of English, Oklahoma State University and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and English, Michigan State University) was President of the American Dialect Society (2001-2) and served on the Executive Boards of that society, the International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, New Ways of Analyzing Variation, and the Linguistic Society of America, as well as the editorial boards of Language, Impact, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Kwartalkik Filologiczny, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Compass. His work focuses on sociolinguistics, dialectology, ethnography, and minority language and variety education. His most recent book-length publications are, with Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (2000), with Daniel Long, A Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume II (2002), Needed Research in American Dialects (2003) and, with Brian Joseph and Carol G. Preston, Linguistic Diversity in Michigan and Ohio (2005). Thomas Ricento is Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Calgary. He has published widely in the field of language policy, politics and ideology. His most recent publication is An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method (Blackwell, 2006). Other books include Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities (co-edited with Barbara Burnaby) and Ideology, Politics, and Language Policies: Focus on English (editor). He is founding co-editor (with Terrence G. Wiley) of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (Lawrence Erlbaum). Rafael Salaberry is Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at University of Texas–Austin. He is Associate Chair and Director of the Language Program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. His research and teaching are focused on a variety of topics centered on the acquisition of second languages among adults. His most recent publications are: Marking Past Tense in Second Language: A theoretical model (2008, Continuum Press); The Art of Teaching Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis (with Barbara Lafford, 2006, Georgetown University Press); and Tense and Aspect in the Romance Languages (with Dalila Ayoun, 2005, John Benjamins). Professor Salaberry has also produced a one-hour documentary on bilingual education entitled The Choosers. Ronald Schmidt, Sr is author of Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States (Temple University Press, 2000), and professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach. He has published numerous articles on the politics of language and language policy in the US and Canada and his current work centers on the

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incorporation of immigrants in the US and Canada. Schmidt has held a Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Montreal (Quebec), and he has been president of the Western Political Science Association and co-president of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Almeida Jacqueline Toribio is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas–Austin. Her major fields of inquiry are linguistic theory, Spanish syntax and contact linguistics, with specializations in language variation and change, bilingualism and attrition. Her publications appear in Bilingualism: Language & Cognition; International Journal of Bilingualism; International Journal of the Sociology of Language; Lingua; Linguistic Inquiry; Linguistics; Spanish in Context and Probus, among others. She has co-edited, with Barbara Bullock, the Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching.

Chapter 1

Language Allegiances RAFAEL SALABERRY

Introduction Is the competence to speak a language (for example, Spanish) an essential or important feature of identity (for example, Hispanic or Latino)? To what extent is self-perceived identity based on language abilities in one or more languages? What effect does bilingualism have on specific identities? Does bilingualism lead to ‘fractured’ identities? Does a state need a ‘national’ language to become a nation separate from other nations? Are multilingual states less united than the ones that promote a single national language? These questions, among others, focus our attention on the relationship between language and identity. Indeed, identity seems to be associated, at least to some extent, with our competency in one or more languages. For instance, the rapid shift in language competency in, or usage of, the language(s) used by the children and grandchildren of immigrants is typically linked with the severing of ties with the specific culture associated with that language (e.g. Brodie et al., 2002; García-Bedolla, 2005; Kymlicka, 1995; Kymlicka & Patten, 2003; May, 2001; Sears et al., 1999).1 This very close association between use of a language and the sense of affiliation with the culture associated with it may be regarded as a form of language allegiance in that language affiliation seems to garner a type of loyalty and support that few other identities command (e.g. Ricento, 1998, 2000; Schmid, 2001). For instance, Cornell and Bratton (1999: 635) point out that ‘for many Latino/as their ‘visibility’ stems more from their lack of acculturation than from their skin color.’ In this respect, language seems to be one of the main components of acculturation mentioned by Cornell and Bratton in opposition to race. Thus, given the importance of language in defining cultural identities, this book will address a number of questions associated with the concept of language allegiances: are language allegiances rational; is allegiance to more than one language possible; how do we define language; are allegiances to 1

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minority languages supportive of a liberal state or antithetical to it; can we be objective in our analysis of our language varieties? In this introductory chapter, I will provide an initial framework of analysis, and will summarize the main intent of the various chapters that make up this volume.

Language and Identity Is language an essential feature of identity? From a sociolinguistic perspective, language can play the role of a boundary-marking function that helps to denote identity (Blommaert, 2005; Cameron, 1995; Lippi-Greeen, 1997; Tabouret-Keller, 1999). For instance, Cameron (1995: 17) points out that ‘speakers use speech to signal their sense of themselves as belonging to group A and being different from group B.’ Indeed, the association between language and identity is clear from the analysis of surveys, public opinion polls and demographic data in general (e.g. Alba, 2004; Crawford, 2000; GarcíaBedolla, 2005; Sears et al., 1999). For instance, based on the analysis of data from approximately 100 personal interviews, García Bedolla (2005: 81) claims that the ‘collective identification [of Latinos] is intimately related to their language, so it becomes problematic for some when they lose their connection to that language’ (see also Toribio, this volume). Similarly, Sears et al. (1999) reached an analogous conclusion based on the analysis of questionnaires that measured attitudes towards social identity, political representation, resource allocation, etc. Their results revealed that second and third generation Latinos (in Los Angeles) progressively eliminate ties to their heritage language at the same time that they progressively assimilate to mainstream US culture (as much as previous European immigrants did). In this respect, language shift can serve to signal that an individual or group does not wish to retain any identity features significantly different from the ones held by the majority speakers of a language. Interestingly, it is not so clear that identity precedes its signaling through linguistic means. For instance, Cameron wonders: ‘[i]f identity pre-exists language, why do speakers have to mark it so assiduously?’ (17). In other words, it is possible that language, to some extent, helps us define our identity; that is, language precedes our self-identification. From a socio-economic point of view, language and identity are also inextricably linked. For instance, according to May (2001: chap. 4), the process of language shift in Ireland (from Irish to English) can be explained as the outcome of a socio-political process that has linked

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English with modernization, and, ultimately, with economic and social success. Along the same lines, but with reference to the case of Spanish in the US in particular, Cornell and Bratton (1999: 629) argue that ‘[t]he minority can retain its language and its economic independence only by restricting itself to segregated workplaces and to teams that are monolingual in the minority language’. They, thus conclude that the process of cultural assimilation is equivalent to ‘reinventing oneself to surmount the linguistic and cultural divides that separate a minority from the majority group’ (p. 644). The connection between language and identity is also well represented in literature, and especially so when monolithic cultural identities are being challenged (for relevant examples see García, this volume and Ricento, this volume). In this respect, Cornell and Bratton (1999) point out that important writers have explicitly noted that their cultural identification is intimately connected with the language they use in their writings. The literary authors cited by Cornell and Bratton are worth mentioning because their work is indicative of language shifts and concomitant cultural transitions. For instance, Gloria Anzaldúa, writing in English and Spanish, conveys what it means to be mestiza in the US, whereas Toni Morrison describes how her writing in English can be regarded as quintessentially African-American. I note that the above-mentioned writers use vernacular forms of English and Spanish to convey mixed and hybrid senses of their identity. Cornell and Bratton also note the way the writer Jorge Luis Borges identifies himself as a Latinamericanist (‘I am inseparable from the Spanish language’). Interestingly, Borges was a fluent bilingual who studied in a bilingual English–Spanish school and read the writings of famous English-speaking authors in the original language. The notion that language and identity create an inseparable bond brings about some difficult conceptual and by extension legal challenges. For instance, Del Valle (2003: 28) points out that only immutable, unchangeable characteristics define protected groups; thus, only immutable characteristics endow groups with legal rights. More specifically, policies that disfavor mutable characteristics do not, for instance deprive of job opportunities, rather they condition them ‘on a willingness to comply with workplace rules’ (Ford, 2005: 185, stress added). Does language constitute a mutable characteristic that can be changed at will? Some legal scholars have argued that language is not a mutable characteristic in the sense of an ‘on–off switch’, and have thus proposed that language is an essential property of cultural identity and affiliation (e.g. Cornell & Bratton, 1999; Matsuda, 1991; Piatt, 1990; Rodriguez, 2001). For instance, Rodriguez (2001: 142) argues emphatically that ‘[l]inguistic difference

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retains an immutable dimension precisely because it has been interwoven into the linguistic development of the speaker’. Along similar lines, Piatt (1990: 180–181) argues against the theory of mutability of identity alongside changes in language proficiency found in García v. Gloor because such a legal position ‘fails to take into account the individual’s interest in viewing the world through his or her culture’. Finally, Del Valle (this volume) wonders: Why are language minorities treated differently by the courts in Gloor and Spun Steak than African-Americans in Brown v. Board of Education? Aren’t all minorities the ‘other’? Aren’t most minorities easily ascertainable by some kind of marker, whether color or accent or language? The answer seems to be a qualified ‘yes’. Del Valle thus argues that language represents as powerful an indicator of identity as any other, including race. She acknowledges, however, that the level of discrimination against African-Americans may have been disproportionately higher than the level of discrimination represented in previous legal cases against, for instance, bilingual employees (see also Ford, 2005). Nevertheless, the perspective that the only wronged rights that have to be addressed are the ones from the past represents a myopic position. On the other hand, some authors disagree with the strong association of language and identity (e.g. Appiah, 2005; Ford, 2005; Gracia, 1999, in press; Gutmann, 2003). For instance, Gracia (1999: 44) defines the term Hispanic within the context of what he calls the familial–historical view: ‘. . . in spite of the many differences that separate Hispanics, we have a common identity of a familial, historical sort, although this identity is not based on common properties. . .’. Most importantly, Gracia argues that ‘. . . [n]one of the conditions mentioned — territory, political unit, language, culture, race, genetic lineage, or class — functions either as a necessary or a sufficient condition. . .’ (p. 14). Therefore, language, among many other features, cannot be considered an essential feature of being Hispanic. May (2001: 129), however, points out that ‘to say that language is not an inevitable feature of identity is not the same as saying it is unimportant’. To be more precise, May (2003: 140–141, stress added) claims: I reject unequivocally any conception of language as a ‘primordial’ feature of identity, along with any related essentialist notions of language-identity link . . . Where I beg to differ is [. . .] to assume that, if language is merely a contingent factor of identity, it cannot therefore (ever) be a significant or constitutive factor of identity.

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Similarly, but from a broader perspective, Cornell and Bratton (1999: 681, stress added) state that ‘the proposition that language and culture are not coterminous does not imply that language is not a basic parameter of culture’. In fact, we should note that Gracia (in press, stress added), more precisely, explains that ‘[t]he use of the Iberian languages is one of the main features that unites Hispanics and can serve to distinguish them in certain contexts. In other words, the latter statement seems to give language a sort of preeminence among other features of the Hispanic identity. Overall, the debate about the nature of the connection between language and cultural identity can be assessed from several different perspectives: language can be regarded (a) as a true essential property of identity; (b) as a belief about an essential property; (c) as a symbol that denotes cultural affiliation; and, finally, (d) as a fluid parameter subject to social construction. In essence, there are at least three non-essentialist arguments that may account for an effect of language on the constitution of identities. As a matter of fact, the position against a strong essentialist view of language as constitutive of identity — cogently argued by Gracia and others — is accepted by researchers who have been strong advocates of language rights (e.g. May, 2001). Having said that, however, we need to differentiate actual essential properties of identity from the perception of an essential property of identity. That is, even if Gracia were right in that the Spanish language may not define Hispanic identity in essentialist terms, the belief that language and identity are essentially connected may have important consequences on cultural group affiliations (e.g. Banaji & Bhaskar, 2000; Bonifiglio, 2002; Cameron, 1995; Lippi-Green, 1997; Matsuda, 1991). Furthermore, we also need to consider the possibility that even if language were not an essential property of identity, language could, nevertheless, symbolically represent an identity — equally or even better than other identity features (e.g. Cameron, 1995; Lippi-Green, 1997). For instance, Cameron points out: ‘one common function of arguments about language is to stand in for arguments on subjects people are reluctant to broach more directly’ (p. 217). Indeed, Cameron highlights ‘the powerful symbolism in which language stands for other kinds of order — moral, social and political’ (p. 25). Finally, we need to consider the possibility that cultural identity may not be static, but rather fluid and dynamic in nature.2 For instance, Cornell and Bratton (1999: 675) make a distinction between parameters and limits to point out that identities can be reconstructed based on how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. In sum, the belief about what is an essential property of identity, the symbolic power of certain properties of

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cultural identity and the wish to be perceived in a certain way may be as crucial as (or even more crucial than) actual inherent properties that make up an identity. The subtle gradience of language categories Not only is the association of language and identity very complex, but the delimitation of a definition of language is complex as well. Take the meaning of Spanish, for instance. Gracia (1999: 10) wonders: . . . how much do some African Cubans, some native Bolivians, and some Asturians have in common linguistically? The accent would be very different, and so would be the vocabulary and even much of the syntax. Would they understand each other? Gracia’s question points to the obvious complexity of the term language and how generic labels such as Spanish, English etc. are misleading because they refer to many different representations or delimitations of language at once. This oversimplification of the reality of the definition of language is deceptive and, more importantly, it seems to be popularly accepted as part of the metaphor of ‘language trees’, and its concomitant branching-off of languages as categorical entities. Contrary to this view, Penny (2000: 20–28) proposes that the best metaphor to describe language variation (whether regional, historical or social) is that of the perception of colors. Colors are defined, in objective terms, as specific frequencies in the visible light range of the electromagnetic spectrum. But the definition of color can also be a subjective experience because the light spectrum consists of an infinite gradation of wavelengths that are arbitrarily segmented by the human visual system into the seven basic colors of the rainbow. In other words, color categories are continuous rather than clear-cut and, most importantly, categories reside in the eye of the beholder. Languages seem to be better defined as continuous entities with no clear-cut boundaries, although, as is the case with colors, we can have categorical perceptions of them. Blommaert (2005: 245) explains the consequences of not taking into account the metaphor of the light rainbow when he notes that ‘[w]e have failed to see the fine shades of identity often articulated not by one monoglot “language”, but by delicate and moment-to-moment evolving variation between varieties of language, including accents, registers, styles, and genres’. Not surprisingly, thus, we find significant discrepancies in the way we describe language varieties as standard or non-standard to the point of incorrectly describing some varieties as

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abnormal (e.g. Bonifiglio, 2002; García, this volume; Niedzielski, this volume). More importantly, not only are languages not ‘categorical’ entities neatly defined and segmented, but their associations with specific identities are also fluid and dynamic. Blommaert, thus states that identity is best seen not as one item, but as a repertoire of different possible identities, each of which has a particular range or scope and function. In that sense, a term such as ‘national identity’ is, as said above, best seen as a specific ascriptive label attached to people. (245) In essence, it is clear that we cannot address language allegiances within the overly simplistic framework of classical categories. For instance, how do we determine whether bilinguals can switch from one language to another when we cannot categorically define where one language ends and the other one starts? In this respect, Francois Grosjean (1998) coined the phrase ‘a bilingual is not two monolinguals in one.’ His assertion summarizes a basic concept of bilingualism (cf. the lack of a clear demarcation between the two languages) that is shared by most — if not all — scholars who are specialists on this topic (e.g. Hamers & Blanc, 2000; Myers-Scotton, 2005; Romaine, 1995). This concept, however, stands in contrast with popular views about bilingualism in which languages are discrete and in which any syncretism is perceived as tainting either one of the categorically perceived individual languages (e.g. Grijelmo, 1998). This fluid and dynamic definition of language identities leads to other problematic phenomena with regards to the identification of speakers of specific varieties of language in a legal setting (Preston, this volume) and the adjudication of the right to speak a preferred language at the workplace (Del Valle, this volume).

Language Allegiances The preeminence of the majority language The association of language and identity is corroborated by evidence that shows that losing ties to a particular language entails losing ties to that identity (e.g. Brodie et al., 2002; Sears et al., 1999). For instance, as mentioned above, the findings from Sears et al. (1999) revealed that second and third generation Latinos are assimilating as much as previous European immigrants (as measured by attitudes towards social identity, political representation, resource allocation, etc.). Sears et al. argue that their data are revealing of a transition towards a superordinate national identity model (cf. mainstream views). In fact, many

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scholars share that position and conclude that religious and ethnic diversity is not as significant (real) as popularly assumed, thus there is no substantive risk of ‘Balkanization’ (e.g. Aguilar, 2004; Appiah, 2005).3 Most significantly, Aguilar argues that the Latinization of the US is a fantasy of Chicano intellectuals and academics. And much of the promoted singularity of the Latin identity is, in reality, imaginary, although for its proponents — and for ethnic corporations in general — it may represent a reality. (pp. 203–204)4 Notice that the unapologetic position advanced by Aguilar underlines what most demographic data in the US seem to indicate — that the so-called Latin or Hispanic identity in the US society is either inexistent or non-viable (e.g. Alba, 2004; Crawford, 2000; García Bedolla, 2005; Sears et al., 1999).5 It is ironic that in this context of clear domination of one majority language/culture in the US, the public support of bilingualism and of minority languages in general is perceived to be the beginning of a possible threat against the project of a homogeneous national culture. Such is the main concern of organizations such as English-only that loudly proclaim that English is under the threat of, especially, Spanish (see Del Valle, this volume; Ricento, this volume). The value of a super-ordinate cultural identity It must be acknowledged, however, that even if the minority language/culture had no real chance to destabilize the status quo that the majority language/culture enjoys, there could still be valid reasons not to encourage the development of minority views. Indeed, despite the noble objectives of accommodation of minority groups, we should recognize that cultural and language allegiances may, in theory, lead to negative outcomes. In this respect, Appiah (2005: 139) is right when he points out that the Robber’s cave experiment (Sherif, 1966) taught us about ethnogenesis: groups are defined by opposition to one another. It is worth summarizing the findings of Sherif’s famous study given its relevance for the arguments advanced against the support of minority groups in a liberal society. Sherif’s experiment on intergroup conflict and cooperation was carried out in a boy scouts camp (at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma) with a group of 22 12-year-old children divided into two groups of eleven children each. In the first stage of the study (4–6 days), the groups were kept separate and were given the chance to bond and create a sense of belonging to the group (the groups named

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themselves the ‘Rattlers’ and the ‘Eagles’). In the second stage of the project, the two groups were led to compete with each other with no second prizes awarded (winner-takes-all) for another period of about 4–6 days. During this stage, the groups became very antagonistic against each other both verbally and physically and eventually decided that they had no desire to be together (e.g. not to eat together in the same mess hall). Finally, during the last stage of the experiment, researchers created some super-ordinate goals (gathering water and renting a movie of their choice) that required the collaboration of both groups. This last stage was successful, eventually generating a great deal of generosity among members of both groups towards members of the other group. As stated by Appiah, the outcome of Sherif’s study seems to suggest that cultural groups are defined by opposition to other groups (e.g. Brewer, 1999, 2000; McCauley, Jussim & Lee, 1995; Wright & Taylor, 2003). Thus, one may be tempted to conclude that it is important to eliminate this antagonistic perception of reality and favor, instead, the development of a more overarching cultural make-up through the promotion of super-ordinate goals (for example, the project of a democratic liberal state). Appiah ultimately concludes that the consolidation and maintenance of a homogeneous cultural make-up represents a valid objective of a viable liberal society. . . [f]or the erasure of differences within social groups is not necessarily something to be condemned. Rather it raises the question of whether there are certain norms or uniformities that are useful in preserving a benign social order — whether some measure of homogeneity is a good thing. (p. 152) Similarly, Ford (2005: 155, 158) views cultural syncretism as an eminently good objective of a liberal society, further arguing against the ‘counter-productive message that difference discourse sends to the disadvantaged: . . . that they have a right to persist in socially dysfunctional behavior and that the way to a better life is not to adapt.’ Nussbaum (1997: 109) is also opposed to the politics of cultural identity: ‘The goal of producing world citizens is profoundly opposed to the spirit of identity politics, which holds that one’s primary affiliation is with one’s local group, whether religious or ethnic or based on sexuality or gender.’ Most dramatically, and in non-ambiguous terminology, Sleeper (1997: 93) warns us that: if public policy and the media only heighten people’s awareness of one another’s religious and ethnic identities, they will hinder individuals’ passages (and promotions) to a second, broader tier of

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American creativity and belonging. We need that second tier more than ever before. Precisely because the country is becoming more racially and religiously diverse, we should be working overtime to identify and nurture the shared values and affectional bonds that have spared it the fate of so many nations. Sleeper’s statement can be regarded as a call for immediate action (before it is too late) and thus avoid following ‘the fate’ of other nations.6 The example of French speakers in Quebec trying to secede from the rest of Canada is an example that has been used in the past to warn US citizens of the impending danger of ‘Balkanization’.

Accommodation of Minority Languages/Identities The above-mentioned arguments in favor of the promotion of cultural homogeneity to develop a liberal democratic society are not enough, however, to address some thorny outstanding questions that challenge the view that a homogeneous culture has to be ‘nurtured’. For instance, should the use of other languages and bilingualism in general be regarded as dysfunctional (as implied by Ford in his general statement)? Should the use of other languages and bilingualism in general put the users of languages other than the dominant one at a disadvantage with regards to monolingual speakers of that majority language (as warned by Sleeper)? Should access to bilingual education in the US put children at a disadvantage with respect to children being taught in English only? In this section, I will argue that the promotion and support of education in languages other than the majority one strengthen (as opposed to compromise) the project of developing a liberal and democratic society (its resource value: Ruiz, 1984). I substantiate this position along the lines of three main arguments: the use of majority goals as the reference point by which basic principles of a liberal society are assessed; the complementarity of majority and minority goals in a liberal society; and the effect of group stereotypes on judgments about the promotion of minority languages. Who speaks for the liberal state? We should note that (at least some of) the same authors who favor cultural syncretism also argue that there is a role to be played by minority groups as long as the views and perspectives of the latter are not intolerant or antithetical to the basic principles of a liberal society. Thus,

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there is a tendency (intended or not) to give priority to the majority culture/language, given that the majority views are regarded to be the reference point that other cultures should adapt to (Kymlicka, 1995; May, 2001). For instance, Appiah (2005: 203) points out that one legitimate function of a liberal state is, and has been, to attenuate the strong, Blut-und-Boden identitarian commitments it encounters: to process the surly sources of alternative authority — whether Catholicism or English nativism — and leave something diluted by broader liberal commitments: call it Identity Lite. . . The question one should ask is: who speaks for the liberal state? Even though it is not explicitly stated in Appiah’s statement above, it appears that there is a reference point that determines what is and what is not an identitarian commitment that needs to be attenuated. That reference point seems to be associated with the majority culture given the popular view that majority interests are aligned with civic goals, whereas minority interests are associated with ethnic goals (Kymlicka, 1995). But even if such popular (and inaccurate) perception of the ‘civic’ nature of majority views and the ‘ethnic’ nature of minority perspectives, were not an intended assumption of Appiah’s statement above, there are structural factors that lead us to the same unfortuntate outcome. To wit, Appiah further affirms that the state has at its disposal specific means by which that concept of Identity Lite can be achieved: ‘. . . if intolerance of other identities is built into an identity, or if learning the views of others except as shameful error is one of their norms, we will be seeking, in public education, to reshape those identities, so as to exclude this feature’ (p. 211). Interestingly, one could argue that it is the imbalance of power that, by definition, characterizes the majority group, the structural factor that is likely to lead the latter group to be intolerant of the minority group rather than the other way around. Majority–minority complementary goals The idea that the support and development of a minority language/ culture does not necessarily threaten the liberal state and that it can be integrated within a majority language/culture is cogently articulated by Rodríguez (2001: 185), who proposes that ‘[a]ccommodation should . . . make it possible for linguistic minorities to incorporate the dominant language into their identities and communities without being coerced into assimilation’. Rodríguez specifically argued that the state should actively support the concept of fluid civic identity. That is, the state

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

should support the rights of citizens to retreat to ‘culturally defined communities in search of meaning for living or personal values’ but structure ‘public institutions in a manner that discourages such retreats or rejections of participation in public life’ (157). In other words, individuals should not feel threatened or discouraged from using languages other than the majority language (cf. English) in the public context. Taking an even stronger position, Schmidt (this volume) supports a ‘national policy of fluent bilingualism, enabling Latinos (and others) to become fully bilingual in both English and Spanish’. Schmidt states that such a national policy would assure ‘social mobility (in English)’ at the same time that it would support ‘valued ethnic ties (via Spanish language mastery)’. Individual rights and group (perceived) identity There is yet a third argument in favor of the promotion of minority languages/identities that is worth discussing in detail: the effect of group stereotypes on individuals. In this respect, Appiah (2000; 2005: 194–195) describes three main types of stereotypes that are useful for our discussion: (1) normative stereotypes (e.g. gender-related norms of dress and behavior); (2) false stereotypes (e.g. when the group does not have that property); and, most importantly, (3) statistical stereotypes. The latter occur when we ascribe ‘to an individual a property in the belief that it is characteristic of some social group to which she belongs, where there is indeed a statistical correlation between that property and being a member of that group, but where, in fact, she does not have that property’ (2000: 47). Statistical stereotypes are important because their activation and effects are antithetical to a fundamental principle of justice: individuals cannot be guilty by the fact that they are associated to/are part of a certain group, but rather because they have done something as individuals. One clear example of a statistical stereotype is the phenomenon of racial profiling (Ford, 2005: 197–198; Sleeper, 1997: 28), prominently represented by the case of owners of jewelry stores that use a buzzer system to deny entrance to some customers if they regard them as more likely to commit a crime (typically young black males). A series of invited editorials published by The New Republic in 1986 presented various opinions on this case of racial profiling. Ultimately, the editorial opinions assessed whether stereotypes and prejudice are the result of abnormal behavior of socially maladapted individuals (thus, profiling is racist), or, whether stereotypes and prejudice should be regarded

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as normal behavior rooted in basic mechanisms of perception and categorization (thus, profiling is rational). Among the responses published in The New Republic, a noted economist, Williams (1986), argued that storeowners are acting rationally by ‘playing the odds’.7 In fact, he points out that we normally make decisions based on perceived statistical evidence: Doctors can predict the probability of hypertension by knowing race, and osteoporosis by knowing sex. A white jeweler who does not open his door to young black males cannot be labeled a racist any more than a black taxi driver who refuses to pick up a young black male at night. Essentially, Williams argued that we make decisions on the basis of limited information, but we can do so efficiently and economically if we rely on statistical trends. Thus, Williams argues, to some extent the effect of racial profiling is almost unavoidable, and in some cases justified as the only rational decision. The editors of The New Republic contradicted Williams’ position stating that ‘[i]f race is ever a factor in deciding whom you admit to your store, you are breaking the law’ (p. 22). In fact, at least some legal scholars seem to concur with the opinion of the editors of The New Republic. For instance, Armour (1994: 794) argues that ‘[u]ltimately, the courts’ reliance on statistical generalizations may provide an official imprimatur on stereotypes about the class in question.’ Is it possible that Williams’ argument about rational thinking represents a more pragmatic approach than the one voiced by legal scholars? Only in principle, because, as we will see, Williams’ argument is incomplete. Before we review in more detail Williams’ rational thinking approach, I will summarize a proposed solution to the problem of racial profiling that is in line with William’s thesis. More specifically, some have argued that racial profiling in general can be effectively addressed through an increased reliance on personal responsibility and civility, instead of any ‘wholesale’ solution along the lines of cultural groups. Thus, Appiah (2005: 152) suggests that ‘culture is not the problem and it is not the solution’. Along the same lines, Aguilar (2004: 183) argues that ‘culture takes over a moral space that is not its own. We should respect people, not their cultures.’8 And, Sleeper (1997: 155) admonishes that ‘[w]hen respect for individualism is intense enough, its judgments of individuals are not so easily circumscribed by race.’ Although the emphasis on individuality advocated by Aguilar, Appiah, Sleeper and others is valid, it does not provide an adequate solution to a problem (i.e. statistical

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

stereotypes) that, by its very nature, seems to be impervious to the exercise of individual responsibility. The main problem with Williams’ analysis is not that it is misguided on its emphasis in the role of rational thinking (cf. Intelligent Bayesians); rather, the problem is that Williams seems to minimize the negative effects of perceived statistical evidence (thus, leading to the overly simplistic solutions focused on individual responsibility detailed above). In fact, findings from modern social psychology show that humans’ cognitive processing of statistical information is guided by bounded rationality, not by classic rationality (e.g. Banaji & Bhaskar, 2000; Kahneman, 2003). For instance, humans tend to make a logical mistake called the inverse fallacy (or conditional probability fallacy) that essentially confuses the posterior probability of an event with the prior probability of that event (e.g. Villejoubert & Mandel, 2002).9 In essence, not only do humans tend to rely on statistical generalizations (as Williams points out), but they may also underestimate (or overestimate) the effect of specific trends that they find in their daily interactions with data of various types (including racial profiles). The obvious consequence of underestimating the importance of the effects of bounded rationality is that we are discounting clear and negative trends against specific individuals because they are members of specific groups. Thus, with reference to the ‘jeweler’s dilemma’, if individuals who are members of a specific minority (e.g. AfricanAmericans) are effectively treated not as individuals, but as members of (perceived) categories (be they based on skin color, language etc.), we would be hard-pressed not to support the minority group as such. In line with the latter argument, the editors of The New Republic specifically argue for the accommodation of minority groups: Expecting a jewelry storeowner to risk his life in the service of colorblind justice is expecting too much. Acknowledging this reality, however, also requires acknowledging that that society as a whole, principally through the government, must do all the more. (p. 22) We cannot escape the fact that stereotypes of individuals as members of perceived groups have an effect on many decisions we make in our daily lives. Thus, in light of the reality of our bounded rationality we should judiciously discount stereotypes in our legal judgments on an individual basis (e.g. Armour, 1994), at the same time that we proactively provide accommodations to minority groups — the ones most negatively affected by stereotypes. As a consequence, the development of a proactive agenda to develop to its fullest the potential abilities of the

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members of a nation (including language abilities) is, arguably, a valid objective of the liberal state (see chapters by Ricento, Salaberry and Schmidt, this volume). In fact, there is a great deal of support for the view that minority rights (as group rights) are not necessarily at odds with the concept of the development of a liberal society focused on a common superordinate identity. Ford (2005: 176), for instance, specifically states that ‘[w]e should require social institutions to bear reasonable costs in order to prevent widespread and unjustified discrimination’, thus opening the door for the state to play a more active role in the preservation and maintenance of language minorities should these (and their speakers) happen to be discriminated. In this respect, and with reference to the specific objective of language rights and the promotion of language diversity, Del Valle (this volume) argues for a proactive approach that avoids making the same mistake that has been made in the past with minority communities that co-habit with majority groups: Immigrants bring assets to the United States, whether it is hard work, the revitalization of dormant communities or bilingualism. They also bring new challenges and one of them is accommodation, if not promotion, of minority languages. It will not do for the US to refuse to extend the full panoply of civil rights protections to immigrants simply because they do not have a history of repression in the US. They are now in the US and unless the country is willing to repeat its history of creating classes of second-class citizens, it needs to re-frame its position on the civil rights of language minorities to a more generous and practical approach. Even more specifically, Hochschild and Scovoronick (2003: 181) propose that: . . . non-immigrant communities need to be encouraged to integrate more across ethnic and racial lines, not given an excuse for remaining aloof from the great demographic, political, and social changes facing our nation. Both groups must change, and each will do so in part because the other does. For better or for worse, we are all in this together. Furthermore, the promotion and support of the language abilities of the citizens of a nation willing to do so need not be seen as an unfair burden on members of society not interested in the development of language abilities. In fact, there are precedents that justify such an investment given that there are a number of ways in which the state supports

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

and promotes the development of resources of various types even when not every person benefits from such investment (at least not directly). For instance, as Nussbaum (2001: 407) argues, the reduction of the capital gains tax helps primarily the people who have considerable financial resources in the stock market more than the ones whose income is mostly represented by wages.10 Ultimately, if our bounded rationality leads us to categorize others too strictly on the basis of their language competence, it behoves us to find appropriate solutions to allow each individual to pursue his/her own view of the ‘good life’. The analysis of factors for and against the promotion of minority groups leads us to an ironic conclusion: in order for us to overcome our natural tendency to segregate ourselves into (antagonistic) groups, we need to explicitly and critically analyze potential differences among groups. This is where the concept of multiculturalism is very useful in critically analyzing cultural contrasts and similarities (Parekh, 2000; Nussbaum, 1997, 2001; Tully, 1995; Salaberry, this volume). For instance, making specific reference to the value of second language learning (both among children and adults) Nussbaum (1997: 146) states that: language study puts the problem of cross-cultural understanding before the student in a way nothing else does. Expressing your own ideas in a foreign tongue is a good way of seeing the relationship between sameness and difference; it should shape all cross-cultural study. In the end, the social (and financial) investment required to engage in a process of consciousness-raising that will lead to a more open analysis of language allegiances is supported by many and varied arguments. The chapters that follow make a cogent case for such analysis.

The Chapters in this Volume The collection of eight essays (Chapters 2 to 9) that comprises this volume focuses on the analysis of the concept of language allegiances, and, more broadly, on the analysis of language-based identities in a multilingual society such as the US. The authors of the chapters that comprise this volume share the idea that, whether based on reality or a perception of reality, there is a privileged connection between language and identity. The guiding theme of the chapters that comprise this volume is the identification of specific beliefs and attitudes towards language, and how specific perceptions of language lead to particular actions exemplified in this volume in language ideologies (García,

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Ricento, Schmidt), legal litigation (Del Valle, Preston), educational agendas (García, Niedzielski, Salaberry), political strategies (Del Valle, Ricento, Schmidt, Toribio) and cultural identities (Salaberry, Ricento, Toribio). In Chapter 2, Toribio starts out with a contextualized analysis of the social–psychological construct of attitude defined as a disposition to react favorably or unfavorably towards an object. Most obviously, in traditionally immigrant-based societies like the US language contrasts that may exist between members of the host society and incoming groups may have significant consequences for each. In particular, Toribio’s analysis focuses on the perspective of Non-Hispanics and Hispanics residents of the small town of Reading (Pennsylvania) towards the increased presence of Hispanic immigrants, mostly from the Dominican Republic, and their language varieties. Toribio’s study is interesting insofar as the attitudes towards the Dominicans arriving to Reading are mostly positive (paralleling the attitudes towards Cubans in general in Miami). In fact, only 8% of non-Hispanics and 5% of Hispanics believe that the presence of the newly arrived immigrants is negative for the host city, a finding that seems to contradict popular beliefs about the attitude towards Hispanic immigrants in the US. On the other hand, the majority of both Hispanics and non-Hispanic (about 60% of each group) believe that bilingual education classes should not be offered in Reading. Toribio acknowledges that there are some specific characteristics of her case study of one small town that need to be taken into account. Her findings are, nevertheless, enticing due to the interesting correlation of factors such as demographic density, homogeneity of immigrants’ backgrounds, perspectives on language use etc. Niedzielski delves further into the notion of attitudes towards language varieties in general by specifically focusing on the deleterious effect of popular (negative) beliefs about non-standard language varieties of English. She specifically focuses on the efforts to ‘remediate’ dialectal speech, drawing important conclusions regarding the nature of beliefs about language and its speakers. Niedzielski starts off documenting that non-standard speakers make up a disproportionate amount of the population of students in remedial speech and special education programs. To account for this phenomenon, Niedzielski reviews the results of research conducted over several years, involving speech professionals ranging from pathologists to educators to computer programmers. She concludes that there are at least four main factors that seem to account for the mistaken belief that speech needs to be remediated (when in fact there is nothing to be corrected). The four main factors

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

are: (1) the myth that there is a language variety in the US which could be labeled ‘General American’; (2) features that are part of the phonological and syntactic structures of nonstandard dialects are often considered symptomatic of disorders in various diagnostic tools; (3) nonstandard dialects are often considered ‘social pathologies’ in need of remediation; and (4) computer-based diagnoses or remediation tools of necessity rely on a very narrow definition of ‘normal’. Niedzielski’s chapter brings up an often overlooked dimension of the language identity phenomenon: we seem to share the belief that there is a standard form of language that is right and variations from it that are less right or patently wrong. More importantly, as documented by Niedzielski, even language professionals seem to be unaware of the fact that standard varieties are the ones that are ‘almost pathological’ in nature, given the fact that the spoken standard variety is so much tied to the written form of language. Surely, as Niedzielski points out, one necessary tool to address this important shortcoming will be a proactive approach towards educating non-professionals about the nature of language change and language variation. Along the lines of the theme of linguistic variation and popular beliefs about language and its speakers, Preston analyzes the value and legality of linguistic profiling. The assumption in linguistic profiling is that hearers can use speech as a means of identifying people according to classes or categories such as ethnicity, age, sex, sexual preference, native language background and so on. Thus, Preston wonders whether laypersons have the competence to make such identifications with any degree of accuracy. Preston’s answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, lay people can identify speakers of their own speech community as well as other language varieties. As stated by Preston, ‘members of speech communities are not only good at ethnic identification but are also good at age, gender, social status, and a host of other distinctions, with amazingly minimal amounts of linguistic evidence to go on.’ On the other hand, lay people also tend to be misled in their judgments of speakers’ identifications with speech communities as evidenced by the effects of, for instance, prescriptive notions about standard and non-standard varieties of language. For instance, the empirical evidence shows that in some cases ‘the belief that a person belongs to a certain class . . . prevents the hearer from registering actual pronunciation’. Thus, Preston argues that linguistic profiling cannot be just accepted at face value without taking into consideration the fact that it requires a minimum level of specialized knowledge. Preston argues that some modifications to the precedent procedures used in court are in order.

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Among his most important recommendations, he suggests that for someone to be regarded as a trustworthy judge of a particular language variety, four conditions need to be met. First, the person deciding whether someone is a member of a particular speech community must also be a member of that community of speakers (it is not enough to be familiar with some broadly defined characteristics of a language variety). Second, the person who is being identified should indeed be an authentic speaker of the target variety under scrutiny. Third, the speaker being identified on the basis of linguistic characteristics should not have been trying to disguise his or her voice or speech by imitating another variety of the language in question. Fourth, the judge of the language variety being identified does not hold any well-known stereotype of that speech community of speakers (cf. statistical stereotypes as discussed in preceding sections). Following up on the theme of the legal implications of linguistic profiling, Del Valle discusses the legal rights of bilinguals to use the non-mainstream language in the workplace. Del Valle reviews language rights law within the parameters of US civil rights law by examining two employment discrimination cases where bilingual employees were fired for violating English only workplace rules, Garcia v. Gloor, 618 F.2d 264 (5th Cir. 1980) and Garcia v. Spun Steak, 13 F.3d 296 (9th Cir. 1993). In both cases the courts held that the terminations were not in violation of anti-discrimination laws. Politically, socially and legally the crux of the cases lays in the role that bilingualism plays in anti-discrimination law. The question is: should a bilingual employee who can, to some but an unknown extent, speak English, be protected when s/he does not abide by and English-only workplace rule? Should we, under these circumstances, assume that an English-only workplace rule will have a cognizable, discriminatory impact on the employee? In both cases, the answer was negative. After Garcia v. Gloor was decided, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued Guidelines that stated that the presence of English-only workplace rules were prima facie indicators of employment discrimination. Still, after the Guidelines were issued, the Ninth Circuit in Spun Steak decided that the kind of injury, if one existed at all, in forcing a bilingual to speak English at work was not of a sufficient magnitude to justify invocation of the anti-discrimination laws. Del Valle discusses the cases in depth, from both a legal as well as a political perspective in order to gather conclusions about attitudes towards language minorities. Ricento analyzes the conceptual rationale that underlies different views of bilingualism in the US, and how those various perspectives are — or are not — beneficial for the development of heritage languages.

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

Ricento’s framework of analysis is the famous tripartite division proposed by Ruiz (1984) to account for language planning: language-asproblem, language-as-right and language-as-resource. Ricento explains that in the US, language ‘rights’ have been tethered to ethnic or racial entitlements as a means to redress historical patterns of discrimination and to enhance access to individual rights (e.g. provision of voting ballots in languages other than English, access to bilingual education). As Ricento points out, however, the language ‘rights’ approach is ‘not to protect any particular language or the rights of speech communities to maintain or use their languages in the public sphere indefinitely’ (stress added). Thus, the language-as-right approach is essentially an instrumental view of language (as opposed to language as identity marker) and one that inherently seeks to garner support for the teaching and learning of heritage languages by de-linking language from ethnicity or race. As a consequence of this decoupling of language use and identity, the language-as-right orientation ‘displaced from its historical situatedness’ has had negative effects on efforts to gain broad public support for the teaching and maintenance of languages other than English. Conversely, Ricento argues that the language-as-resource orientation represents the best option to promote and support heritage languages in the US. By definition, however, the view of language as a resource entails a challenge to the hegemonic view of English as the main marker of a true American identity. Of course, this argument is only true under the assumption that the use of languages other than the majority one may lead to divided loyalties. Ricento concludes that efforts to promote heritage language education as a national strategic priority within the framework of an instrumental view of language may result in shortterm governmental support. In contrast, the more substantive objective of developing heritage languages within a true language-as-resource orientation will require wider and more sustained popular support. In turn, popular support will require significant modifications in the underlying values and ideologies about the status and role of languages other than English in education and public life. Further expanding on Ricento’s view of the application of the language-as-right versus the language-as-resource frameworks of analysis of language diversity in the US, García describes and critiques the current bilingual (mostly diglossic) environment in the US. García focuses, in particular, on the potential value (or lack of value) of bilingual education given her analysis of the two monoglossic ideologies that surround the teaching of Spanish in the US today. The first monoglossic ideology characterizes Spanish as a minoritized language — the language

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of poor people of color, of conquered and colonized people, as well as immigrants. The second one, spurred by the economic globalization of the 21st century, sees Spanish as a global language, capable of being used to access the world economy, as well as the growing Spanish speaking market in the US. García analyzes how these two ideologies influence, now and in the past, the use of Spanish in teaching (what is generally called bilingual education), as well as the teaching of Spanish (what is commonly called foreign language education or heritage language education). The chapter then looks at how the two opposing monoglossic ideologies surrounding Spanish in the US, and the ways in which they are manifested in Spanish language education today, make it difficult to develop a US bilingual citizenry. García ultimately argues that Latinos in the US are prevented from developing their Spanish/English bilingualism to be effectively used as an economic and social resource in the global markets. Expanding on the topic of García’s chapter, Schmidt analyzes the reasons that would explain the lack of support for a pluralistic or bilingual approach to language policy in the US. Like most states in the contemporary world, the US is a multilingual country. That is, nearly eighteen percent of the US population regularly speaks a language other than English in their homes. Well over half of these speak Spanish, and most US Spanish speakers are members of the Latino ethno-racial group. Despite these elemental demographic facts, however, Schmidt contends that the country’s approach to language policy is overwhelmingly weighted toward linguistic assimilation to English. Furthermore, there is virtually no organized political movement in the US to support a pluralistic or bilingual approach to language policy. The latter fact is surprising given that some two-thirds of US Latinos have consistently favored a policy that favor bilingualism for more than two decades. Schmidt analyzes why, in marked contrast to the political situation in most multilingual countries in the world, such a political movement has not emerged in the US. Employing a critical discourse analysis, and drawing upon the path-breaking work of Antonio Gramsci, Schmidt argues that it is a combination of English language hegemony, American nationalism, and the highly individualistic political culture of the US that best accounts for this seeming political anomaly. After developing the explanatory argument, Schmidt concludes with a brief inquiry into the prospects for a counter-hegemonic discourse of linguistic pluralism in the US. Finally, Salaberry proposes that bilingual education has the potential to develop a more coherent and demographically representative new

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mainstream civic identity (e.g. Barry, 2001; Hochschild & Scovoronick, 2003; Macedo, 1998). Salaberry argues that bilingual education can help accomplish this objective by bringing together children from diverse backgrounds that, in turn are reflected in diverse home language backgrounds. In principle, the viability of the potential of bilingual education should be attainable given specific trends in beliefs about the positive value assigned to the achievement of competence in second languages in general. For instance, most parents tend to view the learning of a second language as a valuable scholastic activity at all levels of schooling (e.g. Padilla, 1998). Ironically, however, Salaberry states that bilingual education in the US is viewed with suspicion as one of many ways of enhancing the threat that other languages (especially Spanish) pose to English as the preeminent language (e.g. Crawford, 2000; Lippi-Green, 1997). This is because bilingual education is regarded as an educational program that leads to segregation by enhancing the already strong ties between language and cultural identity (e.g. Blommaert, 2005; Cameron, 1995; Rossell & Baker 1996; Tabouret-Keller, 1999). In contrast with this view, and to some extent counterintuitively, Salaberry claims that bilingual education can become a highly integrationist educational program by effectively softening the connections between language and cultural identification. More specifically, Salaberry proposes that (at least some) bilingual education programs (cf. dual language programs) can help decouple the tight connection that is forged between language and identity during the formative years of childhood. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, bilingual schooling can help children become less (rather than more) identified with the strong version of language allegiances. In turn, loosening the connection between language and perceived identities can help future citizens develop a more representative and socially just mainstream society (cf. Appiah, 2005; Guttman, 2003; Nussbaum, 1997, 2001). Notes 1. It is difficult to determine which factors among the various changes that happen from generation to generation are the ones that most weaken cultural ties to the original immigrant groups (e.g. correlation need not imply causation). It is plausible, however, that language shift acts as the harbinger of a cultural identity shift given socio-economic and political factors. 2. But see May (2001, Chapter 2) for some theoretical limitations of socialconstructionist models. 3. Popular parlance seems to be accurate enough when, as was the case with previous generations of immigrants from Italy, Ireland etc., the descendants of the original immigrants, after becoming part of the mainstream society

Language Allegiances

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

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(assimilated), labeled themselves as Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans. Lately, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries have become MexicanAmericans, Cuban-Americans, etc. In this respect, US native-born generations of Hispanics are probably much ‘less Hispanic’ than other Hispanics who continue to be dominant Spanish speakers (especially the ones living outside the US). In contrast with the divergence from the use of the Spanish language as a unifying (or necessary) cultural force to define who is Hispanic in the US, Hispanics outside the US are defined, more likely than not, as residents of countries in which Spanish is a majority language. Translated from the original in Spanish: ‘La latinización de los EEUU es una fantasía de los intelectuales y académicos chicanos. Y mucho de la pretendida singularidad de la identidad latina es en realidad imaginaria, aunque para sus proponentes — como para los empresarios étnicos en general — resulte muy real.’ A second, more controversial, argument advanced by Aguilar is that this imagined Latin/Hispanic identity is manufactured by intellectuals, corporations and other parties with a vested interest in promoting such ‘fantasy’ (see also Barry, 2001; Slepper, 1997) It is worth repeating that despite Sleeper’s concern — at least within the realm of language use — the preeminence of English as the hegemonic language in the US will hardly be challenged by any other language, Spanish included (e.g. Brodie et al., 2002; Sears et al., 1999). Williams’s piece was titled the Intelligent Bayesian in reference to Thomas Bayes who started the field of statistics. Translated from the original in Spanish: La ‘cultura’ usurpa un lenguaje moral que no le pertenece. Es a las personal a quienes debemos respetar, no a sus culturas. In general, this fallacy is based on the fact that conditional probabilities are assessed without taking into account the effect of base rates. For instance, if we know that a certain disease occurs in 1% of the general population (the base rate), and that a specific test is accurate 99% of the time, what are the chances that a patient who has received a positive reading of the test, actually has the disease? Previous studies show that the majority of respondents to this puzzle (doctors included) tend to assume that there is a 99% probability that the patient has the disease. In essence, they are ignoring the effect of the base rate. In fact, the application of Bayes theorem leads us to the conclusion that the probability that the aforementioned patient actually has the disease is only 0.5%. Warren Buffet, the wealthiest person in the world as of 2008, famously stated that he was embarrassed that his secretary paid proportionally more taxes than he did. Indeed, investment capital (which tends to be the bulk of the taxable income of wealthy tax payers) is taxed at a lower rate than wages. More specifically, the Tax Reconcilliation Act of 2001 determines that longterm capital gains (investments held for at least one year) are taxed at a maximum rate of 15% (irrespective of the marginal tax rate of the individual — the latter as high as 35%). In contrast to capital gains on investments, wages are taxed at the specific marginal tax rates of each individual tax filer (on average 25% for most middle income tax filers, although the range of tax rates goes from 0% to 35%).

Chapter 2

Language Attitudes and Linguistic Outcomes in Reading, Pennsylvania* ALMEIDA JACQUELINE TORIBIO

The Sociolinguistics and Social Psychology of Immigration As aptly noted by Chambers (2003), the resettlement of people across national and linguistic boundaries invites consideration of the sociolinguistics of immigration. Most obviously, the language differences that may exist between members of the host society and incoming groups may have significant consequences for each. One consequence, to be addressed herein, relates to the social–psychological construct of attitude, a disposition to react favorably or unfavorably towards an object, in this instance, the posture of the majority group towards the presence of immigrants and their language varieties. Attitude comprises three components — cognitive, affective and behavioral — reflected respectively in the propagation of stereotypes, adverse inferences, and concerted actions against visible and ‘audible’ minorities by the dominant group. Such is the case for Spanish-speaking minorities immigrating to the US and migrating within its national borders. Also addressed are Spanishspeaking (im)migrants’ responses to attitudes towards their increased presence in the larger US social sphere.

Language Attitudes It is well recognized that particular speech forms can evoke assumptions about speakers’ social status, economic standing, personal attributes and group membership (see The Social Connotations Hypothesis, Giles & Niedzielski, 1998). Patterns of reactions toward linguistic forms and towards those who employ them are referred to as language attitudes. Language attitudes have been assessed through a variety of methodologies, among these, ethnographic observations and examination of public information, direct treatments that draw on questionnaires, surveys, polls and interviews requiring participants to express attitudes about 24

Language Attitudes and Linguistic Outcomes: Reading, PA

25

particular language varieties, and indirect measurements, such as the matched-guise technique, that tap into stereotypes about language by focusing on assessments of the speakers of particular language varieties.1 Extant research in psychology and the social psychology of language is consistent in finding that listeners stereotype members of certain groups and their speech forms along a number of dimensions. Studies drawing on direct scalar measures suggest that Anglo-Americans’ perceptions towards Hispanics are generally unfavorable.2 Hispanics are viewed as unproductive, uneducated, poor, and criminally-inclined (Marin, 1984; Jackson et al., 1996). Likewise, in verbal-guise tests, speakers of Spanish-accented English are downgraded on traits of competence (Giles et al., 1995) and rated as less suitable for higher status occupations (De la Zerda & Hopper, 1979). Additional evidence suggests that Hispanics may come to adopt the same negative characteristics in describing themselves (e.g. Bernat & Balch, 1979) and their language forms (Dailey et al., 2003), consistent with the research that others’ perceptions have important implications for self-perceptions and behavior. Thus, the study of language attitudes takes on considerable importance in discussions regarding broad social issues such as language planning in the context of immigration, and attitudes are centrally implicated in language maintenance and language shift among immigrants. For instance, unfavorable attitudes towards (im)migrants’ speech may limit their access to, and participation in, the social and economic arenas of the larger society. This holds true for many Spanish speakers who immigrate to the US and migrate within its borders. Recognizing that their language, and more specifically, others’ attitudes towards it, often sets limits on their prospects of advancement, many Hispanics elect to completely assimilate to the host society, relinquishing the heritage language (and other Hispanic cultural traditions) in favor of those of the Anglo-American mainstream majority. Others resist linguistic assimilation, either because they are socially and economically empowered, as in established enclave communities; or, less likely, because they perceive themselves as permanently disenfranchised by the mainstream — for instance, as a consequence of racial or cultural characteristics — and regard the acquisition of English to be a pointless exercise. Still others seek to integrate themselves linguistically into the dominant English-speaking society, while at once maintaining linguistic identification with co-ethnics through bilingualism. Implicated in this latter option are immigrants’ attitudes regarding their own language varieties and the value ascribed to language retention. The particular

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outcomes depend on the social context pertinent to the allegiances of the group and individuals in question (cf. Liebkind, 1999). This chapter focuses attention on Reading, Pennsylvania, a community that has witnessed a tremendous growth in its Hispanic population over the past decade, and subsequently examines the identity and language outcomes for one group in particular: persons with origins in the Dominican Republic. As we cannot discuss matters of outcomes without reference to context, the ensuing section presents a portrait of Reading, Pennsylvania, and its residents.

Spanish and Spanish speakers in Context Pennsylvania ranks as the state with the thirteenth largest Hispanic population. Numbering 405,000, Hispanics account for 3.4% of the state’s populace. US Census data present a population that is young (median age 25.2) and mostly US-born (82%) or naturalized citizens (5.9%). Hispanic adults participate in the labor force at rates comparable to non-Hispanics (62.2% and 63.9% respectively), although their median earnings are significantly lower than non-Hispanics ($28,584 versus $41,478), and a disproportionate number live below poverty level (28.8% vs. 10.0%). The Hispanic school-age population increased by 76.7% (as compared with the 9.1% for the total state population) in the decade preceding the 2000 Census. Hispanics in Pennsylvania have settled in the northeastern regions, especially along the border with New Jersey, and along an arc of small cities, including Allentown, Lancaster, York and Reading. This growth in Hispanic presence in Reading reflects a national trend: Census data reveal a redistribution of Hispanic (im)migrants and internal migrants away from traditional destinations and towards new settlement communities. Reading, Pennsylvania Reading is a small, industrial city, with a population of over 81,000, located in Berks County, a largely agricultural region in southeastern Pennsylvania. Its early economic growth was spurred by iron foundries and transportation, which served military forces in the 18th and 19th centuries. The city witnessed continuous growth until the 1930s, when its population reached nearly 120,000. But in subsequent decades, a decline in industry led to mass emigration to surrounding areas. More recently, this trend has been reversed, due in part to developments connecting the suburbs of Reading to Philadelphia as well as to an increase in Hispanic (im)migrants.

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Figure 2.1 Sign in both English and Spanish

Hispanics entered Reading’s labor force in the early 20th century in the textile mills. As these posts diminished and disappeared, the workers gravitated towards the retail outlets and service industries that flourished in the area in the 1970s. The closing of the outlets did not curtail the influx of Hispanics, however. In 1990, Hispanics in Reading numbered 14,486; by 2000, their numbers had increased to 30,302 or 37.3% of the city’s population (US Census). The Hispanic presence is evident in the signature of Reading’s linguistic landscape, which is marked with Spanish-language billboards and storefronts (as shown in Figure 2.1), and in the Spanish-language newspapers and bulletins that are readily available at local retailers and public service agencies. To be sure, the visibility of the Spanish language is a strong indicator of its vitality in Reading (see Landry & Bourhis, 1997).3 Dominican (im)migrants in Reading Among Hispanics in Reading, persons with origins in the Dominican Republic have provoked particular attention. As reported in Jensen et al.

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(2006), Dominican (im)migrants are bypassing traditional Dominican destination cities (e.g. Washington Heights, New York; Laurence, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island) in favor of new settlement communities such as Reading. In 2000, there were an estimated 2,758 Dominicans in Reading — a nine-fold increase in one decade — accounting for 7.6% of the city’s Hispanic population; by 2005, the number had grown to 5,912 (American Community Survey). While some immigrate to Reading directly from the Dominican Republic, most are ‘secondary’ migrants (or ‘internal’ migrants), relocating from New York. Second, notwithstanding their small numbers (and recent arrival) relative to other Hispanic groups in Reading (62% Puerto Rican and 18% Mexican), Dominicans display the hallmarks of an (im)migrant minority that has made significant social and economic strides.

The Present Study: Language Attitudes and Language Outcomes The present study probes language attitudes and consequent language outcomes in Reading. More specifically, it explores the attitudes of Non-Hispanics and Hispanic resident of Reading towards the increased presence of Hispanics and the Spanish language, and subsequently explores the language outcomes for Dominicans and DominicanAmericans. The discussion draws on two data sources: a telephone survey administered to residents in Reading and personal interviews with a sampling of Dominicans and Dominican-Americans. These sources of data are complemented with figures generated from the 2003 and 2005 American Community Survey (US Census Bureau). Telephone survey The telephone survey was designed to gauge dispositions toward the increased presence of Hispanics in Reading, toward Spanish–English bilingualism, and toward Spanish in public life in Reading. Volunteer respondents were enlisted through a random sampling of an on-line business directory and through convenience and snowball sampling beginning with several members of a local church. The survey was administered in English or in Spanish, as appropriate, and lasted approximately five to 15 minutes.4 One hundred fourteen persons consented to participate in the survey: 68 Non-Hispanics and 46 Hispanics. Non-Hispanic respondents ranged in age between 18 and 71 years of age; 59% were male, 18% non-Hispanic black, and 82% non-Hispanic white. The remaining 46 respondents were Hispanics, between 18 and

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42 years of age; 54% were male, 65% Dominican, 22% Puerto Rican, and 15% Mexican. Three sets of items were presented, each discussed in turn. The first set was a series of multiple-choice questions as detailed below.5 (1)

Telephone survey: Part 1 (Non-Hispanics and Hispanics) (a) Would you say that the increased Hispanic presence has been overall positive for Reading, negative for Reading, or had no effect on Reading? (b) Would you say that the increased Hispanic presence has driven wages down in Reading, driven wages up in Reading, or had no effect on wages in Reading? (c) Would you say that the increased presence of Hispanics has increased the quality of education, decreased the quality of education, or had no effect on the quality of education in Reading? (d) Would you say that the increased presence of Hispanics has been beneficial, has been harmful, or has had no effect on the local business economy in Reading?

The answers to these questions, divided according to group (Hispanic versus Non-Hispanic), are presented in graphical format in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2 Perception of effects of increased Hispanic presence in Reading

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As shown by the response ratios, participants’ reactions reflect a community that views the Hispanic presence as favorable. Two response patterns merit comment. Note first that non-Hispanics and Hispanics differed markedly in their assessment of the overall effects of the increased Hispanic presence in Reading (1(a)): only 35% of nonHispanics deemed it positive, whereas 85% of Hispanics offered a positive assessment. As elaborated by several respondents, many nonHispanic whites have left the city of Reading to seek out a better quality of life in the surrounding areas. In turn, Hispanics, immigrating from Mexico and the Caribbean or migrating from large metropolitan areas such as New York City and Philadelphia, are looking to Reading for the same. Note also that non-Hispanic and Hispanic respondents differed in their views of the effect of the increased Hispanic presence on primary and secondary education, with non-Hispanics offering a less dim outlook (1(b)): 15% of non-Hispanics versus 50% of Hispanics thought that the quality of education had diminished as a result of the increase in the Hispanic population. One might conjecture that this discrepancy owes to the aforementioned fact that many non-Hispanic whites (the majority of the respondents) reside beyond the bounds of the Reading city school districts or enroll their children in private schools, and therefore have little direct experience with the city’s public schools – in 2006, 68% of the city’s public school enrollment is Hispanic, while local private schools register less than 10%.6 Hispanics’ judgments appear more accurate, the Pennsylvania System of State Assessments results show that students in Reading public schools perform below proficiency in a number of areas. To cite but one example, in 2006, 65% of the state’s Grade 11 students performed at or above defined proficiency level in reading; in Reading the tally was 37% (a decrease from 44% in 2005); in mathematics, the state average was 52%, but Reading’s figure was 23% (a decline from 26% in 2005). Of course, it remains to be determined whether this situation has emerged as a consequence of the challenges to resources (human and monetary) presented by the increased Hispanic population. However, a number of Hispanic respondents raised concerns about the Spanish-rich school environment, which they believe hinders their children’s academic development. In the second component of the telephone survey, participants listened to a listing of statements and indicated whether or not they agreed with the content of each.7 Some items pertinent to Reading as a context of reception for Hispanic (im)migrants are presented in (2):

Language Attitudes and Linguistic Outcomes: Reading, PA

(2)

31

Telephone survey: Part 2 (Non-Hispanics and Hispanics) (a) Hispanics are well-respected in Reading. Non-Hispanic respondents: 94% in agreement Hispanic respondents: 67% in agreement (b) Hispanics in Reading are more socially accepted than African-Americans. Non-Hispanic respondents: 91% in agreement Hispanic respondents: 100% in agreement

As shown, Hispanics in Reading are felt to be well-regarded. Unsolicited statements further substantiate these views: One non-Hispanic white male respondent offered, ‘Everyone else has moved out; Hispanics ARE Reading’, and one Hispanic respondent proudly stated, ‘They compare us [Hispanics] to the Cubans in Miami’, in a direct reference to the social prestige accorded to that population. Hispanics are also thought to be more socially accepted than African-Americans; as one AfricanAmerican remarked, ‘They [Hispanics] are better off than the rest of us’. This response pattern is significant in view of the fact that many Hispanics are phenotypically black, an issue we return to in the ensuing section. While the presence of Hispanics was considered positive, by and large, it remained to be known whether the presence of the Spanish language would be as positively assessed. This was the main objective of the third component of the telephone survey detailed in (3). Again, respondents were invited to agree or disagree with each statement, on a four-point scale. The answers are presented in graphical format in Figure 2.3. (3)

Telephone survey: Part 3 (Non-Hispanics and Hispanics) (a) Being bilingual in Spanish and English is an asset in Reading. (b) All residents of Reading should strive to speak English and Spanish. (c) Hispanics in Reading do NOT want to learn English. (d) Hispanics in Reading should NOT teach Spanish to their children. (e) Bilingual education classes should NOT be offered in Reading.

As revealed above, Non-Hispanics and Hispanics are in full agreement that being bilingual is advantageous in Reading (3(a)). However, bilingualism is perceived as an asset mainly for those who speak a language other than English, i.e. the Hispanic population (3(b)). One

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Figure 2.3 Attitudes towards Spanish, English and bilingualism in Reading, PA

non-Hispanic respondent offered: ‘Hispanics should be bilingual; they should all speak English’. And another respondent regarded the English language as a means towards promoting citizenship among Hispanic (im)migrants, suggesting that ‘Maybe they [Hispanics] can learn civics in the bilingual education classes’. A majority of respondents are in agreement that Reading’s Hispanics are not opposed to learning English (3(c)). And indeed, Hispanics in Reading do speak English: Among residents who reported speaking Spanish at home (31.2% or Reading’s population), 76.7% rated their ability to speak English as ‘very well’ or ‘well’ (2000 Census). Finally, notice that only 24% of non-Hispanics and 6% of Hispanics thought that Hispanic parents should not teach Spanish to their children (3(d)). Nevertheless, a majority of those sampled opined that Bilingual Education classes should not be offered (3(e)), attributable to innumerable factors, some already noted (e.g. the challenges presented to the school districts, or the perceived harm of Spanish in the school environment). Additional items explored perceptions towards the presence of Spanish in the Reading public sphere. Survey results in (4) indicate that Spanish is well-ingrained in the city. Notably, non-Hispanics are not bothered by the presence of Spanish, especially in print media. One

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non-Hispanic respondent said, ‘It’s good they [Hispanics] have their own newspapers; they can learn things about living in Reading, living in the United States’.8 This integrative orientation towards Hispanics’ English-language acquisition stands in contrast to the instrumental orientation that the Hispanics typically present (see the discussion in the next section). (4)

Telephone survey (Non-Hispanics and Hispanics) (a) It bothers me to see Spanish in newspapers and billboards in Reading. Non-Hispanic respondents: 9% in agreement Hispanic respondents: 0% in agreement (b) It bothers me to hear Spanish spoken in public. Non-Hispanic respondents: 24% in agreement Hispanic respondents: 4% in agreement

In brief, social attitudes are sensitive to social changes. In Reading, Hispanic (im)migrants are credited by both Hispanics and nonHispanics with having revitalized the city; accordingly, the cultural gaps between the minority and the dominant groups may be less problematic in Reading than might be the case in other destination communities. Ethnographic survey Having examined Reading as a context of reception for Hispanic (im)migrants, this section turns to consider the identity and language outcomes for Dominican (im)migrants in Reading. The data to be presented are extracted from an ethnographic survey carried out in collaboration with researchers in sociology, demography, and anthropology (Jensen et al., 2006).9 Dominican participants were identified through random blocks, snowball sampling, and convenience sampling. Surveys were conducted in person, in English or Spanish, in respondents’ homes, place of business, or in a local Dominican restaurant; the interviews lasted between 75 and 90 minutes. Cursory characteristics of the sample follow, and more detailed information is found in Jensen et al. (2006). There were 65 respondents: between 16 and 68 years of age; 52% male; 94% Dominican-born; with between 3 and 16 years of education. The survey examined the their outcomes in Reading along a number of dimensions, including transnational ties, socioeconomic status, discrimination experiences, physical and mental health, ethnic identity and language usage. The following discussion focuses on the contributions

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of ethnic identification and language attitudes on Dominican (im)migrant outcomes in Reading.10 Several items examined identity. When asked to offer up the terms they use to describe their race and ethnicity, respondents conflated ethnicity and race.11 Most use ‘ethnic’ identifiers to classify themselves racially: 43% describe themselves with a specific ethnic identifier (‘Dominican/o/a’) and 42% use a more general pan-ethnic identifier (‘Hispanic/o/a’ and ‘Latino/a’),12 a figure that increases to 47% when those who indicated ‘Spanish’ are included.13 The lack of reference to racial categorization may be attributed to the fact that in the Dominican Republic, notions of race are more nuanced and feature an array of color terms for gradations between black and white. Dominicans are often very dark-skinned and as a consequence have an ambiguous racial status in the US (see Duany 1998; Torres Saillant 1998, 1999; Itzigsohn et al., 2005): (5)

‘En Dominicana soy blanca; aquí no sé.’ ‘In the Dominican Republic I am white; here, I don’t know.’

In the black versus white dichotomy of the dominant US society, Dominicans are considered black, an ascription that most resist for historical reasons (see Howard, 2001; Sorensen, 1997; Wucker, 1993). Predictably, Dominicans in Reading make their position explicit with national and ethnic markers: (6)

(a) ‘[Los dominicanos] son una mezcla racial; en Estados Unidos se les llama hispano.’ ‘Dominicans are a racial mixture; in the US they are called Hispanic.’ (b) ‘Me dicen, “Creía que usted era morena”; yo digo, “Sí soy morena, pero de Santo Domingo”.’ ‘They say to me, “I thought you were black”; I say, “Yes, I am black, but from Santo Domingo”.’

Indeed, a number of informants reported responding to instances of racial discrimination through pan-ethnic labeling, as in (7a), and another respondent drew on her citizenship (7b): (7)

(a) ‘When they ask me what race I am, I say: Latina.’ (b) ‘Digo que soy dominicana, pero americana cuando les sale el racismo.’ ‘I say that I am Dominican, but American when their racism emerges.’14

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It merits noting that in specifying those features that distinguish them from African-Americans, Dominicans in Reading point to lifestyle, work ethic, and mindset: (8)

(a)

‘Llevamos un estilo de vida más sano; al afro-americano no le importa el futuro.’ ‘We have a healthier lifestyle; African Americans don’t care about the future.’ (b) ‘Los dominicanos somos más trabajadores, especialmente con los negocios.’ ‘We Dominicans are more hardworking, especially with businesses.’ (c) ‘[El dominicano se conoce por] la forma de pensar — los dominicanos se preocupan por la economía pero también por desarrollar el conocimiento intelectual, la lectura. . .’ ‘Dominicans are recognized by their way of thinking — Dominicans are concerned with economic well-being but also with developing their intellectual knowledge, with reading. . .’

This impression may emerge from their visible rise in socioeconomic status relative to other minorities. In his article, suitably titled ‘Leaving New York, with bodega in tow’, New York Times contributor Seth Kugal reports that Dominicans move to Reading to avail themselves of opportunities for business-ownership and home-ownership that they could ill-afford in New York City. Dominican-owned bodegas seem to anchor every city block, catering to Hispanic needs in general and to Dominican tastes in particular: customers can find food products such as casabe (Yucca bread) and longazina (a type of sausage) or play the Dominican lottery. Likewise, Dominicans describe themselves as more entrepreneurial and less socially dependent than other Hispanics in Reading: (9)

(a) ‘Los dominicanos son más emprendedores [que los mexicanos].’ ‘Dominicans are more ambitious than Mexicans.’ (b) ‘[Los dominicanos] cogen menos ayuda que los puertorriqueños; no me gusta vivir del gobierno.’ ‘Dominicans take less assistance than Puerto Ricans; I don’t like to live off the government.’

Census data support these assessment also. Approximately one third of (31.1%) of Mexicans (but only 7.7% of Dominicans) 16 years of age

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and older engage in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations; 28.9% of Dominicans (but only 10.5% off Mexicans) are employed in sales and office positions.15 And Puerto Ricans have the lowest work-force participation (54.8), lowest income ($19,856), and highest rate of public assistance (20.4%). As noted at the outset, identity is based on how persons perceive themselves, how they strive to distinguish themselves from other ethnic groups, and how they are viewed by the dominant society. In Reading, Dominicans distinguish themselves from African-Americans and from other Hispanic co-ethnics. Interestingly, Dominicans draw differences between themselves and other co-ethnics along dimensions of language. They fault Puerto Ricans for not speaking Spanish or pretending not to speak it: (10) (a)

‘People say, “I don’t speak Spanish”, even those born in Puerto Rico.’ (b) ‘En el hospital, en las calles, en las tiendas, [los puertorriqueños] se hacen que no hablan español.’ ‘In the hospital, on the streets, in the stores, Puerto Ricans pretend they don’t speak Spanish.’

Census data confirm that 17.1% of Puerto Ricans in Reading speak only English; this compared with 7.9% Mexicans and 12% of Dominicans. Nearly 10% of Reading’s Hispanic population does not speak English at all: 27.3% of Mexicans, 5.6% of Puerto Rican, and 12.7% of Dominicans. Those Puerto Ricans who do speak Spanish are reported to be easily identified by their distinctive uvular trill — ‘Puerto Ricans have a different accent; they talk rude, with RRRR’ — and by their English-influenced Spanish-language forms:16 (11) (a)

(b)

‘El puertorriqueño se conoce por su lenguaje. . .tienen una mezcla rara de inglés y español.’ ‘Puerto Ricans are recognized by their language. . .they have a strange mixture of English and Spanish.’ ‘Los puertorriqueños fingen mucho, quieren engañar y actúan como que no son latinos. (que no hablan español)’ ‘Puerto Ricans pretend a lot; they want to deceive and act as if they were not Latinos. (as if they don’t speak Spanish)’

Dominicans disparage Puerto Rican speech perhaps because their own speech patterns carry little prestige, even in Reading (see García et al., 1988; Zentella, 1997):

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(12) ‘Se burlan de nuestras expresiones y de nuestro acento. . .dicen que los dominicanos son brutos.’ ‘They make fun of our expressions and our accent. . .they say that we are stupid.’17 Unsurprisingly, linguistic insecurity is prevalent among the Dominican respondents. As reported in Jensen et al. (2006), only 70% of those with 29 years or more of residency in the Dominican Republic rated themselves as speaking their native language ‘very well’. Moreover, a separate tabulation reveals that linguistic insecurity diminishes little with education: Only 75% of those with between 11 and 18 years of schooling in the Dominican Republic highly assessed their oral Spanish language abilities. Putting aside the other-imposed recriminations and self-directed disparagement regarding their language forms, the social context of Reading — and their socioeconomic attainment therein — promotes Dominicans’ Spanish-language loyalty: (13) ‘Because so many people around are Hispanic, if you know the language, you can do everything; you need Spanish everywhere.’ As discussed in Jensen et al., respondents reported extensive Spanish language usage across domains, and 83% reported that Spanish is ‘easy to maintain’ in Reading. Spanish is considered part of the Dominican cultural endowment that must be preserved: (14) (a)

‘[Mi hijo] ya habla inglés y pienso que es mi responsabilidad que hable español.’ ‘My son already knows English and I think it is my responsibility to have him speak Spanish.’ (b) ‘[A través del español] puedo ayudar a mi comunidad y mantengo mis raíces vivas.’ ‘Through Spanish I can help my community and keep my roots alive.’ (c) ‘[Mis hijos] son hispanos, de descendientes hispanos; no quiero que nieguen la raza. [El español] es una forma de que se acepten ellos mismos.’ ‘My children are Hispanic, of Hispanic descendents; I don’t want them to deny their race. Spanish is a way for them to accept themselves.’

The association between identity and language is well-studied. In immigrant contexts in particular, heritage languages are attributed a core value as a feature of group membership, as a cue for ethnic

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categorization, and as a means of in-group cohesion (cf. Giles, 1977). For Dominicans in Reading, the Spanish language serves as an important indicator and expression of ethnicity, readily allowing for the ‘performance’ of non-African-American identity, as conceptualized by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1982):18 (15) ‘Some people think that I’m black. Because probably I’m dark skinned, I look black, I act black, I always talk in English. . . [They know I’m not African-American] because I can talk Spanish.’ Although Dominicans in Reading report a keen attachment to their heritage language, they are also mindful of the importance of English. In the main, participants discussed the social benefits accrued through English-language acquisition: (16) ‘Sería una oportunidad para integrarme más a la comunidad, poder entender a la mayoría de personas, no ser víctima de engaños en servicios, firmar contratos. . .’ ‘It would be an opportunity to integrate myself more fully into the community, to be able to understand most people, to not be a victim of service fraud, to sign contracts. . .’ Parents were especially vocal regarding the instrumental value of English and Spanish-English bilingualism: (17) (a)

‘El inglés te da más desenvolvimiento. . .la sociedad que nos rodea es americana y tenemos que aprender su idioma.’ ‘English allows you greater self-assurance. . .the society that surrounds us is American and we have to learn its language.’ (b) ‘Si hablan dos idiomas, son dos personas en una.’ ‘If they speak two languages, they are two persons in one.’ (c) ‘[A través del inglés] pueden ser profesionales aquí en el futuro, pueden estudiar, servirle a este país, ocupar un lugar importante en la sociedad; no quiero ver a mis hijos en factoría.’ ‘Through English, they can be professionals here in the future, they can study, be of service to this country, occupy positions of importance in society; I don’t want to see my children in a factory.’

One young respondent was firm in his opinion of the importance of English: (18) ‘If you don’t know English, you’re a nobody.’

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In brief, because they perceive their own group vitality as high, Dominicans in Reading have more positive attitudes towards their own group ethnic identity and language. The larger ethnographic survey, outlined in Jensen et al. (2006), offers further insight: Being able to speak Spanish was found to be associated with higher economic status among Dominicans in Reading. In addition, Dominican respondents who identify with pan-ethnic terms (e.g. ‘Hispanic/o/a’ and ‘Latino/a’) are advantaged on dimensions of education, employment and income relative to those identifying only as ‘Dominican’. These findings suggest that Dominicans in Reading are integrating themselves into the US society, as members of a larger Hispanic/Latino community, which is not hindered, but pushed forward by their Spanish-language allegiance.

Discussion and Directions for Future Work A broad view of the above findings belies the views of Peñalosa (1972) which suggest that Spanish in the US is held in prestige only where Spanish speakers are small in numbers, i.e. the more viable locally the lower its social status. Instead, the findings show that the cultural distinctions specific to Hispanics in Reading (paramount among these is language) do not negatively impact the perceptions and attitudes of the larger community. Speaking to Dominicans’ experience in Reading in particular, enduring ethnic identification and language practices are not prejudicial of social and economic advancement. That is, the cultural practices of the dominant society are not necessarily the most vital in achieving social and economic success; maintenance of distinct cultural practices are also implicated. These findings must be interpreted with caution, however, since the contributions of identity and language on the social and economic outcomes of (im)migrants in new settings is less predictable than that of their cohorts in traditional destination communities (cf. Either & Deaux, 1994). Thus, while the sample characteristics in the surveys are sufficiently diverse so as to allow for generalization in Reading, the findings cannot be extended to attitudes and outcomes in other contexts; comparison data is needed. For instance, it would prove instructive to compare Dominican outcomes in Reading with outcomes in Raleigh or Charlotte (North Carolina), both of which have also witnessed significant (im)migration of Dominicans in recent years. These findings could, in turn, be confronted with data on Dominican outcomes in Providence (Rhode Island) or Lawrence (Massachusetts), well-established destination cities for Dominicans. In addition, since (im)migration presents a case of languages and language varieties in contact, new destinations

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such as Reading allow for the examination of social factors implicated in language innovations. Does the vitality and socioeconomic standing of Dominicans in Reading raise the prestige of the Dominican dialect? Does it exempt them from social pressures towards language assimilation with the dominant English-speaking society? Are Dominicans in Reading less likely to demonstrate dialect leveling with their Spanishspeaking co-ethnics? Will Dominicans in Reading evade the typical pattern of language shift, thought to be systematic by the second or third generation? Again, additional observational treatments are needed, for example (e.g. indirect measures to include matched-guise techniques), and qualitative approaches (involving interviews). Notes * 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

I am grateful to Barbara Bullock, Tyler Kimball, and Rafael Salaberry for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. The interested reader is referred to Garret et al. (2005) for in-depth discussion on the nature and assessment of attitudes. The term Hispanic is used to officially designate people of Spanish and Latin American descent living within US national borders. As a federally legislated label, it is central to the classifications that motivate the distribution of power and status through political representation and allocation of resources. See Gorter’s (2006) edited anthology for current research on linguistic landscape. I am grateful to Jessica Hoover for assistance with the design of the survey and to Benji Romig and Fernando Disla for assistance in its administration. A fifth item on legislation was in referendum in the city of Hazelton, Pennsylvania; this legislation would deny work permits to companies that employ undocumented workers, fine those who offer housing to the undocumented, and make English the official language of that city. Respondents were asked whether such legislation, if adopted in Reading, would be positive, negative, or have no effect; 68% of non-Hispanics and 15% of Hispanics thought such legislation would be positive. Figures available on www greatschools.net The four point scale was converted to two: completely agree and somewhat agree were coded as ‘agree’ and completely disagree and somewhat disagree were coded as ‘disagree’. A final set of survey items was administered only to those who identified as Hispanic, further scrutinizing the perceived importance of Spanish and English for Hispanic residents of Reading. Respondents ascribe significant value to Spanish as a marker of identity: 100% are in agreement with the statement, ‘The Spanish language is an important part of my identity’. English was evaluated as important to identity among only 30% of the Hispanics sampled, but this number increases to 88% when the sample is restricted to those born in the US.

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9. Support for this research was provided by Russell Sage Foundation Project # 88-04-01, ‘Context, Identities, and Economic Outcomes: A Pilot Study of Dominicans in Reading, Pennsylvania’. Infrastructural support and funding for a special US Census tabulation were provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State, which has core funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD041025-03). 10. The notion of ethnicity is invoked here in referring to the ‘the identificational dimension of culture’, following Fishman (1997: 327). It is a socially constructed category that is perspectival and oppositional, understood only in reference to the ‘other’, and it is situational, produced in interaction between individual and contextual variables. Thus, ethnic identity is not a static phenomenon; rather, it depends on the context in which it is expressed. 11. Race is often implicated in the formation of ethnic identity in immigrant contexts (cf. Mittelberg & Waters 1983; Omi & Winant, 1996). 12. Latino has been embraced for collective identification among persons of Spanish language heritage, as an alternative to the imposed designation Hispanic. Initial impetus for the latter was provided by shared social ideologies, but the term has been stripped of some of its original connotations and is now widely acknowledged and accepted as an ‘ethnic’ label. The reader is referred to Oboler (2005) for a thorough-going treatment one ethnic labelling. 13. It is common for Hispanics to identify language with ethnicity: ‘I speak Spanish, so I am Spanish’. 14. Dominicans similarly also use language to make themselves distinct from ‘African’ neighbors on the island of Hispaniola and in New York (cf. Toribio, 2000, 2003, 2006). 15. In this respect, it merits noting that Berks County, which includes Reading, ranks third in the state for agricultural production. Mexicans demonstrate the highest participation in the work force (61.5%) and have the highest median family income ($30,307). 16. Negative critiques of Puerto Rican Spanish are attested in the Dominican Republic as well (cf. Toribio, 2000). 17. Zentella (1990) found that Dominicans expressed highly negative opinions about Dominican Spanish, and 80% reported that Dominican Spanish should not be taught in schools. 18. Consult Toribio (2003) for a study of the differential language performances of black and white Dominicans.

Chapter 3

A Sociolinguistic View of Speech Sciences1 NANCY NIEDZIELSKI

Introduction As a linguist who has spent several years working on speech remediation technology, I have heard from several speech therapists that linguists have a reputation for marching into speech science venues, guns blazing, mouths frothing, and demanding more accountability vis-à-vis dialect issues from communication disorders professionals. The froth is not completely undeserved: the fact remains that non-standard speakers make up a disproportionate amount of the population of students in remedial speech and special education programs (NOMS 1999; OCR, 1989, as cited in Adger et al., 1999). Indeed, results of research including interviews with speech professionals ranging from speech– language pathologists (hereafter SLPs) to educators, thorough examination of remediation software (and work with its creators), attendance at several speech science conferences, and thorough literature reviews, reveals that there is a strong tendency to remediate dialects, for varied reasons. However, SLPs accurately point out that linguists spend very little time with speakers such as their clients, and thus hurl their accusations from the tops of their ivory towers, while they are the ones who must answer to the education system, the parents of the clients, and the clients themselves. It is one thing to construct theories about how language works, but it is entirely another to be charged with the duty of fixing it when it’s broken. In this paper I will not only present the result of the above-mentioned research, but also suggest several ways in which each discipline can enlighten the other, with the ultimate goals of both fields better serving disordered (and non-disordered) speakers, and understanding the nature and development of non-disordered (and disordered) language. 42

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43

Background In 1983, the American Speech–Language Hearing Association’s (ASHA) statement on social dialects made clear their position on dialects as pathologies: ‘. . .no dialectal variety of English is a disorder or pathological form of speech or language’ (ASHA, 1983). Since then, there have been an impressive number of studies examining the role of, for example, ethnicity on diagnoses (cf. Quinn et al., 1996; Wyatt, 2002), proposals for dealing with multiethnic populations (cf. Battle, 1993), classes on American dialects in SLP curricula, and new diagnostic tools (cf. Stockman, 1996; Norris et al., 1989), all created with the goal of eliminating the possibility that a child is labeled as disordered solely due to the use of a non-standard language variety. However, the fact remains that non-standard speakers make up a disproportionate amount of the population of students in remedial speech and special education programs. To illustrate, the National Outcomes Management Survey (NOMS) 1999 reports that 25% of the clients in speech programs in US schools are African-American, while African-Americans represent about 12.5% of the US population, and OCR 1989 (as reported in Adger et al., 1999) reports that 41.6% of the ‘educable mentally retarded’ in the US are African-American, again reflecting an inflated percentage relative to African-American population in the US. In addition, the results of research conducted over several years’ time — in which I interviewed speech professionals such as SLPs, examined speech pathology textbooks and websites; worked with SLPs and computer programmers in the creation of computerized speech remediation programs; and worked with marketing department personnel at a major electronic firm with the goal of marketing such system — reveals that there is a strong tendency to remediate dialects, and that the reasons for this are quite varied. Below I present some of the findings of that research, as well as several suggestions for assuring that true disorders, rather than nonstandard speech, are the focus of speech remediation. I also acknowledge that the research of professionals in the speech remediation fields is invaluable to linguistic researchers in numerous ways — a fact which has been all but overlooked within the field of linguistics.

Methodology My introduction to the field of speech pathology was via speech technology. I was part of a team at a major electronic company assigned the task of creating a speech training system, for both hearing-impaired and

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language-impaired children. As such, I spent several months engaged in the following activities: observing and interviewing SLPs, to determine what kinds of issues a computerized speech training system could address; reading through introductory textbooks on speech disorders, to see exactly what kinds of language pathologies SLPs are likely to encounter; examining various diagnostic tools available to SLPs; and, finally, examining computerized speech programs already in existence. As a result of my training in sociolinguistics, I was especially curious about how language varieties were addressed within the field, and consequently asked specific questions during interviews regarding phonologic and syntactic variation. Additionally, I spent considerable time examining the way in which dialectal variation was dealt with in introductory texts. In addition to working with speech remediation professionals, I spent some time with marketing personnel, exploring how and to whom such a system would be marketed, and spent considerable time with programmers, exploring what capabilities such a system would have. Finally, I examined several website resources, which included websites of SLPs and publishers of materials for parents — several of which contained diagnostic tests presumably to be used to determine if a speaker should seek the assistance of an SLP, or purchase the publisher’s product. I compare findings from this research to the results of different sociolinguistic studies I have conducted over the past decade on both language varieties in the US, and attitudes towards those varieties. These studies have included language attitudes surveys (cf. Niedzielski & Preston, 1999), acoustic analyses and speech perception experiments (cf. Niedzielski, 1999). In addition, I make some recommendations as a result of smaller studies based on several classroom activities, using undergraduates and graduate students as respondents.

Results Several themes emerged from the various sources of speech remediation research: (1) the myth that there is a language variety in the US which could be labeled ‘General American’; (2) features that are part of the phonological and syntactic structures of non-standard dialects are often considered symptomatic of disorders in various diagnostic tools; (3) non-standard dialects were often considered ‘social pathologies’ in need of remediation; and (4), computer-based diagnoses or remediation tools of necessity rely on a very narrow definition of ‘normal’. Each of these will be addressed in turn below.

Sociolinguistic View of Speech Sciences

(1)

45

There is a language variety in the US which could be labeled ‘General American’. One of the first patterns to emerge from the research conducted for the speech training system is that there is a persistent belief in such a dialect as ‘General American’. First, a search for ‘General American English’ on ASHA’s Journals’ website turned up 2961 hits. Next, several SLPs referred to such variety, offering as illustration the dialect of either white, non-Hispanic Californians (the speech laboratory was located in Southern California), or white Midwestern Americans (respondents mentioned as examples people from Michigan, Kansas, or Iowa). An examination of introductory textbooks revealed much the same thing2 (if language variation were mentioned — most texts, in fact, did not address the issue (e.g. Doehring, 2002; Silverman, 1995)). For instance, Yavağ (1998: 226, stress added) mentions ‘New England variety, Southern variety, General American, and African-American vernacular’ as illustrative of US language varieties. Reed (1986) reproduces a dialect map from 1966, which labels ‘Southern’, ‘Appalachian’, ‘Western Pennsylvania’, ‘New York City’, ‘Middle Atlantic’, ‘Eastern New England’, and ‘Emerging general American’ (a region the purportedly reaches from Ohio, down to west Texas, and out to the west coast; emphasis mine). These labels vastly oversimplify the US dialect picture, with the greatest inaccuracy thus being the belief in General American — a variety that simply does not exist. For example, the vowel systems found in one region included under the ‘General American’ label — even vowel spaces of speakers matched for education, social class, age and gender — differ tremendously from vowel spaces found in other regions. I will show (via charts of vowel spaces and recordings of speakers) that even if we examine only those regions specifically offered as standard by SLPs, we find enormous differences between, e.g. Los Angeles speakers and Detroit speakers. Furthermore, virtually every language variety included under the classification ‘General American’ has at least a few, and in some cases several, vowel types that most American listeners would label non-standard. Recordings of urban, educated Detroiters that I have played for people from all over the country have immediately been labeled non-standard, for instance, particularly when listeners are not told that the speakers are from Michigan. In Niedzielski (1999), I report findings that show that Detroiters themselves label other Detroiters’ speech as non-standard, if they are made to believe that the speakers are from English-speaking regions other than Detroit.

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

This study, and others, provide convincing evidence that ‘General American’ is an idealized construct, rather than an actual language variety, and as such should not be used as a benchmark by which to evaluate or compare to speakers’ usages. Features that are part of the phonological and syntactic structures of non-standard dialects are often considered symptomatic of disorders by pathology texts and diagnostic tools. A second pattern to emerge from an examination of speech remediation procedures was that several of the features in diagnostic tools (e.g. the Rice/Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairments (TEGI); the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (NSST); the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Ability (ITPA); etc.) are grammatical in several US dialects. For instance, TEGS contains tests for so-called ‘inaccurate’ constructions such as ‘he happy’, ‘he walking’, ‘yesterday she walk to my house’, and ‘(do) he like me?’, each of which is purported to signal a syntactic disorder. Other tests check for ‘correct’ usage of plural or possessive markers (so that ‘two cat’ and ‘Gramma house’ are ‘incorrect’). While these syntactic productions may in fact signal a disorder in children whose dialects do not contain such constructs, in many dialects these sentences are well-formed, grammatical utterances, and there are millions of normal, non-disordered children and adults who use them. However, there is no statement regarding these dialects anywhere on articles about the TEGI, websites advertising the test, and SLP websites mentioning the test. Similar patterns were found with regard to phonological variation. For instance, several texts (and websites) on phonological disorders offer paths of ‘normal’ phonological progression, and state that retention of developmental processes after a specific age might indicate a need for an SLP’s intervention. Yavağ (1998: 142), for instance, offers several charts depicting chronologies of phonological development, including processes such as ‘final devoicing’ (i.e. ‘goot’ for ‘good’); ‘final consonant deletion’ (i.e. ‘fine’ for ‘find’); ‘cluster reduction’ (i.e. ‘poposal’ for ‘proposal’); and ‘stopping’ (i.e. ‘dat’ for ‘that’), all of which occur in several US dialects as grammatical phonological processes. There is no mention, however, of the fact that these should only be considered pathological if they are not a part of the adult phonology in the region.3 In addition, not a single website that included such diagnostic tests for parents to use on their own children4 contained such disclaimers regarding syntactic or phonological variation, and neither did any of the existing computerized speech-training programs.

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Finally, most of the SLPs interviewed for the computer project felt that tests for the above-mentioned syntactic and phonological features were valuable, and unfortunately several were not aware that such features were part of several US dialects. Several of those that were aware of them, felt that in fact they should be remediated (see (3) below). Furthermore, the marketers and programmers at the electronics company for which I worked felt that the question of dialect was a non-issue, and that computerized programs should test for and help to remediate any non-standard construction, with no consideration for potential language varieties of the users. A few weeks into the project, in fact, one programmer brought a grammar book to me and said that it was proof that the syntactic constructions in question were ‘against the rules’, and thus any computer program we created should eradicate them. Thus, while some texts and SLPs mention the necessity of attention to the speech community’s language varieties, in practice it does not appear to be the norm. And while the constructs mentioned above may very well indicate a disorder in the speech of a child who is not a part of a speech community where they are used, I suggest that using such features as the basis for diagnosis virtually assures that speakers of non-standard dialects will get caught in the language-disordered net. Non-standard dialects were often considered ‘social pathologies’. Perhaps the most distressing of the findings was the often blatantly made statement that non-standard dialects were in fact pathologies, and there were two predominant opinions. First, there were a few SLPs who did not believe that non-standard features, such as those mentioned in section (2) above, could be anything but disordered, and in their defense, they lived in areas that did not include populations of non-standard speakers who used such features (excepting non-native speakers). They thus felt that a client who produced ‘he happy’ or ‘Gramma house’ regularly had a syntactic disorder, which should in fact be remediated. When I suggested that there were entire communities of speakers that would therefore be considered disordered, one SLP said that that was not surprising since ‘speech disorders tend to run in families’. The second group that classified non-standard constructions as disordered often labeled them ‘social pathologies’. Several pathologists felt that helping a child to replace non-standard features with more standard ones actually was a service they should provide,

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(4)

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since non-standard varieties were not accepted in, for instance, the workforce. This idea was found in a few of the texts that mentioned such varieties as well. For instance, Peterson and Marquardt (1990) cautioned practitioners (based on De Avila & Havassy, 1974) that the use of ‘local norms’ could lead to such consequences as ‘reducing children’s aspirations’, ‘lowering expectations for certain ethnic-racial groups’ and ‘reinforcing the genetic-inferiority argument’ (p. 15). One of the programmers I worked with expressed a similar sentiment, based on the fact that he himself was a speaker of a nonstandard dialect. He contended that he would gladly ‘hook myself up to a machine that would make me say my r’s right’, and that the entire eastern seaboard should welcome such a device. I recognize that this is not by any means an unusual attitude of non-standard speakers, and I hope that this can be addressed by the suggestions I offer in the narrative section. Computer-based diagnoses or remediation tools of necessity rely on a very narrow definition of ‘normal’. Existing computerized speech training systems, such as IBM’s SpeechViewer, BoTech’s VideoVoice, and Idioma’s Pronounce products, must be trained to recognize certain tokens of speech as acceptable, or ‘correct’, and others as unacceptable. Most did a good job of detecting degrees of nasality, for instance, or rhoticity. However, each contained several applications for vowel evaluation, and the range of ‘correct’ tokens was limited. For example, on each of the products, my own vowel productions were not accepted (I am a native of Detroit, Michigan). Several of the demonstrators claimed that the machine had a harder time with women, perhaps, or that I was not speaking clearly enough. One person suggested that I said ‘man’ and ‘candle’ too ‘nasally’, and that I may in fact have a disorder (failing to realize that it was my raised and fronted /æ/, rather than nasality, which was the issue). And even though vowel disorders are much rarer than consonant disorders (Yavağ, 1998), these systems had at least as many, or more, vowel-based applications than consonant-based ones.

Computerized systems that address syntactic disorders often require a user to either choose the ‘correct’ grammatical pattern, or to type in a ‘correct’ sentence. However, several of these systems involve training on the very same constructions I have mentioned in section (2). Thus, plurals, past tenses, possessives and number agreement not overtly marked, copula absence, ‘double negatives’, and regularized verb forms

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49

are all unacceptable, and none of the systems mentions dialect. What emerges is a picture of language that assumes there is in fact one correct, uniform variety of American English, which should be the goal that language remediators help their clients to attain. Problems with and solutions to this are discussed in the following section. Discussion Of course, it is not the case that every SLP in the US feels that nonstandard dialects need to be fixed, and in fact most may be acutely aware of the issues. The number of university programs that include dialectology or sociolinguistic requirements suggests that non-standard speakers are not being ignored. In addition, a number of texts address the issue, and texts such as Rosberry-McKibbin and Hedge (2000) address it several times and with great assiduousness. By the same token, I have no doubt that were SLPs to spend time interviewing sociolinguists, and perusing sociolinguistic texts, they would no doubt discover that we know maddeningly little about what types of disorders children have, how such disorders are manifested, and how to treat such disorders. How can we make claims about variants not being disorders, when we know so little about what constitutes a disorder in the first place? Too often, however, non-standard varieties are in fact treated as if they were pathologies, and the percentage of African-Americans in remedial classes seems to confirm this. I therefore offer the following suggestions, based on the success I have had in instructing students about non-standard (and their own) dialects. First, it is worthwhile to spend time examining one’s own speech. People are always amazed to discover that often the very features they find fault with are those that they frequently use themselves. Students, for example, are always surprised to find out how often they delete obstruents word-finally, how often they reduce vowels, and how often they produce an alveolar rather than velar nasal, even in relatively formal speech. I have them read into a tape-recorder a passage about ‘using your best speech around children’, and even in this one phrase they are surprised by the fact that they delete the /d/ from ‘around’, and the /t/ from ‘best’, reduce ‘your’ to ‘yer,’ and sometimes metathasize the vowel and the /r/ in ‘children’. I make students repeat this painful process several times, including having them tape discourses, which allows them to find syntactic and morphological constructions that they swore they never used (no one ever admits to the use of ‘gonna’ or ‘wanna,’ until they catch it on tape, for example).

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In addition, I require students to collect and acoustically analyze the speech of several friends. This allows them to discover that the symmetrical vowel spaces presented in introductory linguistics and phonetics texts (often with the ‘General American’ label) do not exist (this, of course, presupposes a background in both acoustic and articulatory properties of speech sounds). Following Wolfram 1992, I give students ‘grammar’ tests on non-standard dialects, such as a variety of African-American English (AAE), to stress that there are rules in such dialects that they may not be aware of. And I have collected a long list of sentences from many different parts of the country, and require students to conduct language attitudes research using the list, to discover first hand the reactions that people have towards non-standard constructions. Dr Brenda Seal, a speech pathology professor at James Madison University, reports that in her attempts to educate students about Appalachian dialects, ‘a semester’s instruction in dialects’ was not adequate for changing negative opinions about non-standard features, but that a practicum involving the actual speakers was much more successful.5 This suggests that people who have the potential to work with non-standard speakers be exposed to such speakers during their education, when they are learning about dialects, rather than later, when they are evaluating them. The issue of non-standard dialects as ‘social’ pathologies is more complicated, but must be addressed. Students are encouraged to think of other types of areas that might be considered social pathologies, and fairly quickly they offer categories such as gender, height, age, and skin color. Since they agree that it is unreasonable to require a person to alter any of these features, I attempt to make an analogy with language variety. The question of immutability is often raised — isn’t it easier to change one’s dialect than one’s gender? — and I offer weight, nose size and hair loss as additional analogies. Can we require people to conform to a particular ideal with regard to any of these things, in order to get good jobs? If not (and this is debatable among students, especially with regard to weight), then what do we do so that people are not discriminated against based on these things? This is where I find the suggestions made by linguists such as Carolyn Adger, Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian so applicable. In several articles (cf. Adger et al., 1999: 21), they propose that children be taught about language varieties ‘at practically every grade level’. In a classroom, where language variety is inherently an issue (whether or not the students speak a non-standard variety), dialect issues should be honestly

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and accurately addressed in a non-biased way. Regional distribution, history, linguistic features, and even prominent figures who speak non-standard dialects can be studied, and most students find this quite interesting. In instances where this has been attempted, there have been several positive outcomes: test scores have risen, children are less threatened by language discussions, and differences between a child’s variety and standard varieties are often easier to address, to name just a few. As they point out: ‘. . . there is a practical reason for studying about language differences. As students learn in a nonthreatening context to pay attention to details of language variation, they should become more equipped to transfer these skills to other language-related tasks, including the acquisition of a standard variety.’ (22). While this is not a suggestion for speech pathology in particular, its application would complement the work of SLPs invaluably, and would serve to assure that it was only students with true deficits that they were treating. Here too is where knowledge from speech pathology professionals is infinitely useful. A source of information that SLPs hold with regard to dialect information is the often vast quantities of data about features that occur in their clients’ varieties. I found that several SLPs had made recordings of both normal and disordered speakers, and some were aware of features, or patterns of features, that dialectologists had not yet uncovered. To illustrate using a more specific case, Adger et al. (1999) report that collaborative efforts between sociolinguists and SLPs in several schools revealed a phonological pattern among AAE speakers that might not have otherwise emerged. Furthermore, Wyatt (1995) points out that most sociolinguistic research is conducted with adults, but that valuable knowledge about language varieties (and of course their development) is gained from working with children as they acquire a dialect. Researchers with the greatest contact with children — namely SLPs — should be able to most accurately gauge what kinds of variables are found in a given community. Finally, the issue of computerized speech training equipment should be addressed. There are many valuable programs that can address fluency disorders, features found in the speech of hearing-impaired individuals (such as hypernasality and amplitude control), voice disorders, and articulation and language disorders. I would caution, though, that the range of ‘normal’ in these programs is severely limited, especially with regard to articulation and language disorders, and they cannot ever match the sensitivity of human listeners. It is simply not possible to program machines to take dialectal variation into account.

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Conclusion I have been accused of being one of the ‘guns blazing, mouth frothing’ masses of sociolinguists who leaps to criticize the very people who are working daily with those that have difficulty communicating, and if this paper contributes to that reputation, I apologize. One thing that reading through introductory speech pathology texts has taught me is that I really know very little about disordered communication, and that I need to remedy this. As someone who have researched and published a great deal on folk linguistics, language attitudes, and speech perception, I am acutely aware of the myths and misconceptions surrounding language varieties. I feel very strongly that those whose job it is to help children and adults learn to communicate better need to absolutely not operate with any of those myths and misconceptions. I also strongly believe that those of us whose job it is to research language varieties need to understand not only ordered, but disordered varieties. I therefore welcome the blazing and frothing (and the knowledge) of the speech pathologists who are in the trenches, and know much more than I about parents, educators, and clients attitudes towards language varieties. Notes 1. Thank you to Toya Wyatt, and to Brenda Seal. 2. Rosberry-McKibbin and Hedge (2000) is an impressive exception; they provide a more detailed map and explanation of the US dialect scene, and refer to it throughout the text. 3. There is reference to US language varieties later in the text (226), including a reference to ‘General American’ — see above; however, I contend that such a reference should be included wherever diagnostic features are mentioned. 4. See the Ontario Association for Families of Children with Communication Disorders website. 5. Personal communication (2002).

Chapter 4

Linguistic Profiling: The Linguistic Point of View DENNIS R. PRESTON

Introduction The assumption in linguistic profiling is that hearers can use speech as a means of identifying people according to such categories as class, ethnicity, age, sex, sexual preference, native language background and so on. This assumption gives rise to two very important questions. First, do laypersons have the wherewithal to make such identifications with any degree of accuracy? Second, to what ends can such identifications, if indeed they can be made, be put? That is, how do landlords, loan officers, juries, police, teachers, employers, or anyone else who has some control over the lives of others, make use of such identifications? These questions touch on issues of civil rights, and the laws are quite clear. Discrimination against persons based on membership in many of these classes and in many areas of public life is not permitted. This chapter was, in fact, motivated by cases in which legally guaranteed rights have been denied to persons who were identified, or profiled, on the basis of their speech, and it is an attempt to bring linguistic expertise to bear on the two questions raised above. Spurred on by John Baugh’s groundbreaking work (Smith, 2001), local and regional fair housing organizations around the country have been sniffing out wrongdoers for years. They make a record of a landlord’s response by phone to a speaker of, for example, African-American English (AAE) that an advertised apartment is not available. They then call the landlord back and have the request made by a person who is not a speaker of AAE. If the landlord says that the apartment is now available, the trap snaps shut. Such proof usually overwhelms the defense claim that the accused is not an expert, and most of these cases have been settled out of court (Smalls, 2004: 6, fn 15). This approach of taking on wrongdoers one-by-one is not only timeconsuming but has also resulted in a dearth of legal precedent by settling 53

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out of court. Can arguments be put forward by experts, in this case linguists, to establish the precedent that laypersons do indeed have the ability to identify, classify or profile people on the basis of their speech? In doing so, we need to start with a review of the current, established legal precedents concerning the ability of untrained persons to do this very thing, and that necessity will lead us into criminal as well as civil concerns. It raises the question, for example, of whether a witness may testify to having identified an unseen speaker as a member of a class of persons, contributing to the establishment of, say, the presence of the speaker at a crime scene. Do lay people think that they can identify language varieties? Before we investigate the law, however, let us see what history, popular culture, and other domains have contributed to beliefs and practices about this issue. The first answer comes from the Old Testament — Judges 12: 5–6: 5

6

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan; and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

The second answer comes from Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr, which David Margolick, writing in The New York Times, provides the following account of from the 1995 O. J. Simpson case: But on cross-examination, Christopher A. Darden, a prosecutor, contended that in statements to friends, Mr Heidstra had identified the two people as a young white man and an older black one, and had even identified Mr. Simpson as one of the speakers. ‘I know it was O.J. It had to be him’, Mr Darden said Mr Heidstra told a friend. Mr Heidstra dismissed the suggestion that he had identified the speakers by their age or race as ‘absurd’, insisting that he could not have told if they were ‘white or brown or yellow’. When Mr. Darden pushed him, Mr. Cochran rose angrily to object. . . (Margolick, 1995)

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Whose of these contradictory beliefs is right? The Old Testament’s or Johnnie Cochran’s? First, let us look at the answer according to ordinary people, although we have no way of knowing if a few experts participated. A 2001 website poll, ‘Mister Poll’ (http://www.misterpoll.com/ polls/46319/results) asked the following question: ‘Do you believe that you can determine someone’s race by their voice?’ The responses were as follows: All the time (4%) 50% of the time (28%) None of the time (6%)

75% of the time (37%) Less than 50% of the time (22%) (N=364)

It is not clear if the people who answered ‘50%’ would also agree with the statistical sophistication that their identifications were no better than chance (assuming two choices). I return to that below, but at least 40% of those who responded believed that their identification ability was rather better than chance. It is probably also the case that many Americans who took the poll translated the term ‘race’ into the notion ‘African-American’. The same poll also asked people to respond to the following statement: ‘I have made assumptions about someone’s race based on their voice.’ Yes (77%)

No (13%)

Not sure (8%)

(N=323)

Since an overwhelming majority agreed that it had made such identifications, perhaps the ‘50%’ interpretation in the first question (agreed to by 29% of the respondents) did not strictly correspond to a statistician’s interpretation. It may be safe to say that ordinary speakers are at least somewhat convinced that they are adept at racial voice identification; if not, it would be strange for 77% of them to admit that they have made such identifications, although it is important to note that this survey did not go on to ask if the poll-taker knew if his or her identifications were correct. Also relevant, however, were two other questions asked in the poll: The first was ‘Should a witness who has heard a crime but not seen a crime be allowed to identify an unfamiliar suspect in a line-up?’ No (67%)

Yes (32%)

(N=359)

I will pay less attention to this question since the wording may have misled respondents. ‘Unfamiliar suspect’ was probably interpreted by most to mean simply any person unknown to the respondent. But ‘identify’ could refer to the sex, age, or ethnicity of the speaker, or it

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could refer to a specific individual. Those are quite different matters, and I will not deal with the second possibility here, although it is an obviously important issue in language and the law or forensic linguistics. The question also fails to indicate what procedures might be used in obtaining such an identification. The other relevant question was the following: ‘Testimony of voice witness accounts should be admissible in court.’ Strongly Agree (8%) Doesn’t Matter (11%) Strongly Disagree (11%)

Agree (45%) Disagree (23%) (N=333)

This question also fails to indicate what sort of testimony should be admissible — the identification of an individual or the identification of the class, age, sex, regional background and/or ethnicity of an individual. Whatever the interpretation, a majority agrees that testimony about a speaker’s voice characteristics should be admissible. I will assume, therefore, that there is general agreement among nonlinguists that some accuracy is possible in non-expert identification of voices, whether they are ones which lead to the identification of a specific individual or of a class of individuals. Now let us look at the answer from big business. Americans must be thought to be sensitive to speech variety, or advertisers, who surely do not want to waste money, would not be so very careful to match speech stereotypes to performers in their campaigns to sell their products. They seem to have audiences in mind that they can count on to respond stereotypically to certain voices. They do not hire ‘good ol’ boys’ to sell trout flies, and they do not hire posh-sounding Englishmen to sell bigmouth bass lures. In a TV advertisement, it was Ricardo Montalban, not George Carlin, who reminded us that the seats of some autos were covered in ‘Corinthian leather’; the first and second vowels in ‘Corinthian’ and the first vowel in ‘leather’ were just tense enough and the /r/ so delicately tapped to let us know that he was of a romanticized ethnicity that should know about such posh matters. When companies advertise in markets that are dominated by or have considerable representation from one group or another, they often specialize their presentations so that characteristics recognizable as those of local speakers or of speakers of the same ethnicity or background can be identified. In African-American markets, for example, McDonald’s uses the label ‘Micky D’s’ as a short, hip and, to their marketing ears, AAE way of referring to their outlets. In short, the evidence from business is that non-experts can and do make these distinctions.

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Popular culture, however, is perhaps just as involved in selling itself as in selling things, and the appropriateness of certain voices to some roles and identities in drama, radio, television, movies and song is long-standing. In Hip-Hop, for example, the next worst thing that can happen to an entertainer after being accused of lacking street authenticity is to be accused of lacking an authentic voice (Alim, 2004). In fact, it is unimaginable that one could have street authenticity without the right voice. You got to talk the talk as well as walk the walk if you want to get your props. Finally, let us review a little evidence from linguistics. Considering just the ability of hearers to recognize African-American voices, we find that a large number of experiments, dating back to the 1950’s, have been conducted. This body of research is summarized in Thomas and Reaser (2004), who conclude that overall, the rate of correct identifications is about 80%. I will return to a more detailed account of linguistic factors in identification below, but first let’s look briefly at the law.

Precedents of Linguistic Analysis in Court Laypersons as experts In Clifford v. Commonwealth (1999), a frequently cited case (e.g. Smalls, 2004), testimony was allowed in which the witness identified ‘a voice as being that of a particular race or nationality’ (8). The appeals decision went on to affirm that lay persons can so testify ‘. . . so long as the witness is personally familiar with the general characteristics, accents, or speech patterns of the race or nationality in question, i.e., so long as the opinion is “rationally based on the perception of the witness”’ (8, quoting the last phrase from Kentucky Rules of Evidence 701, which duplicates Federal Rules of Evidence 701). This Kentucky Supreme Court decision was not unanimous, and I will present a more detailed characterization of the dissent below; but it reflects established practice in allowing such testimony from non-experts. What do linguists have to say about all this? Frankly, we were flabbergasted by the Cochran claim. We have been working on much more subtle problems, showing that members of speech communities are not only good at ethnic identification but are also good at age, gender, social status and a host of other distinctions, with amazingly minimal amounts of linguistic evidence to go on. Here is just one example of African-American versus European-American voice identification from Philadelphia. An African-American speaker was recorded saying the sentence ‘I gotta get out of the house’. His vowel in ‘house’, a two-part

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vowel (or ‘diphthong’), began with the sound most speakers have for the first vowel in the word ‘father’, the sound indicated by the phonetic symbol [a]. The remainder of the vowel in ‘house’ glides upward and ends somewhere near the vowel most speakers have for the vowel in ‘good’, the sound indicated by the phonetic symbol [̃]. The researchers acoustically modified the first part of this diphthong (leaving the rest of the word and sentence in the speaker’s original voice), so that the vowel in ‘house’ began instead with the vowel most speakers have in ‘hat’, the sound indicated by the phonetic symbol [æ]. In the experiment, the first version was the original (unmodified) sentence, in which the speaker said [hãs]. In the second, the speaker pronounced ‘house’ as [hæ̃s]. The two sentences were played, along with other tasks, for native Philadelphians, who were asked to identify the speakers as African-American or European-American. Results: N=70 /hãs/ 55-black /hæ̃s/ 26-black

15-white 43-white (Graff et al., 1986)

On the basis of just the onset of this single diphthong, local, non-expert listeners were able to make a judgment of ethnicity that corresponded to what linguists had discovered about this vowel in the systems of Black and White speakers of Philadelphia English. Even when the remainder of the sentence gave considerable evidence that the speaker was AfricanAmerican, the [æ] onset to the diphthong, a Philadelphia EuropeanAmerican feature, convinced a majority of listeners that the speaker was White. In another recent study, the sociolinguist John Baugh recorded the word hello with pronunciations which were typical of (1) African Americans (AAVE), (2) Hispanic Americans (Mexican-Spanish influenced — abbreviated ChE for ‘Chicano English’), and (3) European Americans (but neither obviously southern nor East Coast — abbreviated SAE for ‘Standard American English’) (Purnell et al., 1999). Students at the University of Delaware listened to these recordings and were asked to guess the ethnicity of the speaker. Table 4.1 shows that the respondents were very good at this. The largest error was the misidentification of the AAVE guise as SAE 42%. The overall accuracy rate, however, based on just this one word, was 0.72, a figure close to the 80% level reported in Thomas and Reaser (2004). Americans are also very well attuned to status speech variables. Figure 4.1 shows the distribution of the realization of post-vocalic /r/

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Table 4.1 Ethnic identification of the word ‘hello’; correct identification percentages in bold (Purnell et al., 1999: 23) Responses

Stimuli ChE 15 81 6

AAVE 45 12 42

AAVE ChE SAE

SAE 9 3 87

Chi-square=4,510, df=4, p<001, accuracy=0.72

(r)

100 Class

80

6–9 60

3–5 0–2

40

20

Style

0

A

B

C

D

D’

Figure 4.1 /r/ pronunciation by style and social class in New York City (Labov, 1966: 146)

among three social class groups and for five different styles in New York City. The styles are arranged from least (leftmost on the x-axis) to most formal and by social class from highest (6–9, the top line in the chart) to lowest (0–2). The figures on the y-axis refer to the percentage of actual pronunciation of /r/. All appear to agree that a more formal situation requires more /r/-full pronunciation (although no group ever reaches 100% or 0% at either end of the stylistic continuum, a common occurrence in the distribution of sociolinguistic variables). If this is true of New Yorker performance, what of perception? Labov had several speakers read the following sentences, each more than once (1966: 297).

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

He darted out about four feet before a car and got hit hard. We didn’t have the heart to play ball or cards all morning. Serendipitously, one speaker read the first sentence with ‘consistent “r”’ (all /r/s pronounced) but a second time with one /r/ deleted (the /r/ in hard). Another speaker was recorded doing the same for the second sentence, once with consistent /r/, and once with only the /r/ in cards deleted. These four sentences, mixed with several others so that the judges could not know that the same speaker read the same sentence twice nor identify the focus of the investigation, were played for 40 judges (age 18-39 and representing the same social classes shown in Figure 4.1), who placed each sentence on the following seven-point scale for the appropriateness of that speaker to the named profession (Labov, 1966: 282): (1) TV personality; (2) executive secretary; (3) receptionist; (4) switchboard operator; (5) salesgirl; (6) factory worker; (7) none of these. Figure 4.2 shows a remarkable consistency between production and perception on the part of the NYC raters. Working and lower class speakers, for example, downgraded the professional level of the speaker on average by nearly four steps when the inconsistent /r/ samples were played. For example, if a consistent /r/ speaker was rated ‘TV Personality’ (1), the inconsistent /r/ version of the same speaker would be rated ‘salesgirl’ (5), or a rating of ‘executive secretary’ (2) would be changed to ‘factory worker’ (6). Although the upper-middle-class raters were not quite so harsh, they still agreed (by a value of three) that the inconsistent /r/ version was less acceptable for higher-status positions. 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Working and lower class 3.9

Lower middle class 3.5

Upper middle class 3.1

Figure 4.2 Distance (in professional rating, by status groups) between the consistent and inconsistent /r/ sentences (derived from Labov, 1966: 313)

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If ordinary people are good at judging ethnicity and status, what of region? Specialist mappings by dialectologists such as Figure 4.3 surely indicate that highly specialized knowledge is required for regional identification. The major boundaries in this general map have been confirmed by more specific investigations of lexicon (e.g. Carver, 1987) and phonology (Labov et al., 2005). It is not the case, however, that the ability to recognize broad regional categories is limited to professional dialectologists. Some aspects of regional speech are clearly identifiable by non-experts, and clues to such identification may be, in fact, very subtle. Preston (1989) presented respondents with the voices of nine, middle-aged, well educated, European-American males speaking casually. The passages had no grammatical or lexical clues as to region. These short samples were played, in a scrambled order, for respondents from southeastern

Figure 4.3 A composite of regional dialect studies based on vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, drawn primarily from projects associated with the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (Lance, 1997: 352)

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

Michigan and southern Indiana who were asked to assign each voice to a site on the map (Figure 4.4), a north–south continuum down the middle of the US. Table 4.2 shows the mean scores for each voice (based on assigning the values 9 to 1 from the northernmost to southernmost site). The ANOVA patterns of similarity and difference show confusion in the identification of northern (voices 9 and 8), North Midland (voices 7 and 6), and South Midland (voices 5, and 4) samples; but the three southern voices (3, 2, and 1), although not distinguished from one another, as professional dialectologists would have done, were never confused with any non-southern voice. Raters from both the North (Michigan) and the

Figure 4.4 The nine sites in the US to which voice samples were matched

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Table 4.2 Ranks of regional voices, north to south, with mean scores derived from site numbers assigned each voice by the respondents (@, #, and * indicate voices which were not judged significantly different from one another in regional placement) Michigan Judges 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Saginaw Coldwater South Bend Muncie New Albany Bowling Green Nashville Florence Dothan

Rank 7 5 9 8 4 6 2 3 1

Mean 6.37@ 5.49# 6.81@ 6.80@ 5.21# 5.61# 2.60* 3.33* 2.59*

Indiana Judges Rank 7 5 9 8 4 6 2 3 1

Mean 6.23@ 5.88@# 6.56@ 6.49@# 5.72# 6.21@# 3.26* 2.56* 1.97*

South Midland (Indiana) areas were very good at identifying southern voices. It would be hard to deny that at least these US respondents were very good at identifying ‘southern voices’. I will not go on here to document the fact that speech science studies have also shown non-expert listeners to be good at estimating age and sex, for such voice identification abilities, and even others, are usually not called into question in legal settings (e.g. Clifford v. Commonwealth, p. 8). Laypersons are non-experts There are, however, flaws in the linguistic ointment, and before linguists make suggestions for the law, they must be carefully considered. Niedzielski (1999), for example, studied the local (Detroit) awareness of Canadian Raising (in which the onsets of the /ay/ and /aw/ diphthongs are raised before voiceless consonants). She played a Detroit female speaker’s pronunciation of the word house in which the onset of /aw/ was considerably raised (Figure 4.5). This speaker clearly has a higher (and backer) onset of the /aw/ diphthong when it occurs before voiceless consonants (symbolized in Figure 4.5 by a superscript ‘o’). Compare the much lower position (i.e. higher F1 number) for the /aw/ before a voiced consonant (i.e., awv). Although Detroiters associate this pronunciation with Canadians (even caricaturing it with an inaccurate

64

Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US F2, in Hz

3000

2000

2500

1500

1000

500 u

i e

300 400

I

o

æn ε

^ awo ayo ayv awv

600 F1, in Hz 700

ʊ

æ

500

a

800 900

Figure 4.5 Vowel space of the Detroit female speaker on the test tape (Niedzielski, 1999: 65)

/u/ imitation), many quite regularly perform it themselves, as this speaker obviously does. Niedzielski asked Detroit respondents to match this vowel with one of three other resynthesized tokens. The first (#2 in Table 4.3) is called ‘ultra-low’ since it represents an onset considerably below the norm (for F1) for /a/ in local speech. The second is called ‘canonical’ /a/ and represents the /a/ as given in Peterson and Barney (1952), an acoustic study of ‘General American’ vowels. The third token to which the sample was to be matched is called ‘actual’ and was the same token used in the sample itself, one in which the onset was considerably raised (shown at ‘awo’ in Figure 4.5). Respondents heard these tokens mixed with others, but the presentation was significantly different for two groups of respondents. Although the same token of ‘house’ was played for both, one group received an answer sheet which had the word ‘CANADIAN’ prominently printed (in red) at the top of the page; the second group received an answer sheet with the word ‘MICHIGAN’ at

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Table 4.3 Influence of nationality labels on token selection for ‘house’ (x2=23.48, p<0.001 (Niedzielski, 1999: 66) token

#2

#3

#4

label

ultra-low

canonical /a/

actual token

15%

25%

60%

10

24

38%

51%

11%

15

20

CANADIAN n= MICHIGAN n=

6

4

Total

40 39

the top. Any difference in token-matching by the two groups, therefore, can be attributed to that identification. As Table 4.3 shows, the labeling had a strong effect. Sixty percent of the 40 respondents who had the word ‘CANADIAN’ printed on their response sheets matched the token presented with the ‘actual’ one (i.e. accurately), in contrast to only 11% of the 39 who had sheets with ‘MICHIGAN’ on them. After hearing exactly the same stimulus, fully 51% of the ‘MICHIGAN’ respondents heard the token as ‘canonical /a/’, and 38% even heard it as ‘ultra-low’. It is obvious that the identification of the home site of the speaker exerted an enormous effect on the sound that was ‘heard’ by the respondents. We think we know why Michiganders are reluctant (unable?) to hear their own voices accurately. They are overwhelmingly convinced of the standardness or correctness of local English. Figure 4.6, for example, is a map of southeastern Michigander ratings of the 50 states, New York City, and Washington DC for language correctness on a scale of one to ten. Only Michigan occupies a mean rating in the 8.00–8.99 range, an indication of the considerable linguistic security felt by locals. Since a raised and backed onset to the diphthong /au/ is not a standard (or ‘correct’) feature, it was simply not an available choice to local Michiganders in Niedzielski’s study when they thought the speaker was one of their own. This is a troubling study for voice identification. Apparently, the belief that a person is from a certain area (here ‘Michigan’) prevents the hearer from registering actual pronunciation. If we extend this finding to the law, a witness who testifies that he or she has heard Black (or Chicano, or New York or German-accented) speech might be under the influence of some predisposition to hear a certain sort of speech based on the fact that the identity of the speaker might have been supplied by

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

Figure 4.6 Means of ratings for language ‘correctness’ by southeastern Michigan respondents for US English (on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1=least and 10=most correct) (Preston, 1996: 312)

the hearer’s stereotype of who that speaker might be, one which arises from no linguistic facts at all. If a witness believes, for example, that crime is overwhelmingly the result of Appalachian immigrants, then he or she might claim to have heard an Appalachian accent if the person in question had performed a criminal act. Stereotypes of regional correctness are not the only ones that might cause mishearings. Table 4.2 suggests that people are pretty good at identifying southern voices, but Plichta and Preston (2005) presented male and female seven-step resynthesized pronunciations of the word guide in which the vowel /ay/ was increasingly monophthongized (i.e. made more southern). The LPC analysis/resynthesis was done from samples in which target F1 (maximum change 150 Hz) and F2 (maximum change 550 Hz) values at each 20ms frame were calculated to obtain a seven-step continuum of monophthongization and fronting. Fronting of the onset was added since, at least in the part of the US studied here, fronting as well as reduction of the glide is common.

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Respondents were asked to indicate which of the nine sites in Figure 4.4 they thought each token was from. They were recruited in a website survey, and each heard each resynthesized token three times (7 stepsx2 sexesx3 repetitions=42 tokens). The respondents did very well in placing the seven tokens along the nine-step north–south continuum (Figure 4.7). Only steps one and two (the most diphthongal, i.e. northern) were not significantly different from one another; an ANOVA with a Tukey post-hoc test shows every other step to be significantly different from the adjacent (and all other) values. Regional, status and ethnic distributions among the respondents were not large enough for statistical tests to be run, but both age and sex were calculated (61 female, 35 male; 19 under 20, 15 from 21 to 30, 23 from 31 to 40, 19 from 41 to 50, 16 from 51 to 60, and 4 over 60); however, neither sex nor age of the respondents showed any difference in the pattern of responses. What is important here, however, is the fact that a sociolinguistic element, namely sex of speaker, resulted in a significant difference, as determined by independent t-tests, in the ranking for each step between the male and female voice. As Figure 4.7 shows, the male voice was always rated as more southern (i.e. assigned a site farther south among

9 7.61

8 6.59

7

3

6.43

5.4

5 4

5.99

5.77

6

7.16

4.5

3.69 3.31 2.39

2.65

Female Male

4.01

3.25

2 1 0 Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Monophthongization steps

Figure 4.7 Assignment of seven-step /ay/ tokens to the regions in Figure 4.4. The scores are based on the means derived from the assignment of each voice to a region, here numbered from 1 (northernmost, Saginaw, Michigan) to 9 (southernmost, Dothan, Alabama). (Plichta & Preston, 2005: 121)

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

the nine choices given in Figure 4.4). Since the resynthesized signals offered no phonetic clue to this, it is likely that two well-established caricatures have come together to bring about this perception. First, as shown in several studies (e.g. Preston, 1996), southern speech in the US is not only salient to US English speakers but is salient because of its perceived non-standardness (e.g. Figure 4.6). Second, perhaps beginning with Fischer (1958), but elaborated on in Trudgill (1972) and confirmed in considerable further sociolinguistic work, women and girls are much more likely to be users of more standard or overtly prestigious forms than men and boys. It follows that, if female usage is generally more standard, both men and women perceive female speakers as more standard and males as less so. Respondents would, therefore, be much less inclined to rate a female voice, regardless of the phonetic reality, as one from farther south, a region caricatured as non-standard. This is another troubling piece of research. It would seem that Americans are pretty good at identifying southern speech (e.g., Table 4.2), but if one identifies a speaker as a woman, one will be less inclined to characterize her speech as southern. Imitating the speech of other groups But even the examples presented above, which seem to speak to the uncanny ability of US non-experts to use minimal (even frequency) details of speech for accurate identification, should give us pause. In the study of John Baugh’s imitations of African-American, Chicano, and so-called ‘Standard American English’ speech, it is important to remember that an African-American speaker produced all of the examples. Could we be fooled by such speakers about their group membership? Recent research suggests that we can. Evans (2002) samples only a single respondent, ‘Noah’, a 29-year-old male born in Morgantown, West Virginia, a rural US state in the North and South Midlands dialect areas, but with pronounced southern tendencies, particularly in rural and southern parts of the state. He lived there until age 23, but his parents are natives of Detroit, Michigan and speakers of northern US English, and the majority of his school classmates were also northern speakers whose parents were employed at West Virginia University. Because the respondent has had adequate input of both relatively more southern (native Morgantown) and non-southern (or northern) speech, there is good reason to believe that he could have control over both varieties. However, his usual vernacular reflects a northern system, which is perhaps expected, given the stigmatized status of southern speech in

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general, perhaps even more dramatic in Morgantown, a university community. The question addressed here is how accurate is his command of those elements of southern speech that do not appear in his usual speech. The respondent read a word list and a reading passage with items deliberately selected to reflect differences between northern and southern speech. Later, he re-read the word list and reading passage in the West Virginia style of the people from his hometown. Noah’s performances were compared first to a conservative northern vowel system, presumably not unlike his parents’ (and not unlike one he would have learned as a university-oriented child in Morgantown, in spite of the local variety). Noah’s vowels were then compared to the configuration of the ‘Southern Vowel Shift’ (Figure 4.8). If the vowels in both his normal and imitation systems correspond to the conservative system, there is little low-level skill in imitation (apparently the claim in most earlier research). If, however, his normal performance conforms to the conservative system and the imitation system conforms (at least in part) to the Southern Vowel Shift system in acoustic detail, his imitative or performance ability is rather more precise than expected. A comparison of various subsystems of Noah’s normal and imitation speech reveals systematic differences between them. Figures 4.9 and 4.10 display the mean scores for the front vowels of

Figure 4.8 The Southern Vowel Shift (Labov et al., 2005)

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US

Figure 4.9 Noah’s normal front vowel system (Evans, 2002: 99)

Figure 4.10 Noah’s imitation front vowel system (Evans, 2002: 99)

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Noah’s two systems. The highest and most front vowel in the normal system is /iy/; /ey/ is more front than /i/, and /e/ is the lowest, most back of the high and mid-front vowels (Figure 4.9). This is the system we would expect in a conservative, northern US speaker. The imitation front vowel system (Figure 4.10) is quite different. The highest, most front vowel in this system is /i/; /iy/ is lower than /i/, and /ey/ is the lowest most back of the high- and mid-front vowels. The /e/ tokens are split into two groups. The nasalized tokens are quite high, but the others aren’t. This is almost certainly due to Noah’s imitation of the typical southern i/e merger before nasals; he has grouped pen with the /i/ tokens (which, as indicated above, are raised), although that would not explain the position of neck. Nevertheless, even the non-nasalized /e/ tokens are higher than the /ey/ tokens. The positions of /i/ and /iy/ and /e/ and /ey/ have flip-flopped when compared to his normal system, exactly the characteristics one finds in the Southern Vowel Shift system seen in Figure 4.8. The rest of Noah’s imitation vowel system shows fronting of nearly all back vowels, fronting and monophthongization of /ay/, and monophthongization of /aw/, all southern characteristics. Briefly, Noah’s imitative ability was acoustically very accurate. To test the perceptual as well as acoustic accuracy of Noah’s imitations, Evans created a matched guise tape with Noah’s normal and West Virginian speech and five other male speakers; three from West Virginia, one from another South Midlands area, and one from the Inland North. Each speech sample was the same reading passage. Sixty-nine West Virginia University student respondents listened to the tape and were asked to indicate whether they believed each speaker was from West Virginia or not, using a five-point scale. The voices were played again so that they could indicate why they rated each speaker the way they did. Respondent differences of region, age, and sex were important for only one or two sample voices and so are conflated for all the results reported here. Mean scores for respondent’s ratings of speakers are based on the following five-point scale: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

you are sure that the speaker grew up in West Virginia; you think the speaker grew up in West Virginia; you don’t know if the speaker grew up in West Virginia; you think that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia; you are sure that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia. (Evans, 2002: 104)

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Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US 4

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5

no rt h In la nd

K ey se r

N oa h’ sn or m al So ut h m id la nd s

Pa rk er sb ur g

n tio ita Im

C ha rle st on

0

Figure 4.11 Ratings of six speakers and Noah’s imitation of the likelihood that the speaker is from West Virginia (1=sure the speaker is from West Virginia; 5=sure the speaker is not from West Virginia) (Evans, 2002: 105)

Figure 4.11 shows the mean scores for all speakers. The mean score for an authentic local West Virginia speaker (Charleston: 1.67) indicates that respondents felt surest that he grew up in West Virginia; but the mean score for Noah’s imitation (1.93) shows that the respondents believed that the imitation was also the speech of a native West Virginian. The difference between the mean scores for the imitation and Charleston speaker are not significant (.08). Thus it seems that the respondents perceived the imitation as just as likely to be from West Virginia as performance by the Charleston speaker. The mean score for the West Virginia speaker from Parkersburg (2.69) shows that respondents were rather unsure about his West Virginian status. Mean scores for the other speakers on the tape also show that the respondents weren’t sure or perceived those speakers to be from elsewhere, even the Keyser speaker, who is also from West Virginia. Comments from respondents who rated the imitation as native show that their judgments were based on general impressions (‘southern twang’, ‘I know people who talk like this’, ‘sounds like Uncle Jesse’) as well as specific details (‘“u” sound’, ‘sounds like its mixed with the “a” in “cat”’, ‘the pronunciation of “hand and spilled”’).

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‘Has a definite southern twang of a West Virginian.’ ‘I know people who talk like this from WV: accent, speed.’ ‘Man sounds like Uncle Jesse. Likely to be from this region. Yee haw.’ ‘Strong drawl, especially his “u” sound.’ ‘A heavy southern dialect. The pronunciation of “hand & spilled”.’ ‘The way he says slices. His words are drawn out and his speech is not rapid.’ (Evans, 2002: 106) Data from those who rated the imitation a 3, 4, or 5 (14/69) reveal that many felt the imitation was from another southern region, but only two perceived it as inauthentic: ‘Drawl is tricky — maybe more southern.’ ‘Has a southern accent but I don’t recognize it.’ ‘Southern drawl maybe from Texas.’ ‘He has a very strong southern accent — too strong to be from WV.’ (Evans, 2002: 107) Given the acoustic accuracy of the imitation, it was not expected that many respondents would perceive it as false. The two respondents who did said: ‘Sounds too much like a hick to be one’ (native West Virginia respondent) ‘Tries to sound southern but does not keep tone consistent’ (non-native West Virginia respondent) (Evans, 2002: 107) Finally, an acoustic analysis of the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers was conducted in order to compare the imitation system to other native West Virginia speakers (no acoustic analysis was conducted for the Keyser speaker as respondents overwhelmingly found him to not be from West Virginia). Mean scores of F1 and F2 for the Charleston speaker show some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/, /ow/ and /aw/ but no reversal of /iy/ and /i/ nor of /ey/ and /e/. Mean scores for F1 and F2 for the Parkersburg speaker also show some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/ and /ow/ but again no reversal of /iy/ and /i/ nor of /ey/ and /e/. Noah’s imitation demonstrates more features of the Southern Shift than the native speakers and are even more southern than the West Virginia natives (Evans, 2002: 108). This could explain the difference in ratings for the imitation and the Charleston speaker. Twelve of the 14 respondents who gave the imitation a 3, 4, or 5 felt that it was too southern to

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be West Virginian. Perhaps these respondents reacted to such very minute details of the imitation as the reversal of /iy/ and /i/ and /ey/ and /e/, the major difference between Noah’s imitation and the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers. Yet the majority of the respondents were convinced by Noah’s imitation, demonstrating that their perception of West Virginia speech is that it is very southern. This perception must have been the same one that Noah drew from when he did the imitation and that led him to create speech with perhaps too many southern features to be authentically local. Acoustic analysis of the vowel formants of Noah’s normal and imitation speech styles shows consistent patterning in both. The analysis of Noah’s normal and imitation systems, like some earlier studies (e.g. Schilling-Estes, 1998), demonstrates that at least some speakers have considerable imitation ability, although Noah has no such reputation and does not regard himself as skilled. This study should make it clear, however, that imitation speech is not just the ability to produce a few gross caricatures or stereotypes; at least some speakers have the ability to modify their speech, at detailed levels, even when the modification is done self-consciously. Most important, however, is the fact that such imitations are convincing to local speakers, exactly the ones who would be counted on to give the best lay testimony. These findings all suggest that linguists should be careful in characterizing to others the degree of accuracy in lay persons’ identifications of speech. For example, as the regional identification test discussed above (Table 4.2) shows, people are often not good at identifying differences which might be glaring to experts (e.g. the difference between Coldwater, Michigan and Bowling Green, Kentucky). Research such as this points to the need for a professional questioning of lay witness testimony that a speaker was, for example, from Michigan (as opposed to Kentucky). The requirement that such testimony be ‘. . . rationally based on the perception of the witness. . .’ (Federal Rules of Evidence 701) is not met, since the study cited here has shown that such a perception is not viable among laypersons, although the same study suggests that they would be very good indeed at recognizing southern voices. This does not suggest that federal law or the various state reflections of it needs to be changed, but it does suggest, as much of what follows also will, that many details from previous cases, now often cited as precedent, should be carefully reconsidered in the light of linguistic studies which have shown whether laypersons have access to correct identification of linguistic differences.

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Suggestions to Improve Linguistic Profiling Clifford v. Commonwealth (1999) recalls that testimony was allowed that stated that ‘an overheard voice was that of a particular nationality or race’ (8). That decision goes on to affirm that lay witnesses can ‘identify a voice as being that of a particular race or nationality, so long as the witness is personally familiar with the general characteristics, accents, or speech patterns of the race or nationality in question, i.e. so long as the opinion is “rationally based on the perception of the witness”’ (8). Suppose a linguist rewrote this, taking some of the above findings into consideration: Testimony may be allowed which suggests that lay persons can often identify a person’s age, gender, ethnicity, social status, regional background and other demographic characteristics from voice alone so long as (1) the person making the identification is a member of the speech community within whose boundaries the identification in question is taking place; (2) the person who is being identified is an authentic speaker of the variety which would suggest that demographic identification; (3) the speaker was not trying to disguise his or her voice by imitating another variety of the language in question; and (4) there is no evidence that any well-known stereotype of speakers of the class being identified has led the witness to assume facts about the speaker’s language which were not actually present. Some glosses are necessary here: (1)

(2)

The notion ‘speech community’ may be large (all of the US) or very small (a single city). In the web-based experiment reported above, there was no regional significance among those who were able to recognize increasingly monophthongized versions of /ay/ as more southern. In this case, the entire US might be considered the ‘speech community’. Suppose, however, that a Pittsburgher testified that they were pretty sure that an unseen speaker was not from Pittsburgh because she uttered ‘rubber band’. Since the local term for rubber band is ‘gum band’, this might be pretty good evidence, but it would take a Pittsburgher (or dialectologist) to know this. It is very odd that in Clifford v. Commonwealth (and many other cases) the linguistic identity of the speaker does not seem to be of concern. As all linguists know, a person’s African-American identity is no guarantee of their linguistic makeup. Some EuropeanAmericans speak AAE fluently; some African-Americans speak no

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AAE at all. If a witness testified that he or she heard a ‘foreign accented’ person in the other room, but an investigation of the speech of the person in question showed no such traits (or any that could be reasonably detected by a layperson), this testimony would be suspect. On the other hand, if a witness testified that he or she ‘heard a Black person in the other room’, and the person turned out to be a European-American who spoke AAE, the testimony would be relevant to the case. It is safe to assume that when a layperson testifies that they heard a person who is identified as a certain class, they are actually testifying to the fact that they heard a person speaking who used language typical of persons of that class. In a dissent in Clifford v. Commonwealth, Justice Stumbo wrote: I must first object to the basic premise which underlies the majority’s rationale in this case — that a person’s race can be ascertained simply by the sound and cadence of his voice, his pronunciation of certain words — his accent. An accent may be indicative of many things — how a person’s parents speak, the countries, regions or even neighborhoods in which he has lived, the schools he has attended, the languages he speaks, his social class, and even whom he admires. What it most definitely cannot indicate is the color of his skin. (Clifford v. Commonwealth, 1999; Dissenting opinion by Justice Stumbo, 1–2) Stumbo is one hundred percent right and one hundred percent wrong. He criticizes the identification of ethnic, or presumably any, identity based on language use apparently dependent only on genetic rather than social characteristics. Although there are physical characteristics which influence voice that may help laypersons identify age and sex, Stumbo is quite right that there are none which would identify race. An infant of African-American parentage whisked away at birth and sent to Beijing, will not speak Black Mandarin. It seems to me that Stumbo’s objection, which is quite reasonable on the one hand, can be done away with if the person being identified is shown to be a speaker of the variety mentioned in the identification. That laypersons might say ‘he sounded like some guy from the sticks’, rather than ‘he sounded like a person whose dialect patterns were formed in Appalachia’, points only to the fact that laypersons are just that — not linguistic experts. If the identification is made by a qualified layperson (as defined in (1) above, and if the person identified is a speaker of the variety identified by the layperson (as required in (2) above, we would seem to have got around this genetic interlude.

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It is not so necessary to address (3) since it is a possibility that would arise only in unusual cases. If there is no reason to believe that a person being identified by speech alone has disguised his or her voice, then (3) will not come into consideration. (4) is a little trickier, but it should be a part of the general understanding of the court that stereotypes, caricatures, language ideologies and the like might interfere not only with a witness’s interpretation of what he or she heard but even with the accurate hearing or comprehension of speech itself. In a study of undergraduate university student attitudes to international teaching assistants (Rubin, 1992), for example, the respondents actually comprehended more poorly when they heard a nonaccented lecture given in conjunction with a picture of an Asian female. Apparently the face identification was enough to make them believe the language performance would be accented and even to reflect that belief in their lessened ability to comprehend the lecture content when contrasted with the same lecture given in conjunction with a picture of a European-American teaching assistant. I have offered a modification of the Clifford v. Commonwealth language at length here since it appears to be an important precedent in this area, but it cites precedent as well, and some of the statements there are also worthy of linguistic attention. The most important of these appears to be People v. Sanchez (1985), in which a witness identifies the voice of a defendant as having a Dominican rather than Puerto Rican accent. The court, in allowing the testimony, outlined the following: Accent is a branch of phonetics, which in turn, is a division of linguistics. While some writers use accent and dialect interchangeably, accent relates to how words are pronounced whereas dialect involves not only accent but particular speech patterns of a group or region. It is clear that lay witnesses can often detect the distinctive accent related to particular ethnic or geographic groups. Thus, a lay witness, depending on his experience, could distinguish between a Yiddish accent and an Italian accent, or between a Russian and an English accent, or between a Spanish and French accent. In addition, within broad categories, certain more specific accents, characteristic of a particular region, may be ascertained. For example, the lay witness may be able to reliably identify the ‘Brooklyn’ accent, as distinguished from the ‘Boston’ accent, or the ‘southern’ accent from the ‘Cockney’ accent. Human experience has taught us to discern the variations in the mode of speech of different individuals. (People v. Sanchez, 1985: 684–85)

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I will not deal with this at length as I did with Clifford v. Commonwealth, but a few things are particularly noteworthy. (1)

(2)

(3)

That ‘accent’ deals with ‘how words are pronounced’ overlooks some important phonetic information, some of which might be very salient to a layperson (e.g. intonation). It also overlooks other areas of interest to phoneticians, for example, so-called voice quality, which might also prove salient to a lay witness. Increased use of creaky voice by young women in many parts of the US might be an interesting aspect of age detection, for example. Dealing only with ‘how words are pronounced’ might leave one with the mistaken notion that phonetic characteristics of any interest to the question of identification might rest only in the variation of segments. Since People v. Sanchez deals with distinguishing a Dominican from a Puerto Rican speaker of Spanish, there are, in fact, few segmental features that one could rely on; many such phonetic features are shared in all varieties of Caribbean Spanish. People from the poor north central Cibao region of The Dominican Republic do, in fact, often substitute /i/ for syllable final /r/ or /l/ (cuarto “room” → cuaito, capital → capitai), and this feature is often (mistakenly) extended to all Dominicans (Zentella, 2004: 197). Limitation to accent, however, would favor this possibly misleading feature and overlook the fact that there are indeed unique Dominican words (e.g., Quisqueya ‘mother of all lands’, i.e. the Dominican Republic; curí ‘rabbit’; furufa ‘ugly’, and mangú ‘dish of boiled mashed plantains’) (Zentella, 2004: 192). Such lexical differences might indeed be more salient than features of accent. ‘Particular speech patterns of a group or region’ is vague. Perhaps it would do if matters of vocabulary, as suggested above, or others of morphology, syntax, and even conversational or pragmatic practices were offered by a witness. The extensive examples (Yiddish versus Italian, Brooklyn versus Boston) do little to satisfy a linguist’s insistence that lay testimony on language variety identification ought to be given by people from appropriate speech communities. It is hard to imagine a community for a witness who would claim to identify that a speaker was ‘southern’ not ‘Cockney’.

Conclusion In the long run, I find these legal pronouncements about language to be very naïve, and I suspect most linguists would agree. Unfortunately,

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linguistics suffers from what one might call the Rodney Dangerfield complaint. Judges don’t make pronouncements about chemistry without consulting chemists; or about psychology without consulting psychologists; and so on. Why then do judges, editorial writers, legislators and school board members make decisions that bear on language with no reference to the scientific study of language — linguistics? Although linguistics is not yet a public science, I hope to have shown that it may have a great deal of public value and cannot be ignored in legal matters. If we allow profiling in lay testimony in criminal concerns and decry it in such civil areas as housing, we must be sure that we can provide the background expertise which can support the claim that identification is a common practice among Americans but that its accuracy is suspect, as much of the research outlined above suggests. In short, linguistic profiling, whether in civil or criminal cases, is a basic linguistic human rights issue, and we ought to get it right.

Chapter 5

The Bilingual’s Hoarse Voice: Losing Rights in Two Languages SANDRA DEL VALLE

Introduction This chapter will introduce the reader to US language rights law through the lens of two employment discrimination cases where bilingual employees were fired for violating English only work place rules: Garcia v. Gloor, 618 F.2d 264 (5th Cir., 1980) and Garcia v. Spun Steak, 998 F. 3d 1480 (9th Cir., 1993). In both cases the courts held that the terminations were not in violation of anti-discrimination laws. The cases are both legally and politically significant as the courts involved — the Fifth and Ninth Circuits — have jurisdiction over Texas, California and Arizona, home to thousands of language minorities. Cases decided by federal courts just below the Supreme Court (Circuit Court level) are hugely influential as most cases are never heard by the Supreme Court. Further, since so few language rights cases are fully litigated, any decision regardless of its specified jurisdiction will have far-reaching effects. As an example, E.E.O.C. v. Beauty Enterprises, an English-only workplace rule case arising out of Connecticut is also discussed.

The Enemy within our Gates1 Fear, language and the new immigration In January of 2005, during a hearing on allegations of child abuse and neglect, Tennessee Judge Barry Tatum warned an 18-year-old mother originally from Oaxaca, Mexico to learn English or risk losing custody of her toddler daughter. The mother, Felipa Berrera, had been cited for neglect because of her failure to have her child immunized and for failure to keep ‘appointments’. It is unclear from news articles whether the broken appointments were with the Department of Children’s Services or with a medical provider (Barry, 2005). It was the second order that he had issued within a year that linked child custody to a mother’s ability 80

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to speak English. In his first decision, Judge Tatum had set a court date six months away during which he expected the mother of an 11-year-old to learn English at a fourth-grade level. The Court’s order ‘specifically informs the mother that if she does not make the effort to learn English, she is running the risk of losing any connection — legally, morally and physically — with her daughter forever’. In essence, Judge Tatum was prepared to terminate all parental rights, the most extreme punishment in child abuse cases, because of a mother’s limited ability to speak English. His explanation for the order was that the mother ran ‘the risk of losing out on all the opportunities’ if she was not ‘assimilated into our culture’. Judge Tatum’s stated intention, then, was to help the mother and her children take advantage of US opportunities. As will be discussed in Section 2 below, paternalism is a recurring theme in US immigration conversations.2 Judge Tatum’s orders and comments were warmly received by at least some of his neighbors. In her article, Barry reported that one Tennessee resident stated that the immigrants had a ‘moral obligation’ to learn English. Then he added that if he were in Mexico he would ‘make an effort to learn “Hispanic”’. A clerk at a local store commented that ‘if you come through that door [indicating the store’s front door] and you don’t speak English, I’m sorry. If you love it that much here, you take the time to take an English class’. Tennessee, like other southeastern states, has experienced a huge surge in its Latino population over the last ten years fueled by Mexican immigration to the state. Between 1990 and 2000, Tennessee’s Latino population grew by 278% (Koshar et al., 2005). These recent immigrants are predominantly young, male, poor and arriving directly from Mexico. This relatively noticeable homogeneity among recent arrivals that makes their presence hard for small towns to ignore and can also seem overwhelming.3 Indeed, the growth of the Latino population in Tennessee is reflected throughout the country. From Chattahoochee, Georgia to Adams County, Pennsylvania, immigrants are no longer clustered into a few urban strongholds (Rakesh et al., 2005). The search for work has taken immigrants onto the tip of Long Island as well as the Deep South. National culture clash is occurring as long-time residents with little or no prior experience with immigrants meet very recently immigrated populations who, on their part, may only possess rudimentary or no English skills.4 For the native residents there is a growing anxiety that their known world is quickly becoming unknown. The Texas custody cases exemplify a broader anxiety that, if left unchecked, immigrants may destabilize the nation; or, at the least, transform it beyond recognition. The proof, the anti-immigrants argue, is a

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perceived refusal on the part of immigrants to assimilate; the prevalence of Spanish on every Main Street, in every corner deli, and in the 7–11 stores that dot busy intersections and wide streets is used as a justification for the fear of an immigrant ‘take over’. Reactions throughout the nation have ranged from welcoming, to ambivalence to downright hostility (De Jong & Tran, 2007). One small town after another has passed anti-immigrant laws or initiatives. Many times new laws are aimed at the young Mexican day laborers who came to the towns in search of work many of which were undocumented and vulnerable to any number of hostile civic and political measures. The laws and policies were clearly over-reaching but required expense and time-consuming litigation in order to be stopped. For instance, the village of Mamaroneck, New York tried to criminalize standing on its sidewalks in the areas where the day laborers stood waiting for contractors to pick them up for work (although, in 2006 the policy was enjoined by a federal court as unconstitutional). Hazelton, Pennsylvania passed an ordinance prohibiting the rental of apartments to the undocumented. However, the Hazelton policy was challenged in court and enjoined in July 2007 in Lozano et al. v. City of Hazelton, No. 3:06 cv 1586 (D. –2007).5 The town of Brookhaven on Long Island adopted a policy aimed exclusively at day laborers who rented illegal rooms in private houses. Rather than follow a legal process against the homeowners, the town sent its housing code enforcers to throw the men out of their homes in the middle of the night. Some men had to take shelter in the surrounding woods. Nevertheless, the town of Brookhaven was sued and, in October 2005, Judge Seybert, a federal district court judge, granted the plaintiffs an injunction prohibiting the town from continuing this policy. The treatment of minority languages, whether historical or current, cannot be excised from the immigration debate. Those who use minority languages most visibly are the recent immigrants.6 If the immigrants are abhorred, derided or mistrusted, so too are their languages. In practical, social and political terms, immigrants and their languages are one and the same. If immigration and language are two strands of the same braid then the nationalism is certainly the last strand. Appeals to the nation’s sense of pride and sacrifice — the attitude that ‘America is for Americans’ could not have been more sympathetically received than after 9/11. The world grew uncomfortably smaller for the US after the bombing of the World Trade Center. The US, a country of unparalleled wealth and military might, had been taken by surprise by a small band of terrorists who could claim no country as their own. The nation was drawn together, but not in a kind of positive unity where its diversity

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was praised as a source of strength, but in fear, where diversity became suspect, even intolerable. Even though neither Mexico nor Mexican immigrants were even remotely involved with the terrorist attacks or terrorism, suspicion of the foreign born was pervasive. Soon after, there were calls for then-President Bush to close the border with Mexico by literally building a wall. Pressured by Republicans, however, President Bush signed a bill authorizing the building of the wall even though it went against his own policies on immigration (Fletcher & Weisman, 2006). Since 9/11 the country has been in deep psychological turmoil, gripped by a ‘loss of confidence’ once used to describe the nation during World War I (Higham, 1965: 162). A loss of confidence in the ability of the nation generally to sustain itself; to provide for the safety and well being of its citizens in the face of external, menacing factors. Anxiety that the nation will fail in its basic protective functions, turns inward as hostility toward anyone perceived as an outsider. Consequently, nationalism climbs to a hysterical pitch where ‘the stranger’ is perceived as ‘menac[ing] the unity, and therefore, the integrity and survival of the nation itself’ (Higham, 1965: 162). Immigrant mythology: Romanticizing the past to condemn the present There is an important mythology surrounding this country’s immigrant history that shapes current political and judicial thinking. Today’s immigrants and the language issues they raise are viewed and judged against the backdrop of the accepted but distorted national mis-history of the nation’s earliest immigrants. Immigrants of the past are viewed through three inter-related modalities — refractions of light through one prism: (1) immigrants as the historical backbone of the country: the true and literal builders of the nation; (2) immigrants as historical representatives of a John Wayne-like rugged individualism who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps; (3) the US as a country which supports and allows for such success for those who are strong enough to grasp it. Essentially, immigrants became the receptacles for the nation’s selfimage: like a mirror, if the immigrant looked good, then so did the country. And the country was successful, economically burgeoning and, while immigrant friendly, was also confidently assimilative. What was to be made then of today’s immigrants landing on the nation’s shores and through its southernmost deserts in a time of economic and military uncertainty? With the history of US immigration

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seen through such rosy glasses, there could only be one response: the differences between today’s immigrants and yesterday’s lays in the nature of the immigrants themselves. The lesson to be learned, argue today’s anti-immigrants, is that the US need not change in reaction to large scale immigration because success for all has lain in the willingness of the immigrants to happily or at least willingly accommodate themselves to their new country. It is the immigrant who must change and model himself after the immigrants of the past as reinterpreted by the US majority. The further away the past, the more likely it will be distorted for present purposes. So that in the 1940s General Patton idolized the immigrant parents of his soldiers, the same people that were excoriated when they actually arrived thirty years earlier. While Patton considered immigrants to be noble souls, tugged toward the US because of its opportunities and helping to form its strong American character, Edward Ross, a social scientist writing in 1914, thought immigrants were ‘hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality’ (Kennedy, 1996: 3). It is through the lens of morality that the immigrants are judged, whether positively or negatively. Today, there is a strong perception that the new immigrants simply do not want to assimilate and that they refuse to learn English. This refusal is seen either as patently disloyal as a consequence of continued loyalties to another country, or as a snub to US values and language.7 Either way the national culture would seem to be under siege as never before. The anti-immigration group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) provides a national forum for this perspective. Its website (www.fairus.org) quotes diverse sources for its position that ethnic strife begins with language issues. FAIR equates today’s Latino communities with the secessionists in Quebec. According to FAIR what they ‘have in common is a determination to preserve a way of life. Dominant languages [here English] seem a threat to that, a challenge to family, church, and historical memory, and so they are resisted . . .’ (Wilkinson, 1997: 161–191). There is an implicit paternalism here: that since ‘Hispanic-American communities’ feel most comfortable in the unscientific, instinctive, arguably less disciplined realms of ‘family, church and memory’, they do not belong and could not be successful in the US, a modern, innovative, forward-thinking country. Although FAIR would like to slow the trickle of immigration, for those less drastic, FAIR provides a rationale for approaching immigrants from another perspective. The immigrant, FAIR would argue, can be ‘de-clawed’, tamed, re-imagined as a friendly neighbor through US re-education; perfect subjects for 21st century noblesse oblige.8

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Deliberately or not, Judge Tatum’s order for the Mexican mother to learn English efficiently carried a powerful parcel of images no US native would fail to understand. He wrapped the historical immigrant mythology, nationalism, and an undifferentiated anxiety, then sealed it with the missionary’s self-righteousness: the immigrant must learn English quickly because it is in her best interest. His response to the ‘recalcitrant’ immigrant is not only emotionally powerful but is at least ostensibly unselfish: the push to learn English is for the immigrants’ own good. In Judge Tatum’s view, the immigrant is a lazy child who should not be coddled through minority language assistance. Instead, English-only policies and laws are touted as the harsh but necessary medicine. Echoes from the past: National anxiety and the anti-German crusade Hostility towards immigrants is not new in the US. The combination of patriotic fervor and national vulnerability as the parents of xenophobia was experienced most virulently during the World War I era when the passions and anxieties of war added to a national discomfort over immigration. During that time, the German language was demonized and its use on US streets or even in private homes and churches could lead to violence. Germans had been immigrating to the US for decades by the time war with Germany was declared. The German community in the US was well established, organized and had civic and political control of many states from Pennsylvania west to Ohio, and a presence in states as far south as Georgia (Sowell, 1996: 73–74). The Germans were marked by their attachment to their language, culture and in many cases, to their native country. By the time the War began, the German-American community had organized a German-American Alliance that became adept at political maneuvering in Washington for the benefit of the German communities and schools (Higham, 1965: 196). It would not be long before such a high profile, successful and yet distinctly ethnic group became the target of a new xenophobia. When it did ripen to a full-fledged nativism, it was of a violent and virulent strain. During the War, mobs raided schools, physically beat Germans, destroyed Lutheran churches and even lynched a German immigrant. In 1919 alone, nineteen states passed laws restricting the teaching of foreign languages. By 1920, 37 states had laws that restricted the teaching of German specifically and /or of foreign languages generally (Ross, 1994: 47).

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Nebraska’s law prohibited the teaching of German in parochial schools for students below the eighth grade. The rationale was that if there was to be any real chance of a child’s becoming a ‘true’ American then their minds had to be grasped and molded early in life. Violations of the act were punishable by fines, imprisonment or both (Ross, 1994: 96). Meyer, a Lutheran teacher was fined for teaching young children a Bible studies course in German; German was the language of worship in Lutheran churches and the child’s knowledge of German was critical to the family’s ability to worship together. Meyer decided to fight the law; the case would go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Before it could go that far, though, a Nebraska state court found the law constitutional as a legitimate exercise of the state’s police power (Meyer v. Nebraska, 107 Neb. 657, 1922). Police powers of the state are generally used in times of crisis or emergency when an imminent harm is threatening a state’s population or the state’s ability to function. The state court found that the effects of ‘permitting foreigners, who had taken residence in this country, to rear and educate their children in the language of their native land’ had ‘baneful effects’. The court went on: The result of that condition was found to be inimical to our own safety. To allow the children of foreigners, who had emigrated here, to be taught from early childhood the language of the country of their parents was to rear them so that they must always think in that language, and, as a consequence, naturally inculcate in them the ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country. The statute, therefore, was intended not only to require that the education of all children be conducted in the English language, but that, until they had grown into that language and until it had become a part of them, they should not in the schools be taught any other language. The obvious purpose of this statute was that the English language should be and become the mother tongue of all children reared in this state. The enactment of such a statute comes reasonably within the police power of the state (Meyer at 661–662) There is a fear in the language of this court. A fear not only that patriotism was being jeopardized, but also that the German language itself was intrinsically tied to the creation of the mind. The link is mysterious; the language, unintelligible. Therefore, the court and the public it represented felt justified in its suspicion. Suspicion in a time of war is the equivalent of moral, if not legal, conviction; convictions can be implemented through whatever means are available to the state. It

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was the strength of such convictions that was used to rationalize the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Early in the 21st century, the threat of imminent terrorist acts was used to justify the detention of hundreds of Arab-Americans and other suspected terrorists at the US’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba without charges or arraignment.9 In Meyer, the Supreme Court had a less hysterical opinion of the use of German. The Court struck down the Nebraska law and a similar law in Ohio, as unconstitutional (Meyer at 401). The Court even gave a ringing endorsement of bilingualism: The protection of the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it would be highly advantageous if all had ready understanding of our ordinary speech, but this cannot be coerced by methods which conflict with the Constitution — a desirable end cannot be promoted by prohibited means. Indeed, the Court would go on to the strike down minority language restrictive legislation in the 1920s in two additional cases.10 Despite the Court’s language, each decision was not made in support of bilingualism itself but to protect certain fundamental and established rights against aggressive state action. In Meyer, it was the rights of parents to regulate the teaching of their children; in the others, the rights at stake were either again, parental, or economic — the right to own and profit from a business.

Legal Implications for Defining Language Minorities Mutability of language Even though the term ‘language minority’ is used fairly freely by courts, legislators and political groups alike, it has no clear, fixed definition. Rather, like language itself, it curves and ripples along the edges of a dynamic praxis/process of language formation. Strictly speaking a ‘language minority’ could be anyone whose native language is not English regardless of their current fluency in English or the minority language. Yet, clearly this group would not need special protection from the law if its members spoke English fluently enough to navigate their way through an English-dominant world without assistance or special accommodation.11 More often when we think of language minorities, we think of recent immigrants whose national origin is marked by the large role the minority language plays in their lives as well as by the small role, or complete absence, of the majority language in daily life.

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Very often, language minorities experience and use two languages — the minority and the majority language — to different degrees. Some may be fully bilingual while others may have a good but not fluent grasp of either language. Still others may be fluent in the majority language but may still use the minority language during times of stress, joy or just in comraderie with others who also speak the same native language (Baker, 1996: 11–14; 95–115). The biggest barrier to convincing courts that language rights should have a special place within the civil rights pantheon is that there is no civil rights statute that specifically targets discrimination against language minorities in their specific roles as minority language users as opposed to their possible status as ethnic or national origin minorities. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits discrimination the basis of race, color and ethnicity and alienage12 So, too the principal civil rights statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, color and gender (e.g. Perea, 1992, 1995). The Constitution specifically protects religious choice despite its mutable characteristics for the status that religion holds in the nation as its raison d’être.13 No mention is made of language, language ability or language minorities. While courts have extended constitutional protections to various ethnic groups beyond African-Americans and to women, there is a judicial unwillingness to venture too far beyond these fairly firm borders. The judicial concept of ‘mutability’ is critical here. Without targeted statutory protection, language minority rights are evaluated through the lens of mutability. That is, courts will only extend equal right protections to those identifiable groups whose status will not change with the passage of time and over which the individual has no control.14 So that race, national origin and ancestry for examples, are strictly protected while poverty is not.15 Within both the constitutional and statutory schemas, advocates have used the prohibition against national origin discrimination to argue that discrimination based on language amounts to national origin discrimination and should therefore be prohibited as a civil rights violation.16 The argument is that, since minority languages are used almost exclusively by those of a foreign national origin, then discrimination based on language is tantamount to discrimination based on national origin. The immigration connection then is clear enough — those who are using minority languages are immigrants. This approach, however, has met with limited success. For every court that is willing to make the connection between the two, there are two other courts that will find that the connection simply is not strong enough to warrant an expansion of protected groups. In the only language rights case to come

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before the Supreme Court, the language-national origin connection was roundly rejected. The sins of choice In Hernandez v. New York (500 US 352, 1991), a jury selection case decided in 1991, the Court allowed the prosecutor in a criminal case to disqualify all bilingual venire17 men from serving on the jury for fear that they would use their bilingualism to second-guess a court interpreter’s translation of a Spanish-speaking witness’s testimony. Despite the potential jurors’ assurances that they would follow the court’s orders and abide by the translator’s testimony, the trial court allowed the prosecutor to disqualify the jurors. Rarely, will a court allow a juror to be disqualified on the basis of potential bias when they can assure the court of their impartiality. In fact, the Supreme Court has specifically found that the wholesale removal of minority jurors can be a constitutional violation (Batson v. Kentucky, 476 US 79, 1986). Suspicion of the motives and abilities of bilinguals played a pivotal role in the prosecutor’s, the trial court’s, and ultimately the Supreme Court’s handling of this case. The prosecutor used his peremptory challenges, the removal of jurors based solely on the prosecutor’s discretion, to have all the bilingual, in effect, all Latinos, removed from the jury. The prosecutor challenged the Spanish-speaking jurors even though they said that they could accept the translator’s version of what was actually said by the defendant on the tape-recorded conversations. The prosecutor felt that from the ‘hesitancy of their answers and their lack of eye contact that they would not be able to do so’ (Hernandez at 362). The trial court accepted his justifications and on appeal so did the New York Court of Appeals. The case went up to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the case fared no better. The defendant made an equal protection claim against the state arguing that by striking all bilingual jurors, the state, through the prosecutor, was discriminating against Latinos. Since no Latinos were left on the jury after the bilingual venire had been struck it appeared to be a strong argument. The Supreme Court, however, resisted. The fact that language and ethnicity are closely related, found the Court, was not sufficient to make out an Equal Protection challenge. ‘Race’ for the court was a narrow term and did not include language proficiencies. In fact, said the Court, ‘even if we knew that a high percentage of bilingual jurors would hesitate in answering questions like these and, as a consequence, would be excluded under the prosecutor’s criterion, that fact alone would not cause the criterion to fail the face-neutrality test’. (Hernandez at 362)

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While the Court tried to soften the blow of its decision by assuring that being bilingual in itself is an achievement and alone could not be the basis of juror disqualification, it also gave the prosecutor’s rationale yet more credibility by referring to another case where a bilingual juror caused ‘problems’ when he disagreed with the translator’s interpretation of conversations (Hernandez at note 3). The reference to the other case legitimized the prosecutor’s suspicion of the bilingual jurors even in the face of their good-faith response. The Court appeared to sympathize with the prosecutor intimating that not even close questioning of a bilingual juror will address their problematic nature. Despite its nod to the benefits of bilingualism, the Supreme Court was as vulnerable to the suspicions of bilinguals as were the early Meyer-era courts.18 Regardless of the Court’s bias, the decision of the Court was also informed by a cornerstone of civil rights law: the theory of immutability. Courts have interpreted the civil rights protection of minorities to extend only to those racial/ethnic groups possessing immutable characteristics that mark them as subjects of discrimination. Race, color and ethnicity, for examples, are immutable — they are permanent markers of difference; they cannot be shorn and are not self-created. This group of protected minorities did not choose to be black or Mexican or brown-skinned. Therefore, they can do nothing themselves to change their situation. The attraction of this model is that is does not undermine the nations’ self-image as the progenitor its ‘John-Wayne’ style of individualism. Implicit in that image is the notion of a ‘fair fight’: no one individual can have an unfair advantage over his opponent. Under this paradigm, societal discrimination can be addressed through judicial intervention under a narrow injunction and for a limited period of time. The thought is that the government can intercede only if someone’s identity from the moment of conception disadvantages them, so that no ‘fair fight’ is even possible. So, while color, race, national origin and ethnicity don’t change over time, language ability can and often does change over time.19 In fact, the unwritten American immigration expectation is that minority languages will be replaced by English. The courts have taken that expectation of language shift, added it to the appeal of nationalism to fashion a legal precept: minority language usage cannot be protected by the civil rights laws. Bilinguals are particularly vulnerable to judicial indifference. They are in the middle of a linguistic transition that implicates some basic national values and as such are a source of a particular type of anxiety. The anxiety rests in a shift of the locus of power; seemingly only the bilingual can determine whether she will fully acculturate and at what

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rate. Language acquisition is a process that raises questions like whether bilinguals will embrace the majority culture; whether they will commit to achieving English language fluency; whether there is anything the government or private actors can do to push that process along; and whether minority language usage, by the bilingual herself or the majority culture, should ever be maintained or promoted. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths: Courts censor bilingual employees While Hernandez was decided along one spectrum of the bilingualism continuum, Garcia v. Gloor and Garcia v. Spun Steak, two employment discrimination cases based in Texas and California, the courts were required to address minority language usage among recent, barely bilingual employees. Although decided 13 years apart, the cases reflect the continuous judicial ambivalence over immigration and language minorities, with bilinguals as the flash point where national identity formation meets individual ethnic creation. Garcia v. Gloor: The Issue of Harm and Trying to Measure Bilingualism 20 Hector Garcia was hired by Gloor Lumber and Supply Corporation as a salesman in Brownsville, Texas. Brownsville is, and was at the time of the litigation, a heavily Chicano/Latino area. In order to cater to this community, most of Gloor’s employees were bilingual, although some who worked in the lumberyard spoke only Spanish. Mr Garcia testified in court that, while bilingual, Spanish was his primary language. Mr Garcia’s duties included stocking his department and keeping it in order, assisting the department salespersons and selling lumber, hardware and supplies. Gloor had a rule prohibiting employees from speaking Spanish on the job unless they were communicating with Spanish-speaking customers. The rule did not apply to the yard workers and did not apply to conversations held during work breaks. Garcia testified that he had difficulty following the English-only rule because of his preference for Spanish. On June 10, 1975 another Spanish-speaking employee asked about an item requested by a customer and Garcia replied in Spanish that the article was not available. Alton Gloor, an officer and stockholder of the company, overheard the conversation, and had Garcia discharged. The English-only rule was on trial: was it a legitimate workplace rule that if violated would be an offense for which an employee could legitimately be fired. The trial court immediately revealed its position

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when it characterized Garcia as ‘violating the English-only rule at every opportunity since the time of his hiring’ (pp. 266–267). For the court, the constant violation was not an indication that Garcia simply could not abide by the rule, but was presumed to be insubordination or obstinacy. But just the opposite seems true. It seems unlikely that if given a choice, Garcia as a new employee would have begun his employment violating a company rule ‘at every opportunity’. Rather, a more credible explanation for Garcia’s actions is that he did what anyone who truly had trouble controlling their language choice would do: violate the language policy on pain of disciplinary action. Even as early as the trial court stage, there was a clear suspicion of Garcia’s good faith, an attitude that will mark the rest of the litigation as the case went on appeal. Not surprisingly, the trial court found in favor of the Gloor company. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit decided that Title VII, the civil rights law prohibiting employment discrimination, could not be used to protect Garcia because national origin, an immutable characteristic, could not be equated with the chosen language. The court stated: Save for religion, the discriminations on which the Act focuses its laser of prohibition are those that are either beyond the victim’s power to alter . . . or that impose a burden on an employee on one of the prohibited bases. No one can change his place of birth (national origin), the place of birth of his forebears (ancestry), his race or fundamental sexual characteristics. (Gloor: 269) The court reasoned that it is only immutable characteristics, like national origin or color that are protected by the statute. For bilinguals speaking a language other than English was a choice controllable by the employee; like employee clothing, language choice could then be controlled by an employer. The court reasoned: Mr Garcia was bilingual. Off the job, when he spoke one language or another, he exercised a preference. He was hired by Gloor precisely because he was bilingual, and apart from the contested rule, his preference in language was restricted to some extent by the nature of his employment. On the job, in addressing Englishspeaking customers, he was obliged to use English; in serving Spanish-speaking patrons, he was required to speak Spanish. The English-only rule went a step further and restricted his preference while he was on the job and not serving a customer. (Gloor: 269) Despite its cautious approach to national origin discrimination, the court had to go out on a common sense limb in order to justify its decision: under the court’s rationale, there could be no such thing as

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an inadvertent slip of the tongue for the bilingual. Mr Garcia had tried to explain that since Spanish was his preferred language, speaking to another Spanish-speaking employee in Spanish was natural to him and it was an unreasonable burden, if not an impossible one, to require him to try and control what are slips of the tongue. The court knew it could not allow for such slips. To do so would mean that it could not really distinguish between monolinguals and bilinguals; yet to not make such a distinction: to treat both bilinguals and monolinguals as not covered by the statute, would seem supremely unfair. The court paid lip service to the possibility of good faith slips of the tongue that could not be subject to discipline. It stated that for monolinguals who do not speak English, language ‘might well be an immutable characteristic like skin-color, sex or place of birth. However, the language as person who is multi-lingual elects to speak at a particular time is by definition a matter of choice’ (270). The rationale offered by the court for its decision: that language was not a protected category because it could not be equated with national origin which is a specifically protected category, seems rather specious: if language is not protected on mutability grounds, then it should not be protected; whether it is the bilingual or the monolingual who is being affected could not change that. And yet the court did allow that distinction to make some difference to it. Why? The court seemed to hinge its decision less on the strictly protected categories or even on immutability — the traditional criteria for civil rights protections. It went somewhere else — it made ‘good faith’ a de-facto criterion for civil rights protections. The monolingual, whatever that means to the court, is assumed to not be able to comply with the rule; in all good faith, he has tried to do so but cannot. That good faith attempt — which we can understand as in keeping with the immigrant mythology of workers trying hard and doing their best, ought not to be punished. But the bilingual, presumably an assimilated or halfassimilated quasi-immigrant, one who should ‘know better by now’, is not to be excused for this failure — a failure that comes presumably from not making a good faith effort.21 We are back again to Judge Tatum and his admonishment to the Mexican mother to learn English on pain of losing her child. Once the court decided that language could not be a proxy for nationality, Gloor only had to offer legitimate business reasons for its English-only policy. Gloor had three reasons: (1) the policy would help the workers learn English faster; (2) the policy was conducive to workplace harmony; and (3) the policy would make the supervision of employees more efficient.

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The first two justifications would have found a sympathetic audience in the court. Together they efficiently captured the two faces of the ambivalence toward immigrants: paternalism and suspicion. Gloor, with the court’s support, would try and ‘better’ the immigrant under pain of being treated with hostile suspicion. The court did not press Gloor to prove the legitimacy or efficacy of the policy in meeting its ends. Important questions were left unasked: Did the policy actually produce harmony? Was there a less discriminatory way for that end to be achieved? Even if promoting English learning was a legitimate goal, the court never asked if in fact, it did encourage the workers to learn English faster? And how could such a thing be measured? Had the court been willing, a legitimate and reasonable compromise could have been found. An inquiry should have been made into which employees needed direct supervision and in what tasks; whether the inadvertent Spanish word would undermine that supervision; whether the supervisor was bilingual; what was the nature of the work involved. The court could have helped Gloor fashion a language policy that would have made sense for that work environment and not trample on the rights of its bilingual employees. Instead, like Judge Tatum in Tennessee, the court indulged its language bias so unquestioningly that it surely reflected a deeply ingrained belief, like the unfurling of a flag, that the English language is equivalent to nation’s identity; that English language usage by all will indeed lead to harmony — in the workplace and in the nation. Together, Hernandez, Gloor and Judge Tatum, treat bilingualism like a rude guest — it just won’t leave even after the immigrant has entered the country. Yet, the Gloor company did value bilingualism to some extent. It had recruited bilingual employees; it wanted to be a viable business option for its growing number of Spanish-speaking customers. The explanations offered by Gloor to support its English-only rule did not address this dysfunction. As the Latino population continues to grow over the next decades, they become more attractive as consumers. Their spending and growing political clout will be undeniable. Even small to mid-sized companies like Gloor will have to take that market into account. In 1980 when Gloor was decided the company was along the front lines of this demographic shift. The company clearly realized that it needed bilingual employees if it wanted to serve its customers. Yet it was also intimidated, if not, angered, by these changes. It was engaging in a kind of corporate passive–aggressive relationship with its surrounding community; it wanted to control the language of its employees in the face of an uncontrollable and for it, an unknowable and frightening, new customer base.

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In 1980 and in direct response to Gloor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency charged with enforcing and interpreting Title VII, adopted Guidelines specifically addressing language discrimination in the workplace.22 The EEOC defined national origin discrimination as specifically including language discrimination. Employment discrimination ‘against an individual because she has physical, linguistic, and/or cultural characteristics closely associated with a national origin group’ was prohibited (EEOC Compliance Manual December 2, 2002 Sec. 13-II B). Without a requirement of further proof, the regulations state that an English-only rule that applies at all times is presumed to be a ‘burdensome term and condition of employment’ because the ‘primary language of an individual is often an essential national origin characteristic’ (CFR sec. 1606.7(a)). Further, since it is ‘common for individuals whose primary language is not English to inadvertently change from speaking English to speaking their primary language’, if an employer made any kind of adverse decision against the employee based on a violation of the rule, the EEOC would consider the application of the rule as evidence of discrimination on the basis of national origin (CFR sec. 1606.7(c)). Essentially, the EEOC determined that English-only rules were per se evidence of discrimination; employers would carry the burden of showing the objective legitimacy of the rule. When an English-only rule was only applied at certain times, for instance when on a sales floor, the employers could establish the legitimacy of their rule with evidence that the rule was justified by business necessity. An acceptable justification might be that there was a need for quick and coherent communication where stray, foreign words would be distracting. In its Guidelines the EEOC took a deliberate and firm step away from traditional employment discrimination analysis carving out a different space for language based claims.23 If an African-American employee were to bring a disparate impact claim on the basis of race, for instance, she would have to show the policy or rule complained about was having a detrimental effect on African-Americans in greater proportion than employees of other racial groups. Often statistical analysis would be used to demonstrate disparate impact. In the past, promotion or qualification exams or even policies of subjective supervisory recommendations were attacked as racially discriminatory.24 Employees would offer statistical analysis that showed that African-Americans were failing the exam at higher rates than White employees. At this point there would usually be some statistical squabble between the parties. Assuming that the employee had met the burden of establishing disparate impact, the

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burden would then shift to the employer to show that there was a legitimate business necessity for the challenged policy. In this step as well both parties would square off with the employer trying to prove that the policy was integral to the effective operation of its business and the employee trying to discredit that showing. Finally, even if the employer met this burden the employee would still be the winning party if she could show that the employer could meet its operating needs as effectively while using another mechanism or policy that did not have such a discriminatory effect. By equating language discrimination via English only workplace rules, with national origin discrimination, the Guidelines lightened the language minority employee’s burden at the first step. Under the EEOC paradigm, in a disparate impact case the equation of national origin discrimination with language restrictive work rules frees the employee from proving that the policy was discriminatory against language minorities more than other groups — it was presumed to have such a disparate impact. The rest of the legal analysis would remain the same with the employer then left to defend its rule as necessary to the efficient operation of its business. The Guidelines make sense on a practical level. In these workplace rule cases statistical analysis is not the norm. In the typical race discrimination case as outlined above, the depth and nature of the disparate impact would be clear cut, even capable of representation on charts and graphs. But it is the heterogeneity of bilingualism and language use that makes statistical analysis so inappropriate in these cases and which made the Gloor decision so frustrating. While the Gloor court struggled with the issue of choice and mutability, it was shadowed by the monolingual minority language employee who could make no real choice about what language to speak. The Gloor court refused to, and indeed could not, simply from a lack of expertise, engage in the realities of language acquisition and use. It could not determine at what level of English language proficiency a bilingual has a choice as to what language to use in any given situation. Without a statistical facet, there is little left for an employee to offer but her own testimony that she simply could not abide by the rule and that she felt burdened by it. She could be buttressed by expert testimony on the dynamics of language acquisition and the ranges of bilingualism. But the crux of the case would rest on measuring bilingualism through the bilingual’s own testimony. The Guidelines recognize the evidentiary reality that there is little to be gained by simply having an employee mouth what could be seen as no more than self-serving statements while also removing linguistic expertise from the equation. Under the

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Guidelines, courts would not have to grapple with language acquisition; the legal presumption would render that inquiry irrelevant. Garcia v. Spun Steak: Ignoring the EEOC Despite the work of the EEOC, the Ninth Circuit, in Garcia v. Spun Steak,25 declined to follow the Guidelines because it found that in issuing the regulations, EEOC had exceeded its authority and had created new legislation rather than implementing its congressional mandate. The Spun Steak meat packaging company was located in the southwestern part of the US. It had 33 employees; 24 were Spanish-speaking. Two employees spoke no English and the others had varying degrees of proficiency in English. After receiving complaints that some workers were using their bilingual capabilities to harass and to insult other workers, Spun Steak investigated the possibility of requiring its employees to speak only English in the workplace. Spun Steak had received specific complaints about plaintiffs, Priscilla Garcia and Marciela Buitrago, line workers who were fluent bilinguals. Non-Latino co-workers had complained that they had made derogatory comments about them in Spanish (Spun Steak at 1483). The company passed an English-only rule to promote ‘racial harmony in the workplace’. Under the rule only English would be spoken in ‘connection with work’. The rule stated that ‘[d]uring lunch, breaks, and employee’s own time, they are obviously free to speak in Spanish if they wish . . . we urge all of you not to use your fluency in Spanish in a fashion which may lead other employees to suffer humiliation’. (Spun Steak at 1483) In upholding the English-only rule, the court adhered to the Gloor court’s analytic model of distinguishing between the putative rights of bilinguals and monolinguals despite the existence of the Guidelines. The court decided that an English-only rule, like any other rule or policy, cannot be illegal if it does not have a negative effect on anyone. Here, the court found that there could be no negative effect on bilingual employees, because as found in Gloor, bilinguals make the choice of what language to speak: ‘the bilingual can readily comply with the Englishonly rule and still enjoy the privilege of speaking on the job’ (Spun Steak at 1487). The court reasoned that the ‘inconvenience’ of catching herself before the bilingual slips into her native language is not the kind of significant negative impact that was foreseen by the creators of Title VII when they wanted to prohibit discrimination in workplaces. The court was also dismissive of the claims by the employees that their right to cultural expression was squashed by the rule. Although the court stated ‘[i]t cannot be gainsaid that an individual’s primary

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language can be an important link to his ethnic culture and identity’, it did not read Title VII as protecting that right. The plaintiffs were arguing that the active suppression of a minority culture was an onerous condition of employment that majority employees were not subjected to. The court treated this argument as if the plaintiffs were demanding some kind of active employer support for their culture. While sacrificing individual self-expression while at the job site, seems reasonable, the court did not address that it was a sacrifice felt only by the Spanish-speaking employees. (Spun Steak at 1487) The Spun Steak court engaged in the same kind of moralizing that has marked language conversations for decades. Like the Gloor court before it, the Ninth Circuit revealed its unwillingness to take the discrimination claims of language minorities seriously when it hinged civil rights protections on the supposed ease of compliance. It was not physically difficult for Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus. Nor was there a physical impairment which made it impossible to comply with a ‘colored only’ water fountain mandate. We know that the nation’s civil rights struggles were not built on the relative ease or difficulty of complying with a racist law. Rather, the very idea that behavior should be regulated on the basis of color was reprehensible. The racist laws of the south were created to denigrate and control African-Americans. It was their psychic subordination that moved the Supreme Court to declare that separate was never equal. The EEOC was following established civil rights laws, forged years ago but still real and necessary, when it prohibited treating employees differently on the basis of their language, regardless of the ability to choose the language of communication. The Gloor/Spun Steak structure ill suits the complicated dynamics of language usage. Yet in the absence of contrary voices, these two Circuit court cases, the highest courts in the nation to issue decisions in this area, have become the touchstones for lower courts literally across the country.26 In a case from Connecticut the contours of Spun Steak shaped the content of the instructions the court would use to advise the jury on the legal parameters for deciding an English-only case. EEOC v. Beauty Enterprises: The issue of harm redux In EEOC v. Beauty Enterprises, Inc.27, the employer, Beauty Enterprises (Beauty), distributed cosmetic products from its warehouse in Hartford, a city with a large Puerto Rican population. Beauty had an unwritten English-only policy since 1980 which it memorialized in writing in 2001, after Spun Steak was decided. The rule prohibited employees from

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speaking any language other than English while on the premises and while working. It did not apply when employees were on lunch or break. Twenty-three present and former employees of Beauty charged it with discrimination on the basis of its English only rule. These employees, representing about one third of the work force were native Spanish speakers with varying degrees of English proficiency. Of the 23 only one was not born in Puerto Rico and all were educated on the island. One third of the remaining employees were non-Spanish and non-English native speakers and approximately two-thirds were English-only speakers. The non-Spanish/non-native English speakers were primarily Russian, Italian, Bangladeshi, Guyanese, Vietnamese, East Indian and Polish. The EEOC charged that Beauty enforced the rule more frequently and more aggressively against the Latinos and that many of the Latino employees were not bilingual and that the English-only rule denied those employees a privilege enjoyed by native English speakers — the opportunity to talk at work for either business or social purposes. The job functions performed by the employees, pulling, checking, packing and palleting the products to be shipped, required minimal English fluency. For its part, Beauty defended its policy from attack on grounds that hewed closely to the reasoning in Spun Steak. The defenses were two-fold. First, since the employees were bilingual they were not injured by the rule. Second, that it had a right to regulate employee speech especially when it was in the interest of promoting workplace harmony. Further, Beauty asserted that it had not ‘extended the privilege to its employees to engage in social conversation or small talk while they are on the clock’ (Beauty Enterprises at 9). Therefore, no employee had an absolute right to engage in social conversation. The issue of bilingualism and harm arose early when the defendants arranged to depose its employees. The EEOC notified Beauty that it would need to arrange for an interpreter in order for the employees to be meaningfully deposed. Beauty resisted arguing that the employees were fully bilingual and could understand and answer questions posed in English. The issue went before the trial judge who patched together a compromise: an interpreter would be available outside of the deposition room for those employees who indicated that they needed one. From the outset then the prickly problem of measuring bilingualism was presented. An employee pulling or checking boxes through alphanumeric codes, would not necessarily be able to give coherent testimony at a deposition. When the parties came before the court again before trial, it was to decide on how the content of the instructions the court would give a

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potential jury on how to determine whether the EEOC had met its burden of proving discrimination. Not surprisingly, the EEOC, in accord with its Guidelines, argued that it only needed to show that an Englishonly policy existed for Beauty have violated Title VII. Beauty for its part, argued that the court should follow the Spun Steak analysis and require the EEOC to prove more: that the language policy had a significant and adverse impact on the working conditions of the bilingual employees. Although the court knew that it would have to grapple with language acquisition issues as had the courts in Gloor and Spun Steak, it chose not to follow the EEOC Guidelines. Like the courts before it, the Beauty court required the employees to prove the burdensomeness of the rule. It found that there were ‘stark factual disputes’ which would make it inappropriate to assume the rule was burdensome at all. The court thought the relevant inquiries were how aggressive the rule was enforced, whether it was enforced in a manner consistent with Beauty’s purported goal — easing racial tensions — and whether the employees had the time ‘or inclination to make small talk on the job anyway’ (Beauty Enterprises at 9). The court felt that this was vital information that should not be ‘withheld from the jury’ (Beauty Enterprises at 9). A jury could reasonably find, said the court, that an English-only rule had no negative impact if the employer rarely or mildly enforced the rule. The EEOC, it reasoned, would have to carry the burden of showing a negative impact. Twenty-five years after Gloor, its restrictive analysis of language discrimination has become embedded in what is still a nascent area of law. It is the relative youth of language rights law that makes this entrenchment so disappointing. Still, not all of the cards have yet been dealt. The Supreme Court has not passed on these issues, perhaps thankfully so. The lay woman has no image of language rights as she would of race desegregation, sexual harassment or even disability rights. This is an area of law that is being developed under the radar — the majority is not even aware that the rights of a growing number of the nation’s population is being made in the instant. While the social, civic and political infrastructures develop and change, there is a legal structure which must be kept informed.

Aspects of Differential Treatment for Minorities Language minorities are not ‘our’ minorities As discussed earlier, mutability is a thorn on the side of language rights. It need not be the beginning and end of the legal inquiry, however. And more than mutability is at work when these cases come before

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judges. There is a deeper question here: why are language minorities treated differently by the courts in Gloor and Spun Steak than AfricanAmericans in Brown v. Board of Education? Aren’t all minorities the ‘other’? Aren’t most minorities easily ascertainable by some kind of marker, whether color or accent or language? The answer seems to be a qualified ‘yes’. There are a number of reasons that can help explain why language minorities are treated differently. Language minorities may be treated differently because they do not have a history of nationally sanctioned oppression. They cannot stand in the same shoes as African-Americans and claim the same rights. Arguably, the nation does not ‘owe’ them the kind of reparation or ameliorative treatment that African-Americans, Native-Americans and even Japanese-Americans, can claim. They are not ‘home-grown’ minorities. The US created and sustained slavery for hundreds of years. The continued subjugation and neglect of African-Americans contributes to their low achievement levels, both economically and educationally.28 The nation and courts have recognized this to some extent through the creation of anti-poverty and affirmative action programs, school and housing desegregation orders and mandates for remedial education. Courts are not responsive to claims made by language minorities that would put them on a legal par with African-Americans and others who suffered injuries as a result of domestic, federal policy. There has been some, but far from complete recognition of the responsibility the nation owes this population through desegregation efforts, affirmative action and anti-poverty programs.29 The same claim of ‘ownership’ is not felt towards the country’s immigrants. The US’s global reach, however, extends well beyond its borders, most visibly into Mexico, the largest single source of immigrants. The economic paths of the two countries are intertwined. However, because Mexico’s economy is so much smaller than the US’s, it is far more dependent on US policies than vice versa. The repercussions of that kind of influence can mean the stabilization or destabilization of an entire country resulting in a new, huge immigration. These are complicated issues, however, and the national need to identify bad guys and good guys is frustrated. The typical civil rights questions over whether the past can be or has been remedied or whether there is even current discrimination seem simple when confronted with the reality that they may not be relevant. Wrongs, if they are even recognized, are not being committed on US soil; the problems of immigrants feel like they are the troubles of other worlds. There is an expectation, voiced in Tennessee by Judge Tatum, that not only will the new immigrants work hard and contribute to the

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well-being of the US, but that their posture will be one of gratitude and unflinching patriotism. Anything less than that is seen as bad form — unappreciative and disloyal. Demands or requests to be treated as fairly as other groups under the civil rights laws are not patiently worn. Yet this is a limited view; the nation has the means and now, new opportunities, to extend itself to the same group — immigrants — which it has hallowed in the past as the primary builders of US structures. Immigrants bring assets to the US, whether it is hard work, the revitalization of dormant communities or bilingualism. They also bring new challenges and one of them is accommodation, if not promotion, of minority languages. It will not do for the US to refuse to extend the full panoply of civil rights protections to immigrants simply because they do not have a history of repression in the US. They are now in the US and unless the country is willing to repeat its history of creating classes of second-class citizens, it needs to re-frame its position on the civil rights of language minorities to a more generous and practical approach. Language homogeneity of current immigrants In the past, immigrants came from various linguistic areas of Europe and Asia. Although today’s immigrants learn English at least as quickly as past immigrants, since so many are arriving from Spanish-speaking countries at the same relative time, it appears that English is being overwhelmed. The fear today, then, is that Spanish will become recognized as an alternative medium of communication. Certainly, a greater number of services are available in Spanish from multilingual banking machines to multilingual government documents. Nervous native US citizens fear becoming the outsiders; their existence, precarious and irrelevant to the future of their country; a country that is quickly becoming unrecognizable. Within this framework it is impossible to carve out rights for those language minorities who frequently represent the very immigrants who are changing the national cultural landscape. Mobility of current immigrants Perhaps one of the more significant differences between immigration eras is the mobility of the current immigrants. Mexican immigrants can and do travel back and forth to Mexico as needed but especially when seasonal work dries up. Also, there is a life to return to in Mexico or the Dominican Republic; spouses and children often left behind and dependent on the income of their US wage earners. Essentially, domestic

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life many times exists largely if not completely, outside the US. This is clearly very different from the immigration experiences of earlier groups. The cost of travel to far-flung European or Asian countries was prohibitive. In addition, many of the earlier immigrants simply did not have the political freedom to return home. They may have been persecuted or oppressed in their own countries to such an extent that returning was out of the question. Previous immigrants either came with their immediate families or had their families join them when they became financially stable in the new world. This physical mobility concomitant with the flow of funds from the US to native countries, strikes US natives as a lack of commitment to this country. The sense is that if the US is not valued in its own right and a long-term commitment is not desired, then the relationship between immigrants and the host country is simply one of exploitation: cheap labor exchanged for valuable US dollars that can be sent home. The nation has reacted with indignation: it will not extend or create civil rights protections to those unwilling to commit themselves to the country. That the exploitation, to the extent that it exists, may be mutual, is missing from the national conversation. What is most apparent is the physical presence of immigrants who seem to have no greater connection to the country than doing its dishes and mowing its over grown lawns. Indeed, the kind of work today’s immigrants are doing may be part of the ‘rub’. Many immigrants are found in the nation’s homes performing domestic chores, rather than as immigrants of the past who were arguably performing work that nationals could not perform as easily — bridge building, tunnel shaping; work that was far from the nation’s core: its homes; its restaurants; its bakeries; and its shops. Knowing that the immigrants are being paid more for their labor here than in their home country is at least a salve to bruised identities. Greater than this, however, the economic compensation becomes the linchpin on which the anti-immigrant can hang their hats — the exploitation then becomes only one-sided and not as harbingers of complex international, dependent economies.

New Directions: Possibilities from International Influences and Legislative Action The United Nations Charter was the first significant recognition of language-based discrimination. Article 13 states that the aim of the United Nations is to:

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[a]chieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, or cultural or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is the only covenant that explicitly provides for the protection of minority languages. Article 26 states that All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination on any ground such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Not only is language a protected characteristic, but the entire Article envisions a system where mutability is irrelevant. Property ownership and religion are protected, as is ‘other status’. This may seem frighteningly broad to US courts. In fact, they have not embraced international law despite the arguments of civil rights groups.30 The approach, however, is a sensible one for a civil society to adopt if the prevailing goal is the elimination of all forms of discrimination. A new framework for language rights in the US need not scrap the entire civil rights apparatus constructed over the last 50 years. The US commitment to human rights is certainly not all that it can be and the nation is abysmally ‘tongue-tied’. The issue of mutability is clearly one that must be revisited. It may be completely irrelevant today in the age of race and gender bending. But even if not, it should be deeply questioned when a status, such as minority language usage, is closely tied to a protected characteristic, here national origin and of an arguably permanent nature. Poverty is also tied to race and is often generational. Applying a disparate impact analysis should be the cure. Yet, when courts are unwilling to make the necessary connections, as discussed above, then not even a close nexus will be convincing. Although legislative cures are infrequent and can be withdrawn by subsequent administrations, there is precedent for curative civil rights legislation overruling activist judges. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 signed by President George Herbert Walker Bush restored plaintiff rights under employment discrimination law after the Supreme Court issued a decision that threatened to undermine Title VII (See, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 US 642, 1989). Although there is no comparable

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dramatic reversal of civil rights law at issue here, quieter, more circumspect measures would go a long way towards fixing the langue rights shortcomings while staying within the parameters of US-style civil rights. The first and easiest cure is to give the EEOC Guidelines the force of law by converting them into regulations rather than simply a strong suggestion of how the law should be applied. Most importantly for advocates, the Guidelines cleanly excise judicial inquiry from the issues of language development and the measurement of bilingualism, an area clearly not within judicial competence and one that is rife with political subtext. Insofar as the Guidelines reflect a common sense approach to language as an indicator of national origin, they would not necessarily be controversial in the lay world, although such regulations would be opposed by the language restrictionists. Advocates can argue that the existence of other language specific legislation in other areas indicates the national concern over the fair treatment of language minorities. For instance, the right to bilingual ballots and voting materials has been congressionally mandated.31 Since 1968, Congress has continued to re-enact the Bilingual Education Act, albeit in progressively diluted forms; in 2001 when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, specific provisions were made for the alternative testing of children who were still learning English (20 USC sec. 6301, note). Most dramatically, in August 2000, President Clinton signed Executive Order 13166, a national order requiring recipients of federal funds, like schools, doctors, clinics, hospitals, local police departments, colleges, and more, to improve access to their services by those with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). The Executive Order charged the Department of Justice with establishing guidelines for the creation of each federal agency’s own guidance to its particular recipients. So that the Department of Transportation, for instance, created standards for how the Departments of Motor Vehicles throughout the country should accommodate the LEP population they serve. The DOJ’s approach is a practical and common sense one. It mandated that four factors be considered when recipient’s develop their plans: (1) the number or proportion of LEP individuals served; (2) the frequency of language minority contact with the recipient’s program; (3) the nature and importance of the program; and (4) the resources available and costs.32 Under this rubric, a hospital, an essential service, located in a community with a 20% Spanish-dominant population would be required to have more extensive accommodations than a small dental office which was rarely utilized by any language minority. While the hospital might be required to have Spanish-language documents and interpreters, the dental office might only be required to have access to a language line.

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These are significant pieces of legislation that should not be dismissed. They have helped raise the profile of language minorities nationally and might be a stepping-stone from which yet more significant legislation can be launched. Certainly a base knowledge of the issues and the population effected is necessary before new civil rights legislation can even be considered. The current immigration debates, as lopsided as they are, and previous congressional recognition of language minorities may be preparing the ground for some positive, if future, language rights legislation.

Conclusion There is clearly much work to be done on achieving full language rights for minority languages in the US. The link between immigration and minority language usage has in the past, played along more negative lines than positive ones. While bilingualism is generally perceived as a positive for the nation, those most likely to carry that vision forward, immigrants, have also been the most maligned for the use of their native languages. There is a deep fear in the nation that the latest immigrants will not assimilate, and consequently, an intolerance even for bilingualism at least when exercised by new immigrants. The judiciary, reflecting this national anxiety, has been ambivalent about extending the traditional civil rights structure to include the more complex, ambiguous issues raised by language minorities. Those issues include the covert forms of racism practiced by employers and public agencies, alike; the inter-marriage between those of different races having multi-racial children, who do not fall into a neat racial category but may experience different, and so far, unacknowledged forms of racism; the socio-economic discrimination that plagues most minorities but White majorities as well. Whether there is room in the current civil rights paradigm for the resolution of these complex issues is yet to be seen. But the concerns raised about the legal treatment of language minorities, touches on all these issues. This has placed them on the cutting edge of what can be a new generation of civil rights jurisprudence. A place that is challenging, exciting and, like all cutting edges, risky. Notes 1. Theodore Roosevelt: ‘We must have but one flag. We must also have but one language. That language must be the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington’s Farewell address, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and second inaugural. We cannot tolerate any attempt to oppose or supplant the language and culture that has come down to us from the

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3.

4.

5. 6.

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builders of this Republic with the language and culture of any European country . . . We call upon all loyal and unadulterated Americans to man the trenches against the enemy within our gates.’ Reprinted in James Crawford (1998: 85). In 2007, Newt Gingrich, the former leader of the House of Representatives, echoed Judge Tatum gathering the strands of paternalism, immigration and language when he said: ‘We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.’ He went on to explain that English exams required for citizenship eliminate the need for ballots printed in languages other than English (Fox News, 2007). According to data from the US Census Bureau (2000a), between 1990 and 2000 the foreign-born population in the US increased by 4.9 million people boosting the foreign-born share of the national population from 11.2% to 12.4%. Although the largest population growth came from Latin American countries (474.6%), populations with other ancestries saw formidable growths. The percentage of those from Africa increased 381% and Asians grew at 123% and Asian-Indians grew 171%. The Census data show a growing fluency of recent immigrants and language minorities in using two languages. The number of minority language speakers who also speak English ‘very well’ increased at 44% in the 1990s, versus 39% in the 1980s. Over the past 20 years, the population of fluent bilinguals has been increasing at about the same rate as the population that speaks languages other than English at home. (US Census Bureau, 1990, 2000b). Despite the fears of long-time residents, the most recent research reveals that immigrants are learning English faster than immigrants of the past but still hold on to their native languages (for the rate of English acquisition see Waggoner, 1995). The case is now on appeal. Eighty three percent of native-born Americans only speak English as opposed to 15.4% of the foreign born population. For those who speak languages other than English, almost 50% indicated that they spoke English ‘very well’ (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006). There is also an inaccurate mythology that the Europeans of old happily gave up their old ethnic identities to take on the new American ones. Actually, similar to the current immigration, it was also young men who planned on returning to their home countries who formed the bulk of the immigrants (Kennedy, 1996: 6). Attributing overly emotive or salacious characteristics to immigrants is not new in this country. During the turn of the last century Italians bore ‘the stigma of impassioned crime’ (Higham, 1965: 160) and Jews were considered ‘acquisitive barbarians’ (p. 161). See also, Kennedy (1996: 2–3). Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 US 507 (2004); Rasul v. Bush, 542 US 466 (2004); Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 US 426 (2004). Yu Cong Eng v. Trinidad, 271 US 500 (1926); Farrington v. Tokushige, 273 US 284 (1927); see also MoHock Ye Lok Po v. Stainback, 74 F.Supp. 852 (D. Hawaii, 1947) where a district court relied on the Supreme Court case law to strike down language restrictive legislation in Hawaii.

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11. US civil rights generally operate in a deficiency model. That is, a group must make a claim for special treatment based on distinctive characteristics which would form the basis of discrimination by the majority. In other countries, the government’s respect for minority languages may not be seen as creating a right to a new or particularly distinct accommodation. 12. Although the Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Reconstruction Amendments passed in the post-Civil War era to ostensibly address the political and social disadvantages wrought by slavery, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356 (1886) the Supreme Court enshrined the concept that racial groups other than African-Americans were meant to be protected by the Equal Protection Clause. In Hernandez v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), the protections of the Clause were unambiguously interpreted as prohibiting national origin discrimination. 13. Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC sec.2000e, et. seq. The Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 USC sec. 1201, et. seq., prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability would be passed shortly afterward. 14. The Supreme Court has used the term ‘discrete and insular minority’ marked by a status over which the minority has no control. See US v. Carolene Products, 304 US 144 (1938). 15. See Dandridge v. Williams, 397 US 471 (1970) where Supreme Court ruled that it was not unconstitutional for states to limit social service grants to poor families. On poverty issues, see also Richardson v. Belcher, 404 US 78 (1971); Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 US 535 (1972). 16. Hernandez v. New York, supra at note 38; Carmona v. Sheffield, 475 F.2d 738 (9th Cir. 1973); Soberal-Perez v. Heckler, 717 F.2d 36 (2nd Cir. 1983). 17. ‘Venire’ is the legal term for that group of people from which the ultimate jury is selected. 18. See also Pemberthy v. Beyer, 19 F.3d 857 (3d Cir. 1994) where a federal appeals court also allowed a prosecutor to strike all bilingual jurors. 19. The only mutable characteristic that the courts have given the highest level of legal protection is religion. Freedom of religion, however, is specifically covered in the Bill of Rights and is considered a civil liberty rather than a civil right. Like other constitutionally protected civil liberties it can only be impinged in narrow circustances that are strictly construed. 20. 618 F.2d 264 (5th Cir. 1980), cert. den. 449 US 113 (1981) 21. Manuel del Valle, a former administrative law judge for New York’s Division of Human Rights, notes the irony of the Gloor decision. The modality created by Gloor, reasoned del Valle, ‘sanctions discrimination against the Hispanics who have taken the first tentative steps to master English and with this proficiency achieved a modicum of employment opportunity’ (1993: 29) 22. The regulations have since been re-adopted. See 29 CFR Sec. 16706.7(a)(2006). 23. In McDonnell Douglas, Corp. v. Green, 411 US 792 (1973), the Supreme Court adopted a burden shifting analysis for employment discrimination cases where there is no direct evidence of discrimination. A hypothetical application of that analysis follows. 24. Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 US 977 (1988); Connecticut v. Teal, 457 US 440 (1982).

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25. 998 F.3d 1480, rehr’g den., 13 F.3d 296 (9th Cir. 1993), cert. den. 512 US 1228 (1994). 26. See Kania v. Archdiocese of Philadelphia, 14 F.Supp. 2d 730 (ED Pa. 1988) (because employee was bilingual, the English-only rule, it did not cause a legally cognizable adverse impact upon the terms and conditions of her employment); Tran v. Stanford Motor Prods. Inc., 10 F.Supp.2d 1199 (D. Kansas 1998)(English-only rule does not create a hostile work environment); Prado L. v. Luria & Sons, Inc., 975 F. Supp. 1349 (SD Fla 1977)(an English-only rule by an employer does not violate Title VII as applied to bilingual employees so long as there is a legitimate business purpose for the rule); Long v. First Union Corp. of Virginia, 894 F.Supp. 933 (ED Va. 1995), aff’d on other grounds, 86 F.3d 1151 (4th Cir. 1996) (speaking one’s native tongue at any time on the job is not a privilege of employment); Gonzalez v. The Salvation Army, 89-1679-CIV-T-17 (MD Fla. 1991), aff’d on other grounds, 985 F.2d 578 (11th Cir. 1993), cert. den., 508 US 910 (1993); compare Rivera v. Baccarat, Inc., 1997 WL 400119 (SDNY 1997) (denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment where the defendant had not yet presented evidence regarding business necessity); EEOC v. Synchro-Start Products, Inc., 29 F. Supp.2d 911 (ND Ill. 1999) (crediting EEOC Guidelines and declining to follow Spun Steak). 27. 2005 WL 2764822 (D. Conn. 2005). The EEOC is the formal plaintiff here where it is acting under its authority to bring cases on behalf of employees, called ‘charging parties’, when it considers a case to be of particular importance. See, 42 USC sec. 2000e-5. Beauty Enterprises had a history of supporting a national English-only agenda. In 2001, it filed a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court when it appeared that the Court would pass on the constitutionality of Alabama’s English-only law. It didn’t, but Beauty was the only company that filed its own separate brief supporting the state’s law. See Sandoval v. Alexander, 532 US 275 (2001). 28. See, National Center for Education Statistics, Long-Term Trend: The Nation’s Report Card 2004 ‘Trends in Average Reading Scale Scores by Race/Ethnicity: White-Black Gap’ www.nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ ltt/results2004. 29. That said, there has been no substantial or wide spread movement to either pay reparations or at the least create a national museum or monument that either honors the victims of slavery or documents the true extent of slavery in the building of the nation. As discussed below, over the last 30 years, there has been a significant loss of support for even African-American inspired social reform movements. 30. Oyama v. California, 332 US 633 (1948); Takahasi v. Fish & Game Commission, 334 US 410 (1948); Namba v. McCourt, 185 Org. 579 (Sup. Ct. 1949); Shelley v. Kramer, 245 US 60 (1917); Bowling v. Sharpe, 347 US 483 (1954) (a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 US 629 (1950). 31. Voting Rights language Assistance Act, 42 USC sec. 1973 aa(b)(2)(A)(i)(III)– (ii). 32. Department of Justice, ‘Enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 National Origin Discrimination Against Persons with Limited English Proficiency’, 65 FR 50123 (August 16, 2000).

Chapter 6

Problems with the ‘Language-asResource’ Discourse in the Promotion of Heritage Languages in the US 1 THOMAS RICENTO

Preamble In the US, language ‘rights’ have been tethered to ethnic or racial entitlements as a means to redress historical patterns of discrimination and exclusion. The perception that language ‘rights’ are about the redress of past wrongs has had negative effects on efforts to gain broad public support for the teaching and maintenance of languages other than English. The language-as-resource orientation (Ruiz, 1984) is considered as an alternative to a language rights approach. However, analysis of texts produced by advocates of the heritage language movement reveals the shortcomings of the language-as-resource metaphor in advancing broad-based support for the teaching, maintenance, and use of minority languages in the US. While efforts to promote heritage language education as a national strategic priority may result in short-term governmental support, wider and more sustained popular support for such programs will require significant modifications in the underlying values and ideologies about the status and role of languages other than English in education and public life.

Introduction In his influential article ‘Orientations in language planning’, Richard Ruiz (1984) points out the strengths and shortcomings of ‘language-asproblem’, ‘language-as-right’, and ‘language-as-resource’ approaches in language planning. He notes that while a resource orientation in language planning is not without its problems, a ‘fuller development of a resources-oriented approach to language planning could help to reshape attitudes about language and language groups’ (Ruiz, 1984: 27). 110

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Ruiz rehearses the various ways that the language-as-resource orientation helps resolve some of the conflicts evident in the other two orientations: . . . it can have a direct impact on enhancing the language status of subordinate languages; it can help to ease tensions between majority and minority communities; it can serve as a more consistent way of viewing the role of non-English languages in US society; and it highlights the importance of cooperative language planning. (1984: 25–26) It seems to me that we are still awaiting the ‘fuller development’ of a resource-oriented approach alluded to by Ruiz. The field of language planning has yet to demonstrate adequately how such an approach can move beyond academic theorizing and affect societal attitudes towards non-English languages in US society (or anywhere else, for that matter). Even at an historical moment in which many members of the US Congress bemoan the lack of American expertise in strategically important languages such as standard versions of Arabic, Pashto, Urdu and Farsi (let alone the countless varieties of these same languages) (Jehl, 2003), foreign language2 requirements and enrollments in high schools and colleges are in general declining; and while there have been increases in the study of some languages (notably Chinese, Japanese and Arabic), the numbers in absolute terms are still quite low.3 In some cities and small towns certain languages have made considerable gains in status and functional domains (such as Spanish in Miami, Florida and Hartford, Connecticut); yet, in recent years, initiatives in California, Arizona and Massachusetts have essentially outlawed bilingual education (with the greatest impact on Spanish/English programs). Why does the language-as resource argument (to the extent it has been articulated by supporters of bilingual education) not resonate with a majority of voters in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts? Why has there been a significant exodus of monolingual English speakers out of Dade County, Florida (which encompasses Miami)? And if the language-as-resource orientation lacks traction in contemporary American society, can we look to the language-as-right orientation as a more fruitful avenue to promote language status and use? Is the US somehow a different case from other liberal ‘nation-states’? In this chapter, I will attempt to answer these questions and, thereby, demonstrate some of the problems with the language-as-resource orientation, and explain why the language-as-right orientation has little chance of aiding the promotion (in terms of status and domains) of minority languages in the US.

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Language and Ethnicity in the United States The thrust of my argument in this chapter is that the history of languages in the US is very much enmeshed with national development and especially with the construction of (a particular) American (national) identity. I argue that for a resources-oriented approach (Ruiz, 1984) to gain any currency, hegemonic ideologies associated with the roles of non-English languages in national life would need to be unpacked and alternative interpretations of American identity would need to be legitimized. Academics who advocate promotion of linguistic diversity should examine the degree to which their professional discourses help maintain the status quo, or contribute to social change. The main point of this article is to indicate how some professional academic discourses are more concerned with advancing the particular military and economic interests of powerful (including state) interests than with the promotion of linguistic diversity. To begin, it is necessary to provide at least a brief discussion of the history of national development and to ‘unpack’ the role of languages in that development. Language and ethnicity have a complex history in the US. During the period of colonial settlement and early continental expansion, language and ethnicity as social issues took back seat to concerns about political factionalism, acquisition and exploration of land, and nation-building. Yet, there was also a great deal of discussion and debate in the 18th century about how best to ‘ascertain’ and ‘fix’ the language (especially written language and metaphor) in making the case for independence (see, for example, Howe, 2004). Coinciding with this fixation on language as the medium through which national identity and unity might best be achieved was the fact of linguistic diversity in national life. By the 1830s, there were small towns in the Midwest in which German immigrants used German as the de facto public and private language and where English was rarely heard. However, concerns about the presence of languages other than English did not arise in any serious way until the latter part of the 19th century. This is not to say that the Founding Fathers embraced multiculturalism or multilingualism; indeed, multiculturalism as a concept had not yet been invented. Thus, as early as 1788, John Jay in The Federalist, No. 2, characterized the nation as ‘. . .one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion . . . very similar in their manners and customs. . .’.4 This statement and others like it are remarkable in what they reveal about the invisibilization of ethnicity, ‘race’, and language in national discourse

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during the colonial and early expansionist period. At the time of the 1790 census, only about 49% of the national population was of English origin (Pitt, 1976), while nearly 19% was of African origin, 14% of Spanish origin, and 15% of Scotch, Scotch Irish, or Irish origin. Native Americans were ignored. By discursively subtracting non-Protestants, non-whites, non-Europeans and non-English speakers from the ‘nation’, the Founding Fathers helped create a template for ‘authentic’ American identity that has privileged certain groups (white/European), religions (Protestantism), and languages (English and, to a lesser degree, European languages) over all others. As a result, throughout US history, claims for equal representation in society by these ‘other’ groups have often been stigmatized as ‘unAmerican’ because members of these groups have been positioned as being somehow peripheral to the American ‘nation’, even though they are citizens of the state. Thus, the claims for public space for non-English languages have in the past been, and continue to be, viewed as threats to national unity; within the liberal tradition of the nation-state (May, 2001) one can be a citizen of only one (American) nation (even though that ‘nation’ is an imagined community (Anderson, 1983).5 According to this logic, other (non-English) languages cannot be afforded special privileges or rights since languages within the liberal nation-state have been viewed as nationality markers, and therefore in the US context, languages other than English have been viewed as foreign and outside the pale of civil, constitutional, or legal protections. Politics and language rights in the 19th century Given the undeniable fact that English-speaking Anglos co-existed with speakers of other languages in North America, and given the self-anointed privileged status of Anglophones, it would only be a matter of time before the dominant group would seek to justify its status as ‘natural’ and inevitable. In his 1981 book Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism, Reginald Horsman shows how the Enlightenment dream of universal freedom, equality, and progress bumped up against the social and political realities of a diverse American population and ‘helped produce scientific theories of black and Indian inferiority’ (1981: 115). Horsman notes that: For all the optimism regarding the regeneration of other peoples, most enthusiasm was reserved for the idea of populating the North American continent with a homogeneous American people . . . a vast nation, or sister-republics, peopled by white Americans with one language, one culture, and identical political institutions. And even

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at a time when elaborate Indian policies were being shaped with the avowed intention of preserving the Indians, there was a disturbing tendency to think of the North American continent as completely empty. (1981: 92) Horsman chronicles how the American school of ethnology between 1839 and 1859 argued that there were irreversible differences between races that could be accounted for by a polygenetic evolution of distinct human species. In fact, far from any attempt to objectively study cultures, American science at this time ‘provided Americans with a confident explanation of why blacks were enslaved, why Indians were exterminated, and why white Americans were expanding their settlements rapidly over adjacent lands’ (Horsman, 1981: 137). Extreme positions on Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism proliferated among nonscientists as well, who claimed among other things: that distinct races had existed for nearly 4000 years and only among Caucasians did the elements of civilization exist (Horsman 1981: 133); that Confucius was Caucasian; and that all nations and tribes mentioned in the Pentateuch were Caucasians (Horsman, 1981: 136). Later, under the influence of Spencerian social Darwinism justifying Anglo-Saxon superiority and hegemony, this ideology informed a virulent nativist movement beginning in the 1880s which intensified the process of ‘othering’ nonNorthern European background persons living in the US. For example, in 1882 the first Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by the US Congress, suspending immigration by Chinese laborers for 10 years. The measure was extended in 1892 and a permanent ban was enacted in 1902. It would not be until 1965 that the US eliminated racial criteria for its immigration laws (Schmid, 2001: 38–39). Thus, although languages other than English were freely used in everyday life without negative consequences in the early years of the republic, by the mid 1800s the combination of increased immigration (especially from Germany), the continuation of plantation chattel slavery, and programs to relocate and domesticate Native Americans, made it increasingly difficult to ignore linguistic and cultural diversity. Social policies and practices that negatively impacted non-Englishspeaking and non-Northern European origin groups were increasingly justified by ‘scientific’ theories to account for structural and systemic social inequalities and for the unequal treatment of groups based on their assigned value on a hierarchy, with English-speaking, AngloSaxon-origin peoples at the top of the pecking order. Although scholarly discourses opposed to such views were developed in the 19th

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century by Europeans, such as Theodor Waitz, and later in the US by the European-born Franz Boas, these extreme positions on AngloSaxon exceptionalism tended, over time, to become normalized as unexceptional and hegemonic (see Ricento, 2003 for discussion). Immigration and Americanization Although immigration policies had discriminated against certain groups before the ‘great wave’ of new immigration began in 1880, the next 30 years saw the passage of much broader restrictions. In 1906, the first law requiring English as a precondition to citizenship was passed, a requirement that still stands today. In 1907, the Dillingham Commission recommended that passing a literacy test (in any language) be a requirement for immigration. This proposal was part of a strategy to restrict, if not cut-off entirely, immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe since, according to the Commission’s report, ‘the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old, approximately onethird of all those over 14 years of age when admitted being illiterate’ (Leibowitz, 1984: 36). Although legislation requiring literacy tests was vetoed by Presidents Taft and Wilson, a bill was finally passed in 1917. The Johnson-Laird immigration bill (passed in 1924) established national origin quotas of 2% of the number of foreign born already in the country, as determined by the census of 1890. The intent and effect of this legislation was to restrict the number and racial distribution of immigrants, a system that stayed in place until 1965. The Americanization movement, accelerated by US entry into the European war against Germany, was the first coordinated national attempt to promote a particular, and generally narrow, view of Americanism (Ricento, 2003). Language was a crucial element in terms of establishing unequivocally that English — and only English — was the national language, the patriotic language of authentic Americans (native or foreign born alike). Language was viewed by Americanizers as the essential instrumentality through which and by which ‘thought sharing’ could be accomplished, ensuring that a common understanding about American identity (through English) would be shared by the native born and immigrant, irrespective of their ‘ethnicity’. This process was abetted by practices and policies that equated the use of other languages with anti-Americanism. Laws were passed banning German speech in the classroom, in the street, in church, in public meetings, and even in telephone conversations. In the Midwest, at least 18,000 persons were charged with violations by 1921 (Crawford, 1992; Wiley, 1998). In

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Hawaii, the Japanese press was attacked: ‘Here in Hawaii today, there are Japanese papers that do not actively teach anti-Americanism, but they do teach Japanism, and that amounts to the same thing’ (cited in Tamura, 1993: 41). Whereas only three states had laws prescribing English as the language of instruction in private schools prior to 1889, by 1923, 34 states required English (Leibowitz, 1971: 7). The high water mark for voluntary bilingual education in the US was probably around 1900, at which point more than 600,000 children (4% of the elementary school population) were receiving at least part of their instruction in German (Kloss, 1977, in Crawford, 1989: 20). Political movements, led by Americanization organizations such as the American Protective Association (APA) helped end the teaching of German in a number of cities throughout the country in the 1880s (e.g. St Louis in 1881; Louisville, Kentucky in 1889), and in 1889 this was extended to the states of Illinois and Wisconsin (although in 1893, the Acts were repealed in both states). By 1923, 22 states had laws prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages in primary schools (noted in the famous Meyer v. Nebraska decision of 1923).6 Although a number of these languagerestrictive laws and policies were ruled unconstitutional in 1926 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the precedent of successfully restricting languages has had a long-term effect on attitudes towards the learning and use of languages other than English in the US. For example, between 1915 and 1922, enrollments in German classes in high schools nationally dropped from 24% to less than 1%. In many states, declines were much greater. The study of other European languages, including Swedish and Danish, declined as well. It was not until 1994 that the percentage of American high school students studying a foreign language (42.2%) would equal the percentage of students studying foreign languages in 1928 (Draper and Hicks, 1996). Declines in the use of non-English languages in religious worship, businesses, and the print media were equally marked. The folk belief that immigrants voluntarily assimilated, or they acted only in their best self-interest, cannot be supported by these data. In fact, as Terrence Wiley has argued, ‘Americanization was probably more successful in stigmatizing cultural and linguistic diversity than in facilitating assimilation’ (1998: 231).7 Language and protected classes What I have argued to this point is that, in general, in the first century of national development, language policies in the US reflected evolving social beliefs about the relation between language and national

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(‘American’) identity. While there was no strong desire to regiment languages during the colonial period, there was also an awareness that diversity, and especially political and regional sectarianism, could undermine both the political and the cultural creed envisaged by the political elites of that era. Because the members of the Continental Congress, the authors of the Federalist and the US Constitution were mostly of British descent, ‘ethnicity’ was of no particular salience for them; relatedly, the identity and instrumental values of English and its de facto role as the ‘American’ language were not topics of discussion. The Americanization movement cemented the often implied relation between English and the American creed. It would not be until the 1960s with the civil rights movement that the use of languages other than English in civic life once again would become a national issue.

Problems with the ‘Language-as-Right’ Approach A key piece of legislation that was instrumental in enabling the use of non-English languages in civic life was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the amended version of 1975, which recognized language as a proxy for race or national origin, the categories enumerated in the original (1965) Voting Rights Act. Since there is no US Constitutional right to receive communications in a language other than English (Miner, 1998),8 it was necessary to establish the specific ways in which language was associated with race or national origin. This was accomplished largely through a series of lawsuits. The focal point of these suits centered on the education of persons with limited English language skills. Relying on provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and the ‘equal protection’ clause of the fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution, federal courts in New York (Katzenbach v. Morgan, 1966; Cardona v. Power, 1966), California (Castro v. State of California, 1975), New Mexico (Serna v. Portales, 1974), and Texas (Castaneda v. Pickard, 1981) found that school districts had engaged in systematic discriminatory practices and policies against Spanishspeaking students, effectively denying them equal access to the educational program (see Ricento, 1998; Del Valle, 2003). In response to this growing public awareness of unequal educational opportunity for children with limited English language skills, the US. Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) in 1968, which authorized federal monies to aid in the development of special programs for language minority students. School districts were often slow to respond to the needs of their students and remedies were often inadequate. Finally, in a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court in the Lau v. Nichols (1974)

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decision ruled that the San Francisco School District had failed to provide a meaningful education to 1800 children of Chinese ancestry who could neither speak, understand, read nor write English. Writing for the Court, Mr Justice Douglas stated: There is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful Education. (Cited in Crawford, 1989: 36) It is important to note that the basis of the court’s ruling was not that the children represented in the case had a right to receive education wholly, or in part, in their native language; rather, it was because of the children’s deficiency in English that they had been prevented from meaningful participation in the educational program offered by a school district (Ricento, 1998). In this, as in other cases involving protected classes, court rulings and governmental policies typically are concerned with enhancing access to constitutional rights, such as speech and suffrage, and civil rights, such as education and public services. Language rights, per se, do not exist. To summarize, to the extent that language has been a focus of proactive social policy in the US, it has been as a proxy for some other legally protected attribute, such as national origin. When non-English languages have been accorded special consideration it has been in order to enhance access to individual civil rights granted to all Americans, not to protect any particular language or the rights of speech communities to maintain or use their languages in the public sphere indefinitely. Thus, policies such as bilingual education, bilingual ballots and public services in languages other than English have not served to legitimize non-English languages in the public sphere; instead, they have been widely viewed as temporary instruments to ameliorate past injustices. Critics of these policies, who seek to eliminate bilingual education, ballots, and services, often worry that the mere incidental promotion of non-English languages may lead to their greater use in society which they view as antithetical to the national interest and socio-economic interests of linguistic minorities. Socio-economic interests are defined, typically, within the rational choice framework, which posits that individuals make choices on the basis of their own self-interest. In this calculus, language is simply treated as another variable which can be chosen — or discarded — based on the speaker’s assessment of relative (and optimal) value (e.g. English is ‘worth’ more than, say, Spanish, so a ‘rational’ individual would opt to

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‘choose’ English and, presumably, the cultural capital goods that are obtainable through English education, membership in social organizations, and so on). The notion that languages are tied to communities, and that communities may provide ‘benefits’ that are not easily reduced to quantifiable ‘goods’ with market-determined value, is not factored in most types of rational choice models (see May, 2001: 39–40; see also Grin, 2006 for a critique and alternative approaches to evaluating the economic value of languages). The distinction made between group rights and individual rights within the framework of US civil and constitutional law, with individual rights being the more fundamental, renders discussions about linguistic rights problematic. If groups qua groups enjoy no explicit or inherent rights, then the protection of languages, which after all cannot exist apart from communities of speakers/signers/users, cannot be sustained within any currently extant constitutional or civil legal doctrine in the US. The various declarations of human rights, on the books and proposed, are outside the purview of current US jurisprudence. Therefore, the successful promotion, preservation, and maintenance of languages in the US, although perhaps helped somewhat by language policies designed to protect individual civil rights (see Tollefson, 2004), ultimately requires sustained socio-political action and commitment on the part of language communities and their supporters. To be sure, there are ironies and contradictions in the view that languages, or communities of speakers, per se, have no intrinsic rights, or that communities that share a language do not have a reasonable claim to use and hear/ read their language in the public sphere. Indeed, monolingual English speakers take as given their ‘right’ to receive communication in English. In fact, a number of proposed official English laws clearly stipulate the right of persons to receive all communications in English and the right to bring a law suit in certain situations where another language is used in their presence (although individuals or groups are not identified, it is presumed that the law is designed to protect the rights of English-speaking Americans). Why should English speakers require special protections for their language and its community of users, while speakers of other languages, and their communities of users, are denied such prerogatives? Part of the answer is that English is understood by a vast majority of Americans to have more than instrumental value as a medium of communication; it is a marker of American identity and enjoys special status as a group characteristic, the group in this instance being the ‘nation’. Clearly, English is considered to have intrinsic and instrumental value for monolingual English speakers and

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for persons whose dominant/primary/native language is English. It is just that the tie between language (English) and group identity (American) is largely taken for granted since English is the dominant and national language. Since other languages do not have this privileged ascribed status, persons whose dominant/primary/native language is not English are expected to justify or explain how they can maintain ‘divided loyalties’ between the de facto (national) public language (English) and any other language. The general opposition to granting, ipso facto, legitimacy to languages other than English renders the ‘debate’ on language rights a zero sum game in which the ‘winner — English — takes all’ (the rights), while the losers are expected to graciously acknowledge the irrelevance of their language(s) in public (and even private) life. Thus, English speakers believe their language, and its vast community of speakers, enjoy a natural right to existence, maintenance, protection and promotion because English is coterminous with the nation, whose right to existence and protection is unquestioned, while other non-national languages have no natural right, or warrant, to exist, because they are outside the nation and therefore enjoy no warrant for protection. English, in fact, needs no protection (although this fact does not deter the efforts of groups who perceive English to be threatened to bolster its status), while other languages cannot obtain protection even if they desired it.9

Discourses of the Heritage Language Movement The language-as-resource orientation has gained currency among academics interested in the promotion of language learning and use in the US. In recent years, this interest has coalesced under the heritage language movement rubric, with leadership provided by groups at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. This effort has led to several major conferences, publications, and a steering committee housed at CAL called ‘Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages’ comprising distinguished scholars in the field of language learning and teaching (http://www.cal.org/heritage/index.html). In 1999, CAL and NFLC convened the first national conference on heritage languages in America, followed by the ‘Heritage Language Research Priorities Conference’ at UCLA in 2000, followed by the second national conference on heritage languages in America in 2002 (also sponsored by CAL and NFLC). The Heritage Language Journal, an online journal hosted by the UCLA Language Resource Center and ‘dedicated to the teaching and learning

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of heritage languages’ began publication in Spring 2003. Many other conferences dealing with issues related to teaching and learning heritage languages have taken place or will take place in the future. There are many unresolved issues with regard to definitions (what is a heritage language?/who are heritage language speakers?; see Van Deusen-Scholl, 2003; Wiley, 2001 for discussion), goals, means to achieve them, and research priorities, among other matters. Yet, the metaphor of language as-resource is arguably the most important feature common to the texts which I have examined on the various websites at CAL, UCLA, and NFLC related to this topic, and in the various books, position papers, and conference proceedings which I have examined as well. In what follows, based on the analysis of some key texts published by proponents of the heritage language movement, I point out some of the ways in which the language-as-resource metaphor is used in heritage language discourses. I argue that the employment of such discourses tends to perpetuate a view of language as instrument (as opposed to language as identity marker), and, by doing so, seeks to garner support for the teaching and learning of heritage languages by de-linking language from ethnicity or race. In other words, the view promoted is of language as commodity, displaced from its historical situation, a tool to be developed for particular national interests. I realize that language(s) inevitably (perhaps even inherently) are subject to the same processes of commodification as any other cultural artifact, material or non-material. The celebration of ‘heritage’ through its various manifestations — language, dress, music, literature, cuisine and so on — is widespread and generally viewed as a means of both validating ethnic identities and marketing cultural ‘products’, including language, often in a way that exploits the minority culture for the greater benefit of the majority group. Further, I do not claim that my analysis represents the views of all those persons who claim allegiance to the heritage language movement, nor that the identity and communal functions of language are not considered relevant matters by supporters;10 however, I do claim that many of the texts and discourses which have been produced and made available online and in other forums prominently reflect a commodification orientation, and that it behooves supporters to consider the degree to which this movement may perpetuate mainstream and hegemonic views about the role of language(s) in America. I begin with a text published online by the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages (http://www.cal.org/heritage/index.html). The first paragraph describes the composition and purpose of the alliance:

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The Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages consists of individuals and organizations committed to working together to promote the conservation and development of the heritage language resources of this country as part of a larger effort to educate citizens who can function professionally in English and other languages. This certainly is a clear statement of the ‘language-as-resource’ orientation in Ruiz’s framework, that is, the ‘conservation and development of the heritage language resources of this country. . .’. Following this opening paragraph is Guiding Principles of the Alliance: The Alliance holds as fundamental the following principles: • The US has a critical need for individuals who are highly proficient in English and other languages. Language needs in the US encompass the fields of international diplomacy, foreign relations and trade; business, marketing, media and public relations; national security and defense; law; engineering; education; medical and health, environmental and service professions; and community development. • The US is rich in diverse languages and cultures. Heritage language speakers, who include immigrant, refugee, and indigenous groups, contribute to this richness. Heritage language speakers are those whose home or ancestral language is other than English, including those whose ancestors lived in this country prior to the establishment of the US and those who have come in recent years. • To build this national resource, we need policies, strategies, and resources. We also need to develop structures through which we can collaborate to accomplish this vision. • The US must ensure that all students are equipped linguistically and culturally to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American society and abroad, and develop and maintain proficiency in English and at least one other language. • Americans who have a language other than English as their home language should maintain and develop that language as they acquire English. In the first paragraph, the words conservation and development of heritage language resources omit any overt reference to people, that is, the speakers of these languages. This leaves the impression that it is the languages that matter most, not the people who speak them, let alone the communities in which they are used. The first bulleted paragraph mentions that the US has a critical need for individuals (not Chicanos

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or Lebanese Americans, for example) ‘who are highly proficient in English and other languages’. Thus, it is the state (the US) that has a need (not communities) for individuals (not members of ethnolinguistic communities) proficient in English (note that English, as the national language, is mentioned first, presuming its greater importance) and other languages (whichever ones are strategically necessary at a particular historical moment). Although the needs enumerated could have been listed alphabetically, they are not, and this is probably not unintentional. If we are to read anything in the ordering of the enumerated needs it is that national diplomacy (which includes military and security matters), foreign relations, and trade are most important. These certainly fit in with state interests far more than those of language communities themselves,11 whose needs are listed dead last on this list as ‘community development’. The second bulleted paragraph suggests that ‘the United States is rich in diverse languages and cultures’. The third bulleted paragraph argues that ‘to build this national resource, we need policies, strategies, and resources. . .[and] structures through which we can collaborate to accomplish this vision’. The argument offered here is that: (1) the US needs a resource (that is, individuals who are proficient in English and other languages); (2) the resource is required most importantly to advance the interests of the state, that is, the US; (3) the resource exists already; but (4) it is underdeveloped. In other words, the US is claimed by the authors here to have resources but the resources are not currently usable or appropriate to meet the needs of the state. The solution (bullets 4 and 5) is to do a better job in language education and to encourage English speakers to learn another language, and for speakers of other languages to keep their other language while learning English. If America is ‘rich in diverse languages and cultures’, what is the development problem? The short answer is that the ‘resource’ needs to be ‘captured’ and ‘refined’ before it is ready for the ‘market’. The following excerpts taken verbatim from a position paper, ‘Tapping a national resource: Heritage languages in the United States’ (Brecht & Ingold, 1998), make this very point. I have bolded words and phrases which reflect the ‘language-as-resource’ metaphor: (1)

(2)

The US has an unprecedented need for individuals with highly developed language competencies not only in English, our societal language, but also in many other languages. Even before the events of September 11, 2001, congressional hearings had begun to document a shortage of professionals with the language proficiencies required to carry out a wide range of federal government activities.

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More than 70 government agencies reported a need for individuals with foreign language expertise. Since September, the General Accounting Office has suggested that shortages of staff with foreign language expertise at several agencies have adversely affected agency operations and hindered US military, law enforcement, intelligence, counter terrorism, and diplomatic efforts.

The following example emphasizes the way in which language competence is represented as a tangible commodity, much like other natural resources: (5)

There exists . . . a largely untapped reservoir of linguistic competence in this country, namely heritage language speakers. . .

Related to Example 5 is the representation of knowledge about culture and language as a resource: (6)

. . .because of their existing language and cultural knowledge, they [heritage language speakers] may require substantially less instructional time than other learners to develop these skills.

The following examples deal with the perishability of the resource of individual language competence: (7)

(8)

Without active intervention or new immigration, heritage languages are lost over time both in the individuals who speak them and in the community, and they typically die out within three generations. Among immigrant families, language use shifts toward English in predictable patterns . . . and third generation children are not only native speakers of English but usually have lost much of their expressive ability in their heritage language.

There are references to societal constraints that hinder development of language resources: (9)

In the US, heritage speakers of most languages other than English have limited opportunities to develop their skills.

Limitations of infrastructures in exploiting the language resources of HL speakers are highlighted: (10) Funding, teacher training, appropriate instructional materials, and administrative infrastructure are all problematic.

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In other words, the ‘resource’ is in danger of disappearing without some type of intervention, that is, language planning. In this chapter, we get a far more detailed, and perhaps more straightforward depiction of the desired resource, the speakers of immigrant languages who lose competence in their ‘ancestral’ language in the inexorable generational shift to English. As I have suggested earlier, contemporary processes of language shift have been deeply influenced by historical events, processes, and ideologies. The explicit orientation of language-as-resource represented in these texts presupposes that language can be valued as an asset, but the values attached to the asset (languages) and the purposes for which the assets will be used are pertinent only to the needs of the state. Here, the ideological construct of ‘language as instrument’ to achieve various ends becomes relevant. There is a large and growing scholarly literature on the ways in which local and regional languages have been used to further the interests of states. In the colonial context, for example, Pennycook (2002) has shown how resource arguments have been used to support education in the local/regional language in order to keep the ‘natives’ on the plantation, in part arguing that maintaining the local language(s) helps perpetuate traditional cultural values, an efficient way to maintain control of the population. In the colonial context, the metaphor of ‘language-as-resource’ was used in the service of particular socio-economic interests in which local languages were supported to suppress the socioeconomic and political advancement of local ‘indigenous’ populations. In the US context, the ideological underpinnings for the ‘language-as-resource’ metaphor used in these heritage language (HL) texts are more complicated. Supporters of HLs underscore the importance and necessity of acquiring English. Yet, the historical record of governmental support of use of other languages as a medium of instruction in schools, generally, has been within a deficit framework, that is as a temporary vehicle to promote access to full civic participation via the national language, English, and not to promote full-blown bilingualism/biliteracy. Therefore, recent moves to reinvigorate interest in the learning and use of heritage languages in elementary and secondary education are likely to be met with suspicion, or even derision, especially by groups that have suffered discrimination in the past for using their ‘home’ language. In the two texts described in this paper, language-as-resource is connected to particular dominant socio-political agendas, namely national security, trade, and law enforcement. These agendas, it is claimed (or, more accurately, presupposed), benefit the nation as a whole, yet the nation as I have shown in this paper — historically and currently — is

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not neutral with regard to the interests of all languages or groups. Here, the ideology of language as instrument, in effect, is tied to state-driven agendas, much like support of local vernacular languages was tied to the interests of empire. The resource to be ‘cultivated’, ‘captured’, ‘enhanced’, and ‘increased’, that is, languages important to US global military and economic interests, represents the values, goals, and aspirations of dominant interests since those of ‘groups’ (e.g. ethnolinguistic minorities) have not been linked to national identity the way that those of the English-speaking majority have. Thus, while the contemporary metaphor of language-as-resource does not ascribe lower status to heritage languages, it does little in terms of recognition of intrinsic non-quantifiable resources associated with languages, including psychological, cultural, affiliational, aesthetic and historical aspects, among others. And, of course, it is silent with regard to the rights claims of language minority communities to receive official and financial support and recognition that is reserved for the dominant language, English. To reiterate, I am not claiming that such values and claims are absent in HL discourses, nor that they cannot be considered in research or planning activities. What I am arguing is that there is a tendency in the discourses I have analyzed here to focus on the instrumental values of heritage languages while ignoring (or downplaying) the human beings, communities, and socio-political dimensions of language acquisition, use and loss in the United States. I do not think these omissions are accidental; they, in fact, are predictable given the history of languages, race, and ethnic relations over the past 200 years of ‘American’ history.

Conclusion If the goals of the heritage language movement are to be truly geared towards the promotion of minority languages and the socio-political, economic, and cultural interests of language minority communities, then the rhetoric and discourses of supporters need to be rethought and modified (especially in mission statements and other statements of research and policy priorities, like the texts discussed in this paper). Although there can be some enhancement of minority language status as a secondary effect of promoting them in education to benefit national strategic needs in the military, law enforcement, and trade, the overall effect is likely to be very truncated and have only short-term benefits. When HL speakers are conceptualized in military terms as strategic assets capable of serving the national interest (consistent with a resource argument), they are commodified as economically exploitable units. Francois Grin (2006) has shown some of the problems in applying economic

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models when the goal of policy is the promotion of linguistic diversity. His point is that the basic approach of supply and demand cannot be applied to languages without extensive adaptations, for a number of analytical reasons; one of them is that the more people use a language, the more valuable it becomes as a tool for communication to people who already use it. While this argument can also be used to support the teaching of majority languages over minority languages, it fails to consider the non-economic aspects of language mentioned above. Grin (2006: 83–84) identifies six main forms of market failure, arguing that ‘almost every form of market failure occurs when it comes to the provision of linguistic diversity’. Because of these market failures, state intervention in language planning and policy is justified, according to Grin. What has been argued in this chapter, however, is that state intervention carries with it particular interests that may not always (or often) be aligned with the interests and goals of language minority (LM) communities. Similarly, the approach taken by the authors of the NFLC position paper analyzed above is that the value of a language, and its community of speakers, is predicated on its projected relative value in a particular sector of economic or military activity rather than on locally determined interests of the LM communities themselves. Mainstream economic models of supply and demand fail to consider the role of state planners (or analysts and planners funded by the state) whose interventions in the planning process distort the ‘market’ in the direction determined by state interests, which will change over time. Thus, for example, we would not expect Navajo to be as strategically necessary, or valuable, as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Urdu or Pashto (at least for the foreseeable future). This means that the association between a language and its geopolitical importance will determine its relative market worth as a ‘resource’. Such state intervention into language planning does little to promote an across-the-board proactive policy for the development and status enhancement of heritage languages. Instead, it is driven by national needs, which brings us back to the ideology of the nation-state and the arbitrariness of language status ascription within this framework. To be fair, Richard Brecht and William Rivers, in their 2002 chapter ‘The language crisis in the United States: Language, national security and the federal role’ propose a selective language education policy designed to allocate resources in a ‘rational’ manner to target particular flagship universities to train a sufficient cadre of highly proficient speakers in LOTEs (languages other than English). Yet, they view such programs in purely instrumental ways in which resource is understood essentially as linguistic (and some cultural) competence, and they draw

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an analogy between the increased funding for mathematics and science education following the USSR’s launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the need for increased funding in foreign language education in the wake of 9/11 and in response to the ‘new world configuration’. Supporters of this approach might say ‘something is better than nothing’, and besides, there might be some beneficial spin-off as a result of increased funding, such as increased foreign language enrollments and support for research in language acquisition, teaching, and learning. Yet, the skewing of resources for state benefits could as likely have deleterious effects on languages not picked as ‘winners’ by the state, accelerating their demise. Apart from the problems inherent in comparing language planning with natural resource management, the ‘language-as-resource’ metaphor needs to be critically examined in the light of historical language policy approaches, and in order to consider how this metaphor may be complicit with unstated agendas of maintaining current social arrangements that favor policies not particularly favorable to linguistic diversity as intrinsically good or as a national resource, where ‘national’ tends to exclude non-English languages and cultures. In addition to the issues raised by Francois Grin (above), Robert Kaplan and Richard Baldauf (1997) demonstrate some of the problems with the resource metaphor in terms of the many and hard-to-quantify variables in developing language planning approaches. The ‘language-as-resource’ metaphor does not resonate with the historical experiences of many ethnolinguistic groups in the US. Rather, the unquestioned ‘language as instrument for citizenship’ ideology, with citizenship understood implicitly as ‘American’ citizenship (i.e. English-speaking), has circumscribed the viable roles and domains for other languages (at least for the past century) as sub-national, ‘ethnic’, ‘primordial’, and secondary. It is this perhaps unwitting dichotomizing of English (national, civic, central) and other languages (local, ethnic, marginal) which has tended to undermine the efficacy and scope of the ‘language-as-resource’ metaphor. If languages function in particular ways in particular communities, they are in fact resources and are recognized as such by those communities. They should not be viewed as resources by academics and language planners only when convenient to serve particular disciplinary or state interests, and otherwise ignored or suppressed, whether explicitly or covertly. This raises the important question of resources for whom? For what purpose or end? These are the key elements that require exposition in a fuller accounting of the language-as-resource orientation.

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The constructed relation between nation-state and one national language, which entails a civic culture that is based on particular values and expressed in a particular language, is implicit in the texts I have examined for this chapter, and is seen as unremarkable and unproblematic in those texts. Both the implicitness and normality of this construct in what may be fairly characterized as liberal discourses in support of language diversity, in my view, provide evidence of the depth and strength of an ideology which by its very nature mitigates against arguments for promotion of language diversity as intrinsically good, let alone necessary. In other words, I am arguing here that advocates for the promotion of heritage languages in the US need to look more critically to the assumptions to which they may, perhaps unknowingly, subscribe in their discourses. They need to consider in what ways those discourses may help promote the status quo with regard to the status and utility of languages other than English, and to consider developing alternative discourses which identify the causes and nature of the current ‘problem’ and which advocate educational programs in which ‘other’ cultures and languages are positioned as American (not foreign), and which promote a deeper understanding of languages and cultures outside the US. This would, in my view, be a more honest way to approach the thorny issues of American history which are submerged or ignored in most school curricula and, as a result, help to perpetuate stereotypes about historical attitudes and policies towards speakers of the languages which now, in an hour of need, are reconceptualized as assets vital to national security and survival. Facing this challenge should be a priority for scholars interested in promoting social change rather than in temporary fixes for ‘interests of state.’ Notes 1. This chapter was originally published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics in 2005 (9/3: 348–368). It is reprinted here with permission from Blackwell Publishing. 2. I am using the terminology current in policy and educational circles, which is to consider all languages other than English and Native American languages as ‘foreign’. This is an example of everyday language use that embodies and perpetuates ideologies about ‘otherness’ and influences perceptions and beliefs about the status and value of non-English languages in the US. 3. ‘Enrollments in modern foreign languages in higher education declined from 16 percent of students in 1965 to 8 percent in 1994, and have remained at that level ever since. Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL, including all of the languages critical to national security) account for less than 10 percent of these enrollments. Less than 1 percent (italics in original) of

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US American college students are studying these critical languages’ (Brod & Welles 2000; cited in Brecht & Rivers, 2002: 79). The views expressed by Hamilton, Jay and Madison are reiterated practically verbatim by contemporary mainstream historians and political scientists. A recent example is found in the journal Foreign Policy (2004) in an article titled ‘The Hispanic Challenge’ by Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University. He argues that the infusion of immigrants from Latin America, and specifically and most importantly Mexico, is changing American identity by creating an unassimilated, culturally and linguistically distinct population that is indifferent, or even hostile, to the American creed, key elements of which include the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, values of individualism, and the work ethic. He claims that ‘[t]here is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English’. Ricento (2003) describes how the American ‘nation’ and state were discursively melded into one during the Americanization campaign, roughly 1914–1924. Also, see Edwards (2003) for an enlightening discussion on definitional confusions on the meaning of the nation-state, and relationships between nationalism and ethnicity, especially pp. 562–564. In this landmark decision, the US Supreme Court affirmed that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protected certain liberties that the state could not restrict, in this case, the teaching of German to an elementary school pupil. However, the Court might have ruled differently if German had not been singled out as a restricted language. In their majority opinion, Justices Holmes and Sutherland said, in part,‘[w]e all agree, I take it, that it is desirable that all the citizens of the United States should speak a common tongue, and therefore, that the end aimed at by the statute is a lawful and proper one . . . I cannot bring my mind to believe that in some circumstances . . . the statute might not be regarded as a reasonable or even necessary method of reaching the desired result.’ (Leibowitz, 1971: 10). Of course, the goals advocated in the discourses of Americanizers were not always achieved, or at least not in the specific ways anticipated by supporters. For example, despite the combined efforts of federal, state, and local governments, programs developed by the Division of Education were a failure as measured by the number of persons who completed Americanization courses; national studies conducted by the Division of Education along with the Carnegie Corporation’s Study of the Methods of Americanization concluded that of the more than 8 million immigrant adults eligible for Americanization courses in the period 1915–1919, only about 400,000 were reached by the public schools (McClymer, 1982), and a large percentage of those 400,000 never completed their programs. Yet, the Americanization movement was successful in creating a set of expectations of what constituted appropriate behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of ‘good’ Americans (native born or otherwise). The exception to this general principle was established in a decision by the federal Court of Appeals in Negron v. New York (1970), which held that ‘. . . the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to confront and cross-examine

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witnesses gives criminal defendants the right to an interpreter during court proceedings’ (Miner, 1998: 180). 9. However, there is nothing in principle to prevent Spanish speakers, once they have obtained majorities in cities and states, to pass laws protecting the status and domains of Spanish. This is one of the arguments used by opponents of the official English movement that supports passing laws to officialize English at the state and national level. 10. Terrence Wiley (2001: 32), for example, argues that ‘to ensure that heritage language programs do not merely become symbolic gestures, imposed by outsiders to the community, it is important to define heritage language programs from a community perspective’. Ana Roca (2003) argues that much political work needs to be done in order to improve views on bilingualism in general and bilingualism in Spanish and English in particular. Norma Gonzalez (2003) and Guadalupe Valdés (2003) argue for a research agenda, which considers the ways in which language ideologies negatively impact attitudes and learning of heritage languages in schools and universities. Two useful sources for information on the HL initiative are the ‘Heritage Language research priorities conference report’, available in Bilingual Research Journal (2000) and ‘National policy statement on heritage language development: Toward an agenda for action’, available at the Language Policy Research Unit (LPRU) at Arizona State University (http://www.asu. edu/educ/epsl/LPRU/forums/heritage.html). 11. Language communities refers to the constellation of individuals who selfidentify as sharing a common non-English language; it is expected that such individuals are likely to differ in the degree and domains in which they use their language, the degree to which its maintenance is important, as well as the degree to which they share cultural, political, and religious identities as well as other values and aspirations.

Chapter 7

English Hegemony and the Politics of Ethno-Linguistic Justice in the US RONALD SCHMIDT

Introduction The US has been a multilingual country since its founding in 1776, and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that in 2005 more than 19% of the country’s population regularly speaks a language other than English in the home. Nearly two-thirds of these (62%, and more than 32 million people) are Spanish-speakers, most of whom are Latinos (US Census Bureau, 2006).1 Despite the empirical reality of its multilingualism, and the presence of a large ethno-racial group speaking one minority language, most Americans believe that the US is an English-speaking country, and accordingly do not support multilingual policy proposals. Further, it is notable that in contrast to most other countries with sizable language minority groups, there is no organized and active political movement in the US working to enact and support policies and programs aimed at the long-term maintenance of the Spanish language in the country. The aim of this essay is to work toward an explanation of this phenomenon. Why is it that most Americans believe without question that English is the only ‘American’ language? How can we explain the absence of a significant political movement on behalf of the maintenance of the Latino cultural community and Spanish language in the US?2 These are the central questions that underlie this essay’s analysis. Within the context of a critical discourse analysis, the chapter will draw upon Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to help answer these questions. More specifically, the chapter will argue that English language hegemony enables and facilitates the deployment of apparently liberal values (e.g. ‘freedom’, ‘equality of opportunity’) to legitimate a coercive assimilationist language policy approach, denying to ethno-linguistic minority communities (especially Spanish-speaking Latinos) the opportunity to preserve and reproduce their ethno-cultural heritage in a 132

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country in which they have been present as supposedly equal citizens since at least 1848. In light of this critical analysis, the essay will conclude with an exploration of potential counter-hegemonic measures that might be taken to undermine the hegemonic status of the English language in the US.

Ethno-Linguistic Diversity, Demographic Change and Language Policy in the US3 As noted above, the US has never been a monolingual country even though it is widely viewed as an ‘English-speaking’ society. There have been multiple speakers of a myriad of languages living in the country’s territories since its inception as an independent country in the 18th century. For example, at the country’s inception in 1776, there were substantial numbers of German speakers in Pennsylvania; Dutch speakers in New York; French speakers in upper New England; speakers of several other European languages; and numerous speakers of a wide range of indigenous languages throughout the country (Baron, 1990). Moreover, as the US expanded across the North American continent, a multitude of additional language groups were added to the country’s population through both conquest/annexation and immigration. In relation to the country’s current multilingualism, the most important of these in the first category was the conquest and annexation of nearly one-half of Mexico’s territory in 1846–48, and the annexation of Puerto Rico following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Both military victories added numerous Spanish-speakers to the US population before the end of the 19th century. Moreover, since the Mexican–US border was not policed in any substantial way prior to the late 1920s (e.g. Ngai, 2004), the social upheavals wrought by the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 brought tens of thousands of Mexican migrants to join their co-ethnics in the US. A number of migration-centered social networks developed in the US southwest in the years that followed, buttressed by a concerted effort by the railroads, agribusiness and other employers in the southwest to entice additional Mexican workers to make the trek to the north. These patterns of migration, in turn, were enhanced by an early agricultural ‘guest worker’ program — the bracero program — launched during World War II and maintained until the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, since the annexed Puerto Ricans were US citizens and therefore had mobility rights to the mainland, a substantial economically-based migration pattern began to develop in the 1930s between the island and the Eastern mainland states. Further, the Castro-led Cuban

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revolution of 1958 brought numerous Spanish-speaking Cubans to the US (and especially to South Florida) in its wake. These migration networks were greatly enlarged and expanded following passage of an immigration reform act in 1965, which eliminated a highly discriminatory ‘national-origins’ quota system for the allocation of immigrant visas. Since that date, the US has entered an era of relatively high levels of immigration. Indeed, there are now more foreign-born persons living in the US than at any time in the country’s history, and since 1965, Spanish-speakers from Latin America and the Caribbean have made up more than half of the country’s newcomers (Office of Immigration Statistics, 2006). In addition to Spanish-speakers, however, there are unprecedented numbers of Asian-origin immigrants — as well as others from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa — now living in the US, and many speak languages other than English in the home. While the US has never had a national ‘official language’ policy, the dominant approach to linguistic diversity throughout the country’s history has been one of using both formal and informal means to encourage linguistic assimilation to English. That is, though most US cultural communities using languages other than English have sought to retain their cultural traditions and languages, these efforts have never succeeded in gaining political and popular legitimacy on anything approaching the level of official and public support given to linguistic assimilation. And the dominant pattern of encouraging linguistic assimilation has proved highly effective over time. Thus, most studies of ‘language shift’ in the US have found a consistent pattern for immigrants and their progeny since the early 20th century: while many second generation immigrants are bilingual in their parents’ native language and in English, nearly all of the third generation is English monolingual (e.g. Veltman, 1983). By the 1970s, however, following on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, a new era seemed to be dawning in the US in relation to language policy. Thus, two laws passed by Congress were seen as bringing the possibility that Federal law would finally embrace a more pluralistic approach to language policy: the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, and a 1975 amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring election officials to provide ballots and other election materials to language minority voters under certain specified circumstances. These laws, following the logic of the Civil Rights Movement, were articulated by most proponents as measures to counter discrimination against language minorities in relation to equality of educational opportunity and in access to civil and political rights, especially the right to vote. These

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laws, in turn, were supplemented and enhanced by several important judicial decisions providing a legal foundation for ‘linguistic access’ rights to equal educational and employment opportunities for language minority persons. By the mid-1970s, then, the foundations for a national shift toward support for linguistic pluralism in the US seemed to be taking shape. Bilingual education programs were in place across the country, and the beginnings of the surging contemporary immigration to the US from Latin America and Asia seemed to ensure continued growth of these programs. While no one disputed the fact of English language dominance in the US, increasing numbers of educators and a smattering of policy-makers embraced the ideas that some non-English languages are native to the US, that their speakers should be literate and fluent in their home languages as well as in English, and that several minority languages (and especially Spanish) should be recognized as public ‘American’ languages (for examples of this perspective see Ridge, 1981). Moreover, US corporations increasingly recognized the profitability of marketing campaigns and sales staffs working in languages other than English, and began to diversify the linguistic skills of their staffs. Closely related to this economically driven linguistic diversification, immigration brought new life and dramatic expansion to non-English language electronic and print media in many media markets across the country. And many local governments, school districts and other public service providers adopted the pragmatic stance that communication with their constituents required a multilingual capability. By the 1980s, however, the forces of linguistic assimilation had regained their political footing and began to mount a counter-pluralistic movement. At the national level, this was signaled by a 1982 proposal in Congress to amend the US Constitution to make English the sole ‘official’ language of the US. And in 1983 a new national organization, US English, was founded dedicated to reversing the policy trends toward support for bilingualism noted above. Both the proposed Constitutional amendment and US English were spearheaded by a Republican US Senator from California, S.I. Hayakawa (a former linguistics scholar). Meanwhile, the Reagan-appointed head of the US Department of Education, William Bennett, had launched his own campaign against bilingual education and multiculturalism in US education. While neither of these efforts was immediately successful in the early l980s, the assimilationist movement in language policy had gained the upper hand politically, placing the forces supporting bilingualism and linguistic pluralism on the defensive.

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By 2007, it was quite clear that the move toward a pluralistic language policy had been routed in most respects, though there were vestiges remaining in some policies. Bilingual education, for example, was virtually eliminated as a term of use in Federal education policy. President George W. Bush’s major reform of Federal education policy (the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act of 2002), approved with support from most Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress, included a change of title for the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, now renamed the ‘English Language Acquisition Act’. The law also resulted in the reorganization and renaming of the administrative unit responsible for implementing education programs for non-English speaking students (from ‘Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs’ to ‘Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited-English-Proficient Students’). Beyond these symbolic changes, as education activist and journalist James Crawford summarized, the new law marked ‘. . . a 180-degree reversal in language policy. Whereas the 1994 version of the Bilingual Education Act included among its goals “developing the English skills . . . and to the extent possible, the native-language skills” of LEP students, the English Language Acquisition Act stresses skills in English only’ (Crawford, 2002). At the state and local levels, meanwhile, by 2006 bilingual education had been severely curtailed, if not eliminated, in most of the school districts with the heaviest concentrations of non-English speaking students. California (the state with the largest number, and highest percentage, of ‘limited English proficient’ students in the country), for example, rescinded its bilingual education policy in favor of a one-year ‘English immersion’ program through a voter initiative passed in 1998. Similar initiatives were passed in Arizona, Massachusetts, and several other states (the only loss for language assimilation advocates was in Colorado). By early 2007, moreover, 27 states had adopted ‘official English’ laws and/or constitutional provisions, and these included most states with the largest concentrations of non-English language speakers. An effort among some Republican members of Congress (see, for example, Gaouette, 2006a) to eliminate the Voting Rights Act requirements for non-English ballots and election materials in the law’s 2006 renewal, however, was unsuccessful. Still, it is clear that the forces of assimilation have had the upper hand politically for more than two decades, and that linguistic pluralism as a political movement has been fighting a ‘rear-guard’ defensive struggle throughout that period.

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As noted at the outset of this essay, these moves to cut back on bilingualism have not been universally approved by Americans. Among the Spanish speakers who constitute some 60% of the nearly 45 million families that routinely speak a language other than English in their homes (US Census, 2000), for example, support continues for a bilingual approach to language policy. That is, public opinion polls have shown consistently for more than 25 years that a strong majority of Latinos (from every national-origin group) would like to see a language policy adopted that would ensure that their children would become bilingual adults, fluent in both English and Spanish, and that would provide ‘linguistic access’ rights to those who have not yet acquired English language proficiency (e.g. Schmidt, 2006). Still, despite the fact that most Latino parents want their children to be bilingual in both Spanish and English, recent studies of language use among the children and grandchildren of Latin American immigrants indicate a strong preference for English language use over Spanish, decreasing fluency in Spanish (e.g. Portes & Rumbaut, 2001: Chapter 6), and a clear pattern of Spanish language loss by the third generation (Rumbaut et al., 2006). In this context, what seems striking is that no significant political movement in favor of linguistic pluralism, and especially Spanish language maintenance, has emerged in the US during this period. Active political support for linguistic pluralism has come mainly from bilingual educators, scholars, civil libertarians (e.g. the American Civil Liberties Union), and the Latino political elite (e.g. the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund). Yet not one member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus voted against the changes in the Federal education law described above at any stage of the process. And, while ‘grass roots’ political mobilizations have figured prominently in the drives to eliminate bilingual education and to make English the sole official language in various states and localities, there have been no mass mobilizations by (or on behalf of) non-English speakers attempting to block the moves toward a more assimilationist policy approach in the US. Indeed, during the Spring of 2006, the single existing national mass-based pro-bilingualism organization in the US, the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), experienced a self-destructive political schism after its board of directors fired its executive director, James Crawford (arguably the country’s single-most politically effective intellectual activist on behalf of bilingualism), without publicly articulating any reasons for the action. The firing led to an outburst of indignation by many scholars belonging to the organization, and to the formation of a new organization that may compete with

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NABE. All of this intra-organizational conflict, however, occurred without notice in the national media in the US — the NABE just isn’t that politically significant. In contrast, in spring 2006 there was a massive political mobilization of demonstrations in cities all across the country by (and on behalf of) immigrants (mostly from Latin America) that was directed against Congressional moves to criminalize unauthorized immigration to the US. The difference is striking in the degrees of political mobilization on the issues of immigration reform versus language policy. It seems ironic that these mass demonstrations against ‘building a wall’ against immigrants were mounted primarily through Spanish language television and radio broadcasts, yet there has been no similar campaign to protect reproduction of the language itself in the public domains of the US. Again, the primary aim of this chapter is to explain this apparent political lacuna.

Liberal Individualism, US Nationalism and English Language Hegemony The central argument of this essay is that a combination of English language hegemony and US nationalism, operating within a political cultural context of liberal individualism, undermines the legitimacy of political moves toward organized support for linguistic pluralism in the US. The irony, indeed, is that in this context, beliefs in ‘individual freedom’ and ‘equality of opportunity’ may lead many Latinos with an explicit desire to be fluently bilingual to actively consent in their (and their families’) own attenuation from bilinguals to English language monolinguals. How does this happen? The first level from which I will approach this question is through the liberal individualist political culture that has been dominant throughout nearly all of the history of the US.4 As typically understood in the US, liberal individualism has two primary value components, usually formulated as individual freedom and equality of opportunity. That is, liberal individualists believe that the individual person has primacy of place in the hierarchy of political values as well as in the ontology of the political order. And this is understood to mean that each individual person should be ‘free to choose’ (Friedman, 1981) ‘the good’ as she understands it ‘from the inside’ (Kymlicka, 1989: 12).5 Further, each individual is free to pursue the good without obstruction so long as this individual pursuit does not interfere with the equal opportunity of other individuals to pursue their goods. This mention of other individuals brings out the necessity for individual freedom’s twin value, equality of opportunity.

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Liberalism holds that each individual’s life is of equal value with any other life, and consequently each must have an equal opportunity to pursue the good life as each understands it. Or, as the Friedmans put it: ‘No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person — only his abilities’ (Friedman, 1981: 123). But if each individual should have an equal opportunity to pursue ‘the good’ as she defines it, and if large majorities of US Latinos evidently see Spanish-English bilingualism as an important ‘good’ for themselves and for their families, why is it that liberal individualism does not provide support for a political movement among Latinos in favor of a pluralistic language policy in the US? Why, instead, does liberal individualism undercut the legitimacy of such a movement? The most compelling answers to this question, I believe, lie in a deeper examination of US individualist political culture and the social context within which its beliefs operate. To begin, it is important to note that in addition to the above core beliefs of liberal individualists, there are as well two corollaries that are widely taken as given in the US. As most liberal economists would be quick to point out, the first corollary is that there are inherent limitations in the supply of the goods that most people seek (e.g. wealth, fame, prestige, power), and this scarcity gives rise to a never-ending competition in which some are winners and others are losers. So long as the game is ‘fair’, however (meaning that both individual freedom and equal opportunity are prevalent), the outcomes of this competition will be fair as well, no matter how unequal the yield in sought-after goods produced by the competition. The other key corollary to the belief in liberal individualism is that each person is responsible for the outcomes of her own life. That is, having pursued one’s understanding of the good under conditions of personal freedom and equality of opportunity, if things turn out not to be so ‘good’ after all, we are expected to learn from the experience, redefine our goals and pursue a revised version of the good. Casting blame on others who may appear to us to have been more successful in finding the good life is not a legitimate response to our own disappointment at the results of our efforts. How do these core values in US political culture inform the politics of language in the US? First, virtually all political activists on the language question support the ‘individual freedom’ of persons to speak the language of their choice. Since the Myers v. Nebraska US Supreme Court decision (in 1921),6 there have been few Americans publicly willing to

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challenge the right of individuals to speak languages other than English as private individuals, or to send their children to ‘foreign’ language classes (nevertheless, see Del Valle, this volume). But having said that, it is now time to move to the second level of analysis, which I will reach here by introducing the ‘hidden elephant-in-the-room’ that is completely missing from the above account of the freedom-and-equalityavailable-to-all under liberal individualism: the social and institutional context in which the individual pursuit of the good takes place. Two facts about the social and institutional context of US linguistic diversity and language policy require elaboration here: (1) the hegemony of the English language in the US; and (2), the officially sanctioned linkage between US nationalism and the English language. I will take up each social fact in turn. English language hegemony in the US Hegemony is an ancient term, used by the early Greeks in reference to Athens, which had become the dominant city-state in a ‘voluntary’ league of city-states balanced against another league of city-states led by Sparta. Employed for many years in analyses of international relations, the term also has a rich history in Marxist analysis. In the contemporary period, hegemony’s use in political analysis has been most often associated with the work of the early 20th century Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, and it is in that context that the concept may be useful for understanding power relations in the politics of language in the US. Gramsci used hegemony for analytical purposes in several different ways (e.g. Ives, 2004: Chap. 3), but in recent times perhaps the most important of these is his use of the concept to explain the consent of the least powerful, those who are oppressed, to their own domination by the most powerful class in the society. One of the most puzzling questions facing Marxists in the 20th century, particularly in the aftermath of World War I, was why the working classes of the most advanced societies continued to be swayed by nationalist and private property-based appeals rather than by their own (‘obviously contrary’) class interests. That is, Marx had seemingly predicted that under conditions of advanced capitalism, working class consciousness would inevitably develop, leading to revolutionary consciousness, but this had not happened. Why not? As one of the earliest and most persuasive analysts taking the ‘linguistic turn’ in political analysis, Gramsci argued that the cultural (and especially the discursive) context of any society plays a crucial (and

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quasi-independent) role in structuring power relations among and between members of various economic classes. To understand power relations in the real world, accordingly, it is fundamentally important to understand how people come to perceive the workings of their society, and how people believe their personal interests are affected by the way power relations and institutions operate. Gramsci’s crucial point was that the working classes are dominated by the most powerful classes not simply through ‘force’, but in many cases through the active manufacturing of their ‘consent’ in their own oppression. This is accomplished through language, in that a discursively constructed understanding of how things work ‘in the real world’, and how people’s interests are served through how things work, can be so powerful in the culture that it becomes the ‘common sense’ of the people, including working class people (e.g. Gramsci, 2000: Chapter VI). Moreover, Gramsci believed that peoples’ ‘common sense’ is formed, not simply through a crass manipulation of their thoughts by, for instance, the mass media, but through a combination of their personal understandings of their lived experiences in the world and the discursive formations put forth by the media of the dominant groups. It is for this reason, Gramsci believed, that the working classes often found the ideology of private property more compelling than that of highly erudite Marxist intellectuals: their lived experience of how their own and others’ interests are served seemed better explained by capitalism’s ideology defending private property than by the Marxist propaganda offered by parties claiming to speak for the working classes (Ives, 2004: 80–81). This mode of analysis is very useful, I think, for understanding why US Latinos have not prioritized a political campaign in favor of linguistic pluralism, even though most Latinos feel strongly attached to the Spanish language, and want their children to be fluent in both English and Spanish. That is, the English language is such a powerful ‘social fact’ of life in the US that it is obvious to all (‘common sense’) that social mobility is virtually impossible without fluency in the English language. Further, the individualistic liberal values that dominate in the political culture of the US place the onus of ‘making it’ through social mobility on the individual person. And ‘making it’ in US society, as noted above, is understood as a competitive process in which one’s own interests are seen as pitted against those of others seeking the same goals. There is very little social construction of thought in the US toward the view that public policies and large institutions (both public and private) structure and inform people’s daily lives, including their opportunities for advancement. Nor is there social construction of thought that alternative

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public policies and institutions might reconstitute the opportunity structures of their lives. Paradoxically, then, a socially constructed culture of individualism results in a ‘common sense’ that blinds many Americans to the socially constructed context of their own lives. In this context, it is not difficult to understand how Spanish-speaking parents who want their children to ‘succeed’ in the US would applaud their children becoming fluent in English, and might also readily agree that English fluency takes ‘practice’ and that such practice needs to come at the expense of mastering their first language, Spanish.7 Thus, equality of opportunity for Spanish-speaking Latinos (and for speakers of other non-English languages) might better be expressed as ‘an equal chance to ‘get ahead’ in a competitive race in which the English language serves as the discursive medium for the definition and allocation of most material and symbolic rewards’. Under these circumstances, moreover, individual freedom amounts to the opportunity for individuals to become as similar as humanly possible (in speech, beliefs, patterns of behavior, appearance) to those who are ethno-linguistically dominant in the society. As well, the lived experience of most Latinos in the US might easily buttress this conception of the realization of liberal individualistic values. That is, with the important exception of Miami and the relatively unique class position of its Cuban exile community (e.g. Didion, 1998), the Spanish language in the US is most often associated in daily life with immigrants performing tasks that receive very low wages. That is, one is most likely to encounter the public use of the Spanish language among those who are near the bottom of the social and economic ladder — e.g. lawn service workers, farm workers, domestic workers, apparel factory workers, restaurant ‘bus boys’ and dishwashers, low-skilled construction workers, day laborers etc. In contrast, a relatively high percentage of Latinos in upper-middle-class or professional jobs rarely use the Spanish language in public spaces, and/or may not be fluent in Spanish. Thus, fluent bilingual literacy and speech (the acquisition of which is an expensive individual responsibility according to most understandings of US liberal individual values) is rarely displayed or rewarded in public life. Accordingly, it is not difficult to understand why many Latinos might form the ‘common sense’ impression that the road to ‘success’ in US life is paved in the English language, and in English language fluency alone. This hegemonic status of the English language is supported as well by the frequent conflation of race, class and language in US society. That is, in a time when ‘racial’ explanations of social hierarchy have lost their legitimacy in public discourse, a conflation of race, class and language

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has seemed to replace it. This conflation has been described most effectively by Urciuoli (1996: 26), as follows: ‘. . . black or Hispanic or Puerto Rican become metonyms for (naturally connected to) the idea of an underclass. In this metonym, class/race difference becomes morally marked. Activities seen as typical of bad citizens (dropping out of school, becoming teenage mothers, taking drugs, committing crimes, going on welfare) are habitually associated with, for example, Puerto Ricans, and become “explanations” for their “failure”. Terms that do not fit the moral picture disappear from the discourse. Language figures into this race/class conflation in several ways. Hegemonically, Spanish itself is regarded as a barrier to class mobility because it displaces English. Accents, “broken” English, and “mixing” become signs of illiteracy and laziness, which people are morally obligated to control . . . Bilingual neighborhoods are equated with slums, an equation familiar to people who live in them.’ In the context of such discursive formations of power, it is not surprising that many Latinos would seek to escape as individuals from this racialized social context by moving to erase the most easily changed aspect of their personas: their language. Once again, ‘common sense’ teaches that English monolingualism offers the most obvious path to ‘success’ in US society. American nationalism and English monolingualism This ‘common sense’ impression linking ‘success’ with monolingual English fluency is heavily bolstered by the linkage between US nationalism and English monolingualism. As numerous commentators on American political culture have noted,8 Americans tend to be highly nationalistic, and their nationalism has typically had a strong cultural component in which English language conformity has played an important role (e.g. Higham, 1955). Further, this aspect of US nationalism tends to surge during periods when Americans feel threatened by ‘outside’ forces. In the post-9/11 period Americans have felt particularly threatened by international Muslim fundamentalists, and part of that threat has become focused on immigrants in general, and especially on unauthorized immigrants from Mexico.9 Accordingly, it was not surprising that, in the super-heated rhetoric over immigration reform in Washington DC in the first decade of the 21st century, political support for ‘protecting US borders’ and for the assimilation of immigrants

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through linguistic shift to English as critical to the national interest congealed into a singular mantra in debates in the US Congress, as well as in broadcasts from the plethora of conservative mass media that blanketed the country at the same time (e.g. Gaouette, 2006b, for a newspaper report on this political move). The net result is that in the US, the default position is that ‘good Americanism’ is (and has been for much of the country’s history) equated with the exclusive use of English in the country’s public and quasi-public spaces. The fact that this aggressive drive for linguistic conformity in the name of nationalism may be logically at odds with the liberal individualistic values of ‘freedom’ and ‘equal opportunity’ appears to play no role in the political calculations of many American political activists claiming to be prime supporters of individualistic political values.

Individualism, Nationalism, English Hegemony: Consequences for Latinos In summary, then, a combination of English language hegemony in the US, a linguistically-centered understanding of (and commitment to) US nationalism, and liberal individualistic understandings of ‘freedom’ and ‘equal opportunity’ work together to undermine the development of a political movement on behalf of bilingualism as a viable public policy in the US. As understood by most in the US, the liberal individualistic public values of ‘individual freedom’ and ‘equal opportunity’ ignore the stacked deck of the social and institutional contexts in which individual lives are lived, but succeed in placing the onus of responsibility for ‘success’ on the efforts of private individuals. Meanwhile, the hegemonic power of the ‘English fact’ in the US gives urgency to the importance of mastering English language fluency to individual newcomers to US society. And the nationalist, linguistically-centered conception that ‘good Americanism’ is realized only in the English language stigmatizes as foreign those who use Spanish (or other minority languages) in public or quasi-public spaces. Under this combination of dominant ideologies and linguistic hegemony, it is little wonder that Spanish speakers, even though favoring a bilingual approach to language policy by a wide margin, have not mounted a political campaign in favor of their goals. This paper suggests, then, that researchers should find evidence of the impact of this combination of ideological and hegemonic forces in the beliefs and actions of Latinos living in the contemporary US. Evidence that this is

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the case can be found in a recent book by Lisa García Bedolla (2005). García Bedolla’s work10 is centered on factors that aid or hinder the political engagement of Latinos in Los Angeles. Her analysis finds that attitudes toward language play a central role in generating conflict between US-born and immigrant Latinos, and diminishing their political engagement. Summarizing her respondents’ statements on the subject, García Bedolla (p. 72) states: Because language is integral to Latino collective identity, that that language is stigmatized means it negatively affects how group members see that language and those who use that language exclusively. As a result, whether or not a person spoke English, or spoke English with an accent, was very important to these respondents, and was the reason why many of the first generation felt they were treated badly at work and in the community. In particular, García Bedolla finds that the stigma attached to the Spanish language (and associated with Latino collective identity) causes many of her US-born Latino respondents to reject both the mastery of Spanish and those who use it extensively in the public and quasipublic spaces of southern California. After several extended quotations from her respondent ‘Carlos’, for example, García Bedolla (2005: 73) comments: Before Carlos arrived in the United States, he expected to feel connection and solidarity with people of Mexican origin living here. Instead, he feels he is singled out as an immigrant and looked down on by other Latinos because of his inability to speak unaccented English. He feels that other Latinos treat him badly because they have a negative view of their own racial group. The end result is that he feels defensive about and saddened by his position and treatment in the United States. García Bedolla finds that, in reacting to anti-Latino hostility displayed by Anglos, a hostility typically linked to the public use of Spanish or even to Spanish-accented English, many US-born Latinos belittle, avoid, and/ or even berate speakers of their heritage language in the belief that English monolingual fluency in public spaces is crucial to their own social mobility in the US. Underlying this, García Bedolla suggests, is the reality that in being racially identified as Latinos, the public display of Spanish by other Latinos (especially immigrants) in Southern California is experienced by many of her respondents as highly detrimental to their own prospects for social mobility, even if they themselves are

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English-speaking monolinguals. In this way, anti-Latino and assimilationist Anglos benefit from having Latinos ‘police’ the public display of language within their own group. At the same time, García Bedolla found that many monolingual English-speaking Latinos felt defensive and/or ambivalent about their inability to speak Spanish, since it is a widely-viewed marker of Latino collective identity, as well as a vehicle for effective communication with many of their family members and co-ethnics. In some cases, further, fluent Spanish-English bilingualism is seen by respondents as an economic advantage, particularly in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. This conflict is crucial to García Bedolla’s own analytic focus because she finds that Latinos with the strongest sense of positive collective Latino identity are most likely to be politically engaged, and the role of the Spanish language is central in relation to this sense of collective identity: On the one hand, knowing only Spanish causes negative experiences for immigrants; on the other, not knowing Spanish can be a disadvantage for the native born. This is another example of how Latinos struggle to feel positive about themselves and their group. Their collective identification is intimately related to their language, so it becomes problematic for some when they lose their connection to that language. Living in areas where they come into regular contact with immigrants who outsiders define as part of their racial group and yet who, at least from a linguistic standpoint, seem so different from them further complicates how they understand and experience their own group identity. (García Bedolla, 2005: 81–82) Though she does not analyze her findings in this way, García Bedolla’s argument about the role of stigma in shaping the response of many US-born Latinos to the public use of Spanish by other Latinos in contemporary southern California is consistent with my analysis above. More specifically, I argue that a Gramscian analysis of English hegemony, particularly in conjunction with US nationalism and the US political culture of liberal individualism, can be very helpful in understanding the attitudes and political behaviors displayed by García Bedolla’s respondents. Put somewhat differently, it might be argued that a ‘rational’ political response to the collective identity problem outlined by García Bedolla would be a national policy of fluent bilingualism, enabling Latinos (and others) to become fully bilingual in both English and Spanish. In that way, their social mobility (in English) would be assured, and their

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valued ethnic ties (via Spanish language mastery) would be sustained. Why has not such a rational response emerged as the basis for a political movement in support of a bilingual language policy? The answer, I believe, lies in the combination of liberal individualistic political culture, US nationalism, and English language hegemony outlined above. The individualistic political culture focuses the onus for ‘success’ on individuals and not on structures, policies or institutions, and it also undermines political thinking in general. US nationalism, in turn, especially with its heavy linguistic emphasis on English monolingualism in public spaces, undermines as ‘foreign’ any attempt to recognize the long-standing place of the Spanish language in American life. And this is a particularly debilitating influence on members of an ethno-racial group that is strongly supportive of US nationalism while its members are simultaneously viewed as foreign by many other Americans. Finally, the hegemonic status of the English language, not only in the US itself but increasingly throughout the world, renders English dominance so powerful that living one’s public life through it exclusively is experienced as ‘common sense’ for any rational person trying to advance her interests in the ‘real world’. A politics of bilingualism under these conditions of hegemonic power, seems increasingly and hopelessly quixotic — a project for dreamers and intellectuals, not for real people struggling to improve the lives of themselves and their families.

Prospects for a Counter-Hegemonic Ideology of Linguistic Pluralism Given this array of discursive political forces standing as obstacles to a strong political movement in favor of a pluralistic language policy in the US, what are the prospects for the development of a counterhegemonic ideology that might overcome these forces? Along with nearly everyone else, social scientists are notoriously inept at making accurate predictions about the political future, so the following ideas are presented as possible avenues for political exploration rather than as predictions of future success. How could a discursive formation be developed in the US that would effectively challenge linguistic assimilation with pluralism, bilingualism, as a ‘common sense’ public and private good, especially for Latinos? This is the central question that needs to be addressed here. One obvious way in which this might occur is through the adoption of linguistic pluralism as a ‘common sense’ good for all Americans, both

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privately and publicly. This is a political goal that I have outlined elsewhere (Schmidt, 2000: Chap. 8), and will not repeat that analysis here. If linguistic pluralism were to replace assimilation to English as the dominant discursive formation in relation to language policy in the US, the probability that Latinos and other language minorities would retain and develop their native-language fluency would be greatly improved. This would likely result because the ethno-linguistic incentive structure would be dramatically changed. However, the prospects seem very dim that such a country wide counter-hegemonic discursive formation might triumph in the foreseeable future. Another possible scenario for the development of a counterhegemonic movement for linguistic pluralism seems a bit more likely at the present time, though this would involve an escalation of ethnocentric political conflict in the US, particularly in relation to US Latinos but also in relation to Latin Americans more generally. This scenario is based on the possibility that Latino ethnic consciousness and solidarity may dramatically increase in the next several decades, and that that solidarity will include a focus on the Spanish language as a central marker of Latino ethnic identity. How might such a scenario develop? First, numerous collations of social scientific studies asking about which variables most influence the intensity of ethnic identification (e.g. Scott, 1990) point consistently to opposition as the single-most important factor. We should expect, then, that Latino ethnic solidarity will increase most under oppositional circumstances. The more ethno-racially based opposition that Latinos face, the more likely members of this group will feel bound to it as individuals. Further, it is also probable that increased opposition to Latinos, qua Latinos, would lead to a heightened sense of ‘linked fate’ between members of the group.11 Under these conditions, and given the preexisting link between Latino identity and the Spanish language, it is quite possible that being fluent in the Spanish language would increase in importance to members of the group. And to the degree that increased ethnic solidarity among Latinos leads to a belief that political action might ameliorate matters giving rise to grievances among group members, it is quite possible that increased opposition to Latinos could lead to greater involvement among group members with efforts to make a pluralistic language policy a matter of political priority and political engagement among group members. At the present time, the controversy over immigration in the US has led to a significant increase in animosity toward unauthorized immigrants from Mexico, and it seems likely that this animosity is generating a greater sense of opposition among all Latinos in the US. Previous

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experience in California (the US state with the largest number of Latinos) during the 1990s suggests that immigration-centered opposition might lead Latinos generally to an increased sense of ethno-racial solidarity and to a political shift away from the groups and/or political parties perceived as generating the anti-Latino political movement (in that case, it was the state’s Republican Governor, Pete Wilson, and his political party, that carried the brunt of Latino counter-hostility). In short, it is possible that increased Anglo public animosity toward immigrants, and toward Latinos in general, may lead to a backlash of ethno-racial political solidarity in which Spanish-English bilingualism will become a major ‘common sense’ good that most Latinos believe should be at the forefront of their group’s political efforts. Conceivably, that could lead to the development of a major effort to mount a counterhegemonic political movement among Latinos that would seek to displace the strong impulses toward linguistic assimilation that have proved dominant throughout US history. Though there is little reason for optimism along these lines at present, it appears to this writer nevertheless that currently the most likely form that a counter-hegemonic politics of language dynamic might develop in the near future would occur along the lines sketched here. However the future may develop over the next several decades, it is hoped that this essay has provided some insight into why there has been little political movement in favor of a pluralistic approach to language policy among Latinos (and other language minority populations) in the US in the past several decades. Notes 1. The term ‘Latinos’ refers here to persons living in the US, but with origins in Latin America or the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. 2. In a previous essay (Schmidt, 2007), I have explored the question of why, in a time when the English language has become dominant throughout much of the world as well as in the US itself, large numbers of English speakers in that country feel threatened enough to passionately support a political movement to make English the sole and ‘official’ public language of the US. 3. The material in this section draws upon and updates more extensively described and documented information presented in Schmidt (2000), especially Chapters 1, 4, and 7. 4. There is not space here to defend this assertion; however, interested readers would do well to begin with Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1945). See also Schmidt (2000). 5. This key phrase, by liberal philosopher Will Kymlicka (1989), signifies that no one can decide for me the meaning of ‘the good’ for my life — only I can do that ‘from the inside’. And further, I must have the right to learn from my own thought and life experience and, hence, to change my mind.

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6. In Myers v. Nebraska (1921), the US Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Nebraska law forbidding the teaching of ‘foreign languages’ (especially German) in the state’s public schools. 7. Hence, note the apparent common sense of the ‘time-on-task’ hypothesis regarding second language learning; see, for instance, Rodriguez (1982) for an eloquent and heartbreaking description of one family’s experience of this active process of consenting in the children’s language shift. But much research has demonstrated the falsity of the ‘time-on-task’ hypothesis (e.g. Cummins, 1996). 8. See, again, Tocqueville (1945) for an insightful reflection on American nationalism, and on American social conformity. A long line of subsequent commentators has written on the same subject, but there is not space here to document this assertion. 9. See Huntington (2004) for a good example of this alarm over the implications of Mexican-origin immigration for US national identity. 10. García Bedolla’s book (2005) is based on a series of one hundred in-depth interviews with Latinos ranging from teen-age to elderly, both US-born and immigrants, in East Los Angeles and Montebello, California. 11. See Dawson (1994) for an insightful description and deployment of this important analytical concept.

Chapter 8

Livin’ and Teachin’ la lengua loca:1 Glocalizing US Spanish Ideologies and Practices OFELIA GARCÍA

Introduction Spanish has had a continuous presence in the US since the time of settlement (Kloss, 1977). And yet, the language of US Latinos has always been seen as corrupt and loca, since it departs from the reality of what is considered ‘standard’ Spanish and English. A monoglossic language ideology2 pervades the US, insisting that language is just an autonomous monolithic skill in a ‘standard’, valuing English monolingualism above all else, and offensively targeting Spanish. In the early 21st century, as globalization has also penetrated the US, a different Spanish language ideology has come onto the scene. This one, constructed not by Anglophones but by Hispanophone elites mostly from Spain insists on the value of ‘standard’ Spanish for its global utility. Although supporting Spanish, this latter language ideology is every bit as monoglossic as the first one, for it views Spanish without regard to the multiple language practices and identities of US Latinos, what we will call here its ‘localicity’, and yet empowering it in ‘globalicity’. Supported by work on language ideologies, this chapter reviews these two monoglossic constructions that ignore the loca/l language practices of speakers. In order to exert power and control over US Latinos, Spanish is constructed as a minoritized language in the first ideology [prevalent in the US], and as a global language in the second one [prevalent in the Spanish-speaking world and especially in Spain]. But both ideologies exclude the local discourse practices of US bilinguals, what I have called elsewhere their ‘bilingualing’ (García, 2009). These monoglossic ideologies are then manifested in the ways in which Spanish is taught in the US; that is, in the teaching of Spanish (what is commonly called foreign language, second language, or heritage language 151

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education), as well as in the use of Spanish in teaching (what is generally called bilingual education). The chapter proposes that the two opposing monoglossic ideologies surrounding Spanish in the US, and the ways in which they are manifested in Spanish language education today, make it difficult to develop a US bilingual citizenry that can act on their multiple language-based identities. By giving only monoglossic options of language use and language allegiance, and by rejecting the localicity of their language practices, US Latinos are prevented from developing the Spanish/ English bilingualism and the multiple identities that would facilitate living and working in the local and global communities of the 21st century.

Linguistic Ideologies and Language Allegiances and Identities Scholars working within a linguistic ideology framework link linguistic practices to broader socio-political systems and show how beliefs about language are enmeshed in social systems of oppression and subordination of groups (see, for example, Gal, 1989; Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994; Schieffelin et al., 1998; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Based on Foucault’s (1991) concept of ‘governmentality’ and Gramsci’s (1971) notion of ‘hegemony’, linguistic ideologies explain how people acquiesce to the invisible cultural power of a ‘standard’ unmarked linguistic choice, thus becoming ‘regulatory’ mechanisms that unconsciously create categories of exclusion for those who manifest ‘loca/l’ marked ways of using language. In all of this, speakers always have room for agency and resistance, although the ways in which groups and individuals are situated in different social, historical and cultural contexts can prevent them from accessing certain linguistic resources or adopting new identities (see Heller, 1982, 1995; Norton & Toohey, 2001; Woolard, 1998). One of the most popular linguistic ideologies is that there is, or that there has to be, a link between language and identity. But the unidirection between language and identity has been questioned. Liebkind (1999), for example, has shown that there is a reciprocal role between language and identity; that is, language use influences the identity formation of the group, while at the same time, the identity of the group influences the patterns of attitudes and language uses. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985: 181) show how individual and social identity are mediated by language, with speakers creating speech acts as acts of projection in which

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‘the individual creates for himself the patterns of his linguistic behavior so as to resemble those of the group or groups with which from time to time he wishes to be identified, or so as to be unlike those from whom he wishes to be distinguished’. Pennycook (2003) has introduced the concept of performativity which indicates that people do not use language based on their identity; but instead, perform their identities by using language (Pennycook, 2000). The section that follows analyzes how it is that Spanish in the US has been constructed as a minoritized language3, without acknowledging the agency of US Latinos and the multiple linguistic identities that they discursively perform. It questions the propositions contained in the monoglossic construction that makes Spanish the culprit of all the problems experienced by US Latinos. In so doing, it exposes the linguicist views4 about US Latinos based on constructions about their language and its use. Spanish as a minoritized language: Anglophone constructions and deconstructions of a monoglossic language ideology That Spanish has been minoritized and constructed as a problem — the language of poor people of color, of conquered and colonized people, of immigrants — is brought to light by the characteristics assigned to Spanish speakers by the US Census, and reinforced daily by the linguistic prejudice manifested in the streets, in radio shows, in magazines and newspapers. Perhaps it is the comic Dame Edna who in an advice column that appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair expressed this linguicism best: Forget Spanish. There’s nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote. . . There was a poet named Garcia Lorca, but I’d leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone’s speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? (Ask Dame Edna, 2003). Spanish speakers are not only characterized as maids, leaf blowers, gardeners, and not worthy of intellectual pursuit, but they’re also perceived as having a single language allegiance and a ‘foreign’ identity which, as the Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington has said, ‘threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages’. Huntington (2004: 45) continues:

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There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English. There is no room in this language ideological construction by Huntington for US Latinos to fall, as they do, on all sides of that divide, with most falling on both. There is no possibility that the dream may be in English and Spanish, and hybrid versions thereof — American/ Americano — the essence of being and manifesting linguistically what it is to be a US Latino. The possibility of having multiple language identities and performances is also silenced by the way in which the US census gathers its data about language and ethnicity, preventing overlaps and excluding the possibilities of multiple discourses and identities. The US census then reinforces the picture of US Spanish as being the language of many foreign, immigrants, poor, and non-white Latinos. According to the US census, in 2005 there were 41,926,302 Latinos in the US; that is, one out of every seven people (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006). But the picture that emerges from close analysis is a lot more complex than the portrayal of a monolithic Spanish being the language of the too numerous and too similar, too foreign, and too Spanish speaking Latinos. Sixty-four percent of US Latinos were of Mexican origin in 2005 — 26,784,268. But this figure does not tell us about the complexity of language practices and identities in the Mexican origin population — some being newcomers, some longstanding, some workers, some professionals, some English speakers, some not. And this complexity is multiplied in the many national origins of the US Latino population, as displayed in Table 8.1. This table reveals other complexities that are not addressed in the monolithic construction of US Latinos and their language use. For example, the census attempts to identify the national origin of US Latinos, but there are over 3 million US Latinos who remain unidentified, perhaps because they have multiple national origins, possibly including the US, and the census does not facilitate multiple options. Table 8.1 also includes Spaniards. Although of Spanish speaking origin, these Spaniards are not Latin Americans. Yet, they are now considered US Latinos. It is perhaps this last detail that is most revealing to understand the immutable link that this US monoglossic language ideology constructs between language and identity, for it turns out that Spaniards, as ‘possible’ Spanish speakers, are also considered US Latinos. There is no way of being a Spanish speaker and not being identified as a

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Table 8.1 Origin of the US Latino population*i Country

Population

Percentage

Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Salvadorian Dominican Guatemalan Colombian Honduran Ecuadorian Peruvian Spaniard Nicaraguan Argentinean Venezuelan Panamanian Costa Rican Chilean Bolivian Uruguayan

26,784,268 3,794,776 1,462,593 1,240,031 1,135,756 780,191 723,596 466,843 432,068 415,342 362,424 275,126 189,303 162,762 141,286 111,978 105,141 68,649 51,646

63.9% 9.1% 3.5% 3.0% 2.7% 1.9% 1.7% 1.1% 1.0% 1.0% .9% .7% .5% .4% .3% .3% .3% .2% .1%

*Source: Pew Hispanic Center tabulations of 2005 American Community Survey, Table 3 i This table excludes those who did not provide a specific Hispanic origin (3,033,648), as well as those Central Americans other than those included in the table (99,422) and South Americans other than those included in the table (89,443).

US Latino. Likewise, there is no way of being a US Latino and not being identified as a Spanish speaker. And yet, many categorized as ‘Hispanics’ are not Spanish speakers. Table 8.2 deconstructs this monoglossic language ideology. Almost one fourth of those who consider themselves US Latinos (22%) speak English only at home. They could be English monolinguals, Table 8.2 US Latinos’ language use at home, +5 years of age* Language use at home

Number

Percentage

Speak only English at home

8,131,764

22%

29,073,428

78%

Speak Spanish at home

*Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 American Community Survey. Table B16006

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having experienced complete shift to English, for the language shift of US Latinos continues at an unrelenting pace (e.g. Alba & Nee, 2003; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). They could also have chosen to speak English at home because of family or personal circumstances. Many US Latinos live in language-mixed marriage situations, and thus are unable to exercise the option of speaking Spanish at home, although they may do so in the community and at work. Although the US census also manifests its monoglossic language ideology by never asking the degree of proficiency that respondents have in Spanish, it does so for English, asking those who claim to speak Spanish at home whether they speak English very well, well, not well or not at all (notice that no such question is asked of those who speak only English at home, although it can be assumed that many would not always rate their English proficiency as ‘very well’, for they may have no choice but to speak English at home). Forcing the option of the degree of ‘correctness’ with which one speaks a language obviates the existence of multiple linguistic practices having to do with different contexts, topics and interlocutors, and views language as an autonomous skill devoid of context or of the discursive practices of people, their ‘languaging’.5 Nevertheless, even if we take the figures for English language proficiency at face value, a number of problems regarding the construction of US Latinos as Spanish speakers emerges. Table 8.3 displays the results for English language proficiency of US Latinos who speak Spanish at home, and shows that 88% of US Latinos ‘language’ with English, since they have some proficiency in that language, that is, they speak English somewhat (either very well, well or not well). Under the most important federal legislation for US education, No Child Left Behind, the English language proficiency figures of those 5 to 17 years of age are used to make financial allocations to states. But in constructing the concept of a Limited English Proficient student (LEP) (also called English Language Learner or ELL in the literature), the Table 8.3 US Latinos’ English language proficiency, +5 years of age* English Language Proficiency

Number

Percentage

14,417,684

50%

Speak English ‘well’

5,559,872

19%

Speak English ‘not well’

5,616,346

19%

Speak English ‘not at all’

3,479,526

12%

Speak English ‘very well’

*Source: US Census, American Communtiy Survey, Table B16006

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federal government considers all students who speak English less than very well as LEPs. In Table 8.3, that would mean exactly half of all US Latinos, 50%. This is again a way of constructing US Latinos are lacking, limiting, learners, inferior, and assigning their loca/l language practices the blame for economic and educational failure. Looking at the same figures from a heteroglossic angle, and not a monoglossic one, we could celebrate the fact that 88% of them have some degree of bilingualism and able to tap into these multiple language practices and language identities. Elsewhere I have argued that those who the government and educators call Limited English Proficient or English Language Learners would be best considered ‘emergent bilinguals’, a recognition that as they acquire English they are also becoming bilingual and that that schools would serve them better if they acknowledged this fact (García et al., 2007). The process of English language acquisition for US Latinos involves bilingualism. Ignoring the complex loca/l ‘bilingualing’ or what I have called ‘translanguaging’6 of US Latinos — their multiple discursive practices — continues to be a way to exclude them from educational and economic opportunities. A monoglossic language ideology also constructs the idea that foreign-born US Latinos are Spanish-speaking monolinguals. Yet, the figures in Table 8.4 reveal that although the foreign born speak more Spanish at home (96%) than those born in the US (64%), nevertheless 80% of the foreign born also ‘language’ with English. In considering language an autonomous category, the US census doesn’t give the possibility of tapping into the multiple language practices of all US Latinos; that is, their ‘translanguaging’. Speaking of the hybrid language practices and identities of youth of Mexican American descent Bejarano (2005: 28) says: The experience of living and breathing the geopolitics of the border, the literary, linguistic, and cultural forms and embeddedness of the Table 8.4 Place of birth and language use of US Latinos over 5 years of age* Born in the US

Foreign Born

7,482,190

36%

649,574

4%

Speak Spanish

13,188,897

64%

15,884,531

96%

Speak English Vwell, Well, NW

12,952,162

98%

12,641,740

80%

236,735

1%

3,242,791

20%

Speak only English

Speak English ‘not at all’

*Source: U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table B160051

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border, means understanding the distinct languages that come from this area, the cultural practices and nuances of the region, the social, cultural, and political messages and lessons displayed in art, performances, writings, and languages, and how people live their lives in these spaces. People en la frontera (on the border) or people who have had the border experience comprehend the hybrid nature of their existence — their situatedness within representations of mestizaje.7 The US census simply ignores the linguistic mestizaje of US Latinos in the many fronteras of the US. Yet another way in which this monoglossic language ideology is constructed is by racializing the Spanish of US Latinos. Urciuoli (1996: 15) explains that ‘when groups are seen in racial terms, language differences are ideologically problematic’ and typified as the characteristic of those who are ‘out of place’ and ‘unwilling, or unable to do their bit for the nation-state.’ US Spanish, having evolved in situations of conquest, colonization, and immigration has been racialized and judged to be ‘out of place’ in the US, something to be made fun of by Dame Edna, the comic, a lengua loca. US Spanish gets further constructed as a language of poverty by conflating ethnicity and language (García & Mason, 2009).8 For example, we are told that in 2005 the median income of US Latinos was $36,000 compared to $50,000 for white non-Latinos, and the implication is that it is Spanish that is the culprit for this lower income. But if we look only at native-born US Latinos who presumably must be English speakers, we realize that they also are doing much worse than whites. In fact, the median income of native born US Latinos, all English speakers, was $39,000, higher than foreign-born Latinos ($34,000) but very much lower than the $50,000 median income of white non-Latinos (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006). Clearly something else besides language is taking place here. The Swiss economist, François Grin (2003) has explained that if one language is promoted to prominent status, then its native speakers will have social and economic advantages precisely because of the competence in the prestigious language. By constructing Spanish as a language of poverty and ‘erasing’ the ‘translanguaging’ of US Latinos, white English monolinguals enjoy privilege while excluding US Latinos. Research on language and income for US Latinos focuses on Englishlanguage ability or on Spanish monolingualism, without considering the impact of their bilingualism. All studies reiterate that there is an income differentials between Spanish monolinguals and English-speaking

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Latinos (NCEP, 1982; Bloom & Grenier, 1996). The disparities in income supported when comparing Spanish monolinguals with those who speak English as if there are two opposing categories, promote the gradual construction of English as the language of economic opportunity and Spanish as one of limited opportunity and poverty. But most importantly, it makes Spanish-English bilingualism nonexistent as a category of analysis. When scholars have considered bilingualism as a valid variable in studying the question of the relationship between language and income, their findings have been different from those identified above. In a 1990 study, García found that English monolingualism had no effect whatsoever on income, especially for Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County where Spanish had negotiated for itself a role not only for communication, but also for economic value (García, 1995). These findings were confirmed by Boswell in 2000 who claimed that for both Florida and Miami–Dade County: ‘Hispanics who speak English very well and speak Spanish have higher incomes, lower poverty rates, higher educational attainment, and better-paying jobs than Hispanics who only speak English. The differential in mean income is especially apparent’ (p. 422). In Miami–Dade County, and other such US cities, Spanish-English bilingualism has begun to emerge as a valuable economic resource. Linton (2003: 24) has also found that there is a ‘positive relationship between upward mobility and bilingualism’. The development of this positive relationship is explained through Portes and Rumbaut’s (1996, 2001) model of selective acculturation. The selective acculturation model allows a person to adapt to the majority culture while still holding on to elements of the other one. Selective acculturation explains that when ethnic networks and strong communities (such as that of the Cuban American population in Miami–Dade County) support children to deal with prejudice, navigate the education system, and find a place in the labor market for the ethnic language, bilingualism can bring equal, if not greater, benefits. Affirming the value of Spanish–English bilingualism, Massey (1995: 648) has said: ‘Increasingly the economic benefits and prospects for mobility will accrue to those able to speak both languages and move in both worlds.’ Spanish as a global language: Hispanophone constructions and deconstructions of a monoglossic language ideology Spurred by Spain’s economic growth in the last decade, Spanish has recently begun to be marketed as a global language, a language that is

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‘fashionable’ (Álvarez-Martínez, 2001; Guareschi, 2001), a lengua ‘loca’ in the Ricky Martin sense of chic ‘Latinidad’ (Mar-Molinero, 2008), trendy fashions and promising financial returns. The government of Spain has been at the center of this activity through what Hamel (2004) has called a ‘Hispanofonía’ that constructs unity: basado en una política de diversidad piramidal. [España] ya no intenta exportar, como en sus primeros años, el español con la ‘zeta’. Admite la diversidad del español. [based on politics of pyramidal diversity. [Spain] doesn’t try to export, as it did during its first years, Spanish with the ‘zed’. It allows the diversity of Spanish.] This construction attempts to include the lengua loca of US Spanish speakers, but always with peninsular Castilian at the top of the pyramid (Fernández Rodríguez, 2005). The reality is even more rigid and starker. What are the reasons for this apparent flexibility when ‘standard’ Castilian Spanish had been promoted as the sole ‘legitimate’ language since in 1492 Elio Antonio de Nebrija in his Gramática declared it to be ‘compañera del imperio’ (companion to the Empire). In 1713 the Real Academia Española had further linked the Spanish identity to Castilian, under its motto, ‘Limpia, fija y da esplendor’ [cleans, sets and brightens]. The sociolinguist Louis-Jean Calvet (1999) provides an answer by explaining that without Latin America — and we can add, the Spanish speakers of the US — Spanish would be considered only a regional language in Spain, as is Catalan and Basque (Euskara). Although Spanish is spoken today by between 322 and 358 million people as a native language, only 28 million, that is 9%, live in Spain itself (Gordon, 2005). This last figure might be even lower since it was gathered in 1986, before the enormous language consciousness uprising that is now present in the autonomous regions in Spain. A global language is characterized not only by demographics, but also by its economic, political and cultural power (Ammon, 2003). Spanish has clearly a strong demographic presence. With over 350 million people who speak it natively, Spanish holds third place in the world. According to the Anuario del Instituto Cervantes and Ethnologue (15th edition) (Gordon, 2005), Spanish has between 358 and 420 million speakers worldwide. This puts Spanish in third place, after Chinese and Hindi/ Urdu, and before English! Spanish is also spoken in 20 countries. Only English, French and Arabic are spoken in more states than Spanish.

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Table 8.5 Number of Spanish native speakers in millions* Native speakers (in millions)

Speakers (other) (in millions)

Total speakers (in millions)

1. Mandarin

873

178

1,051

2. Hindi/Urdu 3. Spanish

366 358

120 70

486 428

4. English

341

169

510

Language

*Source: Ethnologue, 2005

But in this construction of Spanish as a powerful language demographically there are also limitations. The concept of a ‘native language’ or a ‘mother tongue’ has been questioned by many (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981, 2000, 2008; Garcia, 2009). Many Latin Americans in officially monolingual Spanish speaking countries, as well as US Latinos, do not speak Spanish as their home language. Again, the construct of a language as a standard autonomous skill without reference to the social practices of its speakers and the context in which it is used is flawed. But if the majority of these ‘Spanish’ speakers come from countries where poverty is rampant, does Spanish hold any economic power? According to Graddol (1997: 29), international business in English accounts for $2338 billion dollars, whereas Spanish accounts for $610 billion, putting Spanish in sixth place in the global order — after Japanese, German, Russian and French, in that order. The Engco model, developed by the British Council (Graddol, 1997) considers not only the demographics of a language and its economic power, but also the fact that its speakers participate in social networks beyond local ones. Thus, it combines three factors: (1) demographic ones, including the number of speakers, their age and their rate of urbanization; (2) economic ones, such as the Gross National Product and the opening to international business; and, (3) the UN Development Index which combines a quality of life index with literacy and education. Using this Global Influence Index, and using 100 for English in order to compare the strength of the other languages, Graddol has determined that Spanish ranks fifth, after English, German, French and Japanese. But Spanish would not be in any way capable of gaining global standing if it were not for Latin America and the Spanish speaking market in the US. The Spanish-speaking Latin American market is huge — consisting of over 324 million ‘possible’ speakers. It has grown exponentially, from $40 million in 2005 to $168 million in 2006. And Spain’s investment

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in these Latin American markets has been swift, growing since 1986 by 40 times, and surpassing those of the US, especially in the areas of banking, finance, telecommunications, mines and agriculture (Casilda Béjar, 2001). The US Latino market cannot be ignored in this newly held economic power of Spanish, for it represents more than three times the consumer power of the rest of the Spanish speaking world (Carreira, 2002). In 2003, the US Latino population controlled $653 billion in consumer power, and this is expected to reach 1 trillion in 2008 (Selig Center for Economic Growth, 2003). The US Latino market is growing eight times more rapidly than the rest of the US market (Villa, 2000). From 1990 to 2002, the consumer power of the US Latino population doubled (Carreira, 2002). Total advertising spending for Spanish-language media reached $5.6 billion in 2006 — a 14.4% increase from 2005 (Hispanic Market Weekly, 2007). And from 1990 to 2002, the earnings from Spanish language ads increased more than seven times — from $14.3 million in 1970 to $111 million in 1990, to $786 million in 2002 (Eric García, personal communication). Univisión, the largest Spanish language television network in the US, ranks fifth in viewers after the four big ones that transmit in English — ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. The economic power of Spanish in the US cannot be ignored. Marcos-Marín (2006) remarks that the economic volume produced by Spanish in US television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines and schools is superior to that of any other Spanish-speaking country in the world. Despite Spain’s campaign for the expansion of a globalized Spanish, its economic value rests — to a large extent — on the language of US Latinos. The language practices of US Latino communities, even in the media, have little to do with a global image of Spanish. Listen to a supposedly Spanish language radio call-in program, and you will soon understand that Spanish varieties and English varieties coexist, often within the discourse of a single caller. This bilingualing reflects the linguistic mestizaje of US Latinos that we pointed out before, living in the many fronteras or borderlands where there is constant penetration of languages and discourses. But in the global context mediated by technology in which local varieties of US Spanish are projected today, its localicity interacts with its new globalicity, resulting in the ‘glocalization’9 of Spanish — its g/loca/l/icity. It is this ‘g/loca/l/icity’ that has started to spur the agency of US Latinos, insisting that more heteroglossic language ideologies be considered. Schools, as the most important agent in the ‘transmission’ of language practices, play an important role in upholding and promoting language ideologies. The next section looks at how monoglossic language

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ideologies are reflected in Spanish language education in the US, and how they have been, and continue to be, contested.

Teaching la lengua loca: The Teaching of Spanish and Spanish in Teaching Spanish has been officially present in US schools since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded half of Mexico’s territory to the US. For example, in 1874, in the Territory of New Mexico, 70% of the schools were in Spanish, 33% were bilingual, and only 5% were in English only (Del Valle, 2003). Although teaching in Spanish has continued to this very day, it has always been contested. It exists today in the form of bilingual education and, although calling itself ‘bilingual’, suffers from the monoglossic language ideologies identified above and the tensions between local and global varieties. But nowhere is this tension and contestation between local and global varieties of Spanish more prevalent than in the teaching of Spanish itself. In the next section, we consider three manifestations of the teaching of Spanish in the US: the so-called ‘foreign’ language education, what has become known as ‘heritage’ language education, and what we might call global language education. Teaching Spanish as a ‘foreign’ language The official history of teaching Spanish in the US starts at Harvard in the early 19th century, in the hands of such well-known literati as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Washington Irving (for a more complete history, see García, 1997). The first professional association for the teaching of Spanish, the American Association for the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) was founded around World War I, as German was substituted by Spanish in secondary schools. Lawrence Wilkins, the first AATSP president, insisted that Spanish should never be taught in elementary schools and never be taught by native Spanish speakers, thus making local varieties of Spanish illegitimate (García, 1997). Aurelio Espinosa, himself of Hispanic background and the first editor of its journal, Hispania, declared that ‘The best modern Spanish. . . is that spoken by the educated people of Old and New Castile’ (1923: 244) and that ‘American teachers must do in the future 99% of the teaching of Spanish. . .’ (1925: 281). Despite the insistence that only Castilian Spanish be used, disregarding the local varieties of US Latinos, the teaching of Spanish in the US has grown in direct proportion to the growth of the US Latino

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population. For example, in 1960 the US census counted 6.9 million US Latinos compared to 42 million in 2005, accounting for a 500% growth. Likewise, the number of students of Spanish in public secondary schools has increased from 691,024 in 1958 to 4,057,608 in 2000, indicative of a 487 percent growth (Draper & Hicks, 2002). Clearly the interest in learning Spanish is directly proportional to the US population that speaks Spanish. Although many in the profession continue to emphasize the ‘foreignness’ of Spanish, it is its ‘localicity’ as a language in the US that makes its learning important. Despite the enormous growth of US Latinos, the teaching of Spanish remains in the hands of Anglophones and targets English monolingual students, ignoring the many who sit in classes where their Spanish is silenced. Spanish language textbooks, for example, are written for English speaking teachers without sufficient Spanish language proficiency in Spanish to be able to follow complex explanations and instructions. And Spanish language lessons are delivered mostly in English and reject the local varieties spoken by the US Latinos in the same classes. An indication of this monoglossic ideology which privileges English even in the teaching of Spanish, is New York State’s English Regents High School examination. The Regents test, given to assess the culmination of Spanish language learning in high school, is written for the benefit of Anglophone students and to the detriment of those who know Spanish best — Latino newcomers. An example from the Listening Section of the test serves to exemplify this. After reading the directions in English, the students listen to the following text, read by the teacher: • You are listening to the radio in Spain and you hear: 쐍 Subway to Sally es un grupo musical que se ha apoderado de las listas de popularidad en gran parte de Europa. Y no es para menos, pues estos siete alemanes han podido hacer una mezcla de lo más extraño, ya que combinan melodías de la Edad Media con música típica europea y sonidos de metal moderno. Así que si eres una de las personas que le gusta escuchar cosas nuevas en la escena musical, este disco es para ti. • What is unique about this group's music? 쐍 Their music is played on all the major subways in Europe. 쐍 Their music combines old melodies with modern sounds. 쐍 Their music features an orchestra. 쐍 Their music is only sold in Germany. Despite supposedly assessing Spanish language proficiency, it is English language proficiency that is required to answer this question, since

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English is the language of directions, contextualization, and especially of the question and the options for answers. In fact, High School Latino newcomers do poorly in the Spanish language Regents because, despite being Spanish monolingual students, they do not have sufficient English language ability to be able to select the right options. Both the reading and the writing sections of the Spanish language Regents privilege English knowledge. In the reading section, the questions and options are in English. In the writing section, the situation presented and the points to be included are all in English. Those who construct the test hold on to a tight monoglossic language ideology that privileges English above all else, even when the purpose of teaching has been precisely to develop Spanish language proficiency. Becoming proficient in Spanish is not a serious goal even in Spanish language teaching. And local varieties of Spanish and ways of speaking of bilingual Latinos are excluded from classrooms. Teaching Spanish as a ‘heritage’ language Understanding the inappropriateness of Spanish as a ‘foreign’ language for US Latinos, Guadalupe Valdés held a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute in 1978 to encourage thinking about this topic. Classes for Spanish for Native Speakers or Spanish for Spanish Speakers started to grow in the 1980s at both the secondary and tertiary levels (Valdés, 1997b). Since then, attention to this field has increased, although its growth has been slow and insufficient (for more on this see Valdés et al., 2006). In the year 2000, only 41,212, that is, 1.9% of secondary school students who take Spanish, were in classes for Spanish speakers (Draper & Hicks, 2002). This number is minute if we compare it to the 8,595,305 school-aged students (5 to 17) who were classified as Latinos in 2000, or even to the 928,765 US Latinos who were then 15 to 17 years of age. Recognizing that not all US Latinos are native speakers, or even Spanish speakers, Valdés, Lozano & García-Moya (1981) spoke of ‘teaching Spanish to the Hispanic bilingual’. But in the last decade, the term ‘bilingual’ has taken negative connotations in the US (more on this below), leading Spanish language educators to distance themselves from the bilingual education profession. The term ‘Hispanic bilingual’ has been slowly substituted for ‘speaker of Spanish as a “heritage” language’. Cummins (2005) explains the change in terminology: [R]ecent academic initiatives in relation to heritage languages can be seen as an attempt to establish an independent sphere of discourse

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where heritage language support can be debated on its own merits rather than viewed through the lens of preexisting polarized attitudes towards bilingual education and immigration. (p. 586) Despite the good intentions of these educators, the term ‘heritage language’ is in some ways indicative of the retreat — retreat from Spanish, from bilingualism, backwards towards something old, something that doesn’t quite belong in the present and that is out of place in schools where only English is valued (García, 2005). A monoglossic language ideology prevails ignoring the bilingualing of these speakers. And despite the intention of the Spanish as ‘heritage’ language profession to honor the local Spanish varieties of the Latino students, these continue to be put in their backward place behind a more global Spanish ‘standard’, and especially behind English, the true language of globalization and future. Teaching Spanish as a global language Very recently, Spain has started to export its language education industry to the US, claiming that Spanish is global, chic, and fashionable. The arm of this education enterprise has been the Instituto Cervantes, established on May 11, 1990 with a clear purpose — ‘agrupar y potenciar los esfuerzos en la defensa y promoción del español en el extranjero’ [to group and potentialize the efforts in the defense and promotion of Spanish outside of Spain] (Sánchez, 1992). To accomplish this goal, 66 centers have been established to date, four of them in the US — in Albuquerque, Chicago, Seattle and New York. Among the most important activities of these centers is the teaching of Spanish as a global language, the preparation of teachers for such an enterprise, and the certification of Spanish language professionals through its DELE (Diploma de español como lengua extranjera). The Instituto has developed a virtual Spanish language classroom (the AVE or Aula Virtual de español) that especially targets children between the ages of seven to nine years old, and offers Spanish language classes. But the activities of the Instituto reflect a clearly monoglossic language ideology, focusing on the global, without any concern of the local. Speaking about the AVE, the website says: La variedad principal del AVE y norma del corpus que se propone al alumno como modelo de lengua para su reproducción es el español peninsular central. . . . La selección de esta variedad como principal está fundamentada en que el español peninsular central tiene suficiente importancia demográfica

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y proyección hacia el conjunto de la comunidad hispanohablante a través de manifestaciones culturales y medios de comunicación. . . . (www. cervantes.es) [The principal variety of the AVE and the corpus norm offered to the student as the language model for reproduction is central peninsular Spanish. . . . The selection of this variety as the major one rests in that peninsular Spanish has much demographic importance and projection towards the many Spanish-speaking communities through cultural manifestations and the communication media] This manifests an ideology of language domination that clearly puts peninsular Spanish at the top. This monoglossic language ideology is reflected in the fact that, for example, during the spring of 2005, the Instituto Cervantes offered 95 sections of Spanish as a foreign language classes, although only one section was specifically for Spanish speakers. Seen now from a Hispanophone perspective, the Spanish of US Latinos is also ostracized, debased, stigmatized. Attention is only paid to the more powerful variety, the one that is official, the one that has the army and the economy (Villa, 2000), and that wants to keep for itself global advantages. In Spain, the Spanish teaching industry produces 4 billion dollars annually, establishing that it can teach Spanish without incorporating US, or even Latin American, language practices, and keeping for itself this new business niche. Bilingual education and the erasure of Spanish US schools have been the battleground in which the struggle for control over language, and the resources it can accrue, is settled, and where the lengua loca is tamed. By establishing a clear linguistic hierarchy with English on top, Spanish at the bottom, and bilingualism as non-existent, US educational policy ensures that educational privilege continues to be in the hands of English monolinguals. And yet, as we have said, bilingual education has always had a place in US schools. Its ‘official’ controversial story, however, starts in 1968 with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act, also known as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Originally, federal funds were used for school systems to organize and implement bilingual education programs to teach the nation’s failing bilingual students — mostly Mexican Americans in the southwest and Puerto Ricans in the northeast.10 But these programs turned quickly from being ‘educational alternatives’ into ‘linguistic programs’ to teach English. The transitional bilingual education programs that resulted, used Spanish only as a tool to learn English,

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subjugating Spanish, although giving entry, perhaps, to local varieties of Spanish. Despite the attention to Spanish that bilingual education promoted, bilingual education professionals had little to do with Spanish language professionals. The differences had much to do with the emphasis of bilingual educators on using Spanish as an instrument of education, and not as a linguistic goal in itself. In the 1980s, bilingual education in the US started to come under attack, as the English Only movement gathered force (e.g. Crawford, 2004; Del Valle, this volume; Ricento, this volume; Schmidt, this volume). Today, political pressures have significantly restricted opportunities for bilingual education. California, Massachusetts and Arizona have declared bilingual education illegal. In 2001, Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the Bilingual Education Act) was eliminated as part of the authorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (Crawford, 2004). Eugene Garcia (2005: 98) describes these changes: Whereas the 1994 version of the Bilingual Education Act included among its goals ‘developing the English skills. . .and to the extent possible, the native-language skills’ of LEP students, the new law stresses skills in English only. The word bilingual has been completely eliminated from the law. The silencing of the word ‘bilingual’ from US discourse is noticeable. The chart below displays some of these changes in wording to erase what Crawford (2004) calls ‘the B-Word’. Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) Æ

Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement and Academic Achievement for LEP students (OELA)

National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE) Æ

National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA)

Title VII of Elementary and Secondary Education Act: The Bilingual Education Act Æ

Title III of No Child Left Behind, Public Law 107–110: Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students, 2001

The high accountability measures of NCLB require mandatory, high stakes tests in English for all children (Menken, 2008; Wiley & Wright, 2004). As Crawford (2004: 332) has said: In the name of ‘accountability’, it created new carrots and sticks that may ultimately prove more powerful than Unz’s initiatives in pressuring schools to adopt all English instruction.

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Especially since the passage of NCLB, bilingual education has taken a different linguistic path. Instead of honoring and using the children’s different loca/l ways of translanguaging, it insists on ‘dual languages’, with English duly separated from Spanish and positioning itself way above Spanish. The two-way bilingual classrooms that have grown in the last decade mix children with different linguistic profiles, and although there is renewed potential in this arrangement, there is also danger (for more on this, see García, 2006; Valdés, 1997a). When high-stakes assessment takes place in English only, and children are linguistically mixed, it is easy for English to overcome Spanish. This happens especially because the Spanish of the classroom has been ‘sanitized’, gaining distance from a community that is no longer welcomed in school. A global standard Spanish is reified as the one with value and potential in the global market. Two-way bilingual classrooms have much potential, but only if they rid themselves of the monoglossic language ideologies in which they exist, and allow the forces of globalization to support local US Spanish varieties, that is, only if glocalization is achieved. In the fluid linguistic fronteras in which US Latinos live, there can be no language separation, even if mandated by educational policy. Children in two-way bilingual classrooms violate this language separation all the time. And teachers do also. Encouraging these more hybrid language practices of US schoolchildren, both US Latinos and non-Latinos, would do much to break the stronghold of English monoglossic language practices. It would also support translanguaging as the ‘glocalized’ result of the entrecruces in which US Spanish lives.

Conclusion Although monoglossic language ideologies concerning Spanish and US Latinos persist in the 21st century, there is a new possibility for US Spanish as it ‘glocalizes’. Spanish in the US has left the ‘barrio’ extending itself to fancy movie theatres and going ‘mainstream’. The Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty la Fea was acquired by the Mexican actress, Salma Hayek, herself an Academy Award nominee for her role in the movie Frida Kahlo. Hayek is now the executive producer of Ugly Betty airing in ABC and starring, in English, America Ferrera as Betty Suárez, the daughter of an immigrant family from Queens whose father is undocumented. Alfonso Cuarón, born in Mexico, directed the third film of the Harry Potter series and became a household word with his Academy Award nomination for Children of Men. Teenagers rap Raggaetón music

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with its mix of English and Spanish. Schoolchildren are heard in the streets to repeat Ricky Martin’s Livin’ la vida loca, and Shakira´s Baila en la calle de noche, baila en la calle de día. Disney’s huge hit among young adolescents, High School Musical, stars a Hispanic female character, Gabriella Montez, who is dating the white Anglo blonde basketball star. The name of the character is not Gabriela, but Gabriella, already signaling the hybridity in identity and languages that characterizes much of US culture, and US Latinos. Likewise, very young children who in the 1980s and 1990s watched as Luis and Maria interacted from ‘the margins’ with the muppets in Sesame Street, are now following the bilingual Dora the Explorer, the protagonist of a show that entices them to ‘Come on, vámonos’ and who embodies the growing hybridization of US culture. Spanish and Spanish-English bilingualism, and especially the multiple identities that ‘cross-over’ singers and movie and television stars project today, make it difficult to keep US Spanish and Latinos in the corner. Glocalization offers opportunities to revise and reconstitute the US outdated monoglossic language ideologies, as well as the language education practices that it produces. Perhaps the words of the most successful ‘cross-over’ singer, the Colombian Shakira, may do us well to understand this linguistic interpenetration, this hybrid heteroglossia that characterizes the US Latino community and that is here to stay. The option is not being Latino or being American, or speaking Spanish or not, the problem is that Spanish and English, as Shakira sings: Whenever, wherever We’re meant to be together. I’ll be there and you’ll be near and that’s the deal, my dear. So, that’s the deal — that the history of US conquest, colonization and invasions of Latin America have brought Latinos to ‘language’ also with English. And that the current globalization and technology revolution has brought a new dimension to those language practices that include Spanish, as well as English. And that no matter how hard US schools try, these language practices are products of sociopolitical conditions that speakers will continue to use as acts of projection. And that even if the US federal government refuses to accept that nationhood in a globalized world is much more than one language, one identity; many North Americans, including US Latinos, claim languages and identities in other ways. The concept of ‘glocalization’ offers the possibility to break the immutable link between language and identity that has equated

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English with US identity unequivocally, acknowledging that particularizing and universalizing tendencies are simultaneously copresent in languages practices, language allegiances and identities. Spanish and English local and global varieties, and the multiple identities that these produce in their unending combinations, are meant to be and work together for the common good of all. Notes 1. Livin’ and teachin’ la lengua loca reflects Ricky Martin’s (the Puerto Rican singer) popular song, Livin’ la vida loca. Although Spanish has made its way into popular mainstream music in the US, it often names realities that are outside of the ordinary. Loca, besides connoting craziness and disorganization, points to the local nature of US Spanish, even as it is popularized globally in music. 2. For an extensive discussion of monoglossic language ideologies, see Del Valle (2000). 3. We use ‘minoritized’ here to indicate that power has been exerted to keep Spanish in check. Others have used this term as well (e.g. Skutnabb-Kangas & McCarty, 2008). 4. Skutnabb-Kangas (1988: 13) defines linguicism as ‘ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language’. 5. We use ‘languaging’ here in the sense given to us by Yngve (1996) who uses the term to differentiate between the discursive practices of people, their ways of using language, from the construction of ‘language’ outside of human beings. Swain (2006) has also used the term ‘languaging’ to indicate language as action to make meaning for ourselves and others. 6. For more on this concept of ‘translanguaging’, see García (2009). 7. Mestizaje is a Spanish word to refer to the fusion of cultures and races that is common in Latin America. 8. The next four paragraphs have been adapted from García and Mason (2009). 9. The term ‘glocalization’, coined by Japanese economists was popularized by Roland Robertson who describe it as the simultaneity, the co-presence, of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies. We have used the term in the title of our co-authored book (García et al., 2007). 10. For more on the history of bilingual education, see especially Crawford (2004) and E. García (2005).

Chapter 9

Bilingual Education: Assimilation, Segregation and Integration RAFAEL SALABERRY

Introduction Bilingual education in the US is viewed by some people with suspicion as one of many ways of enhancing the threat that minority languages (in particular, Spanish) pose to English as the preeminent language. Bilingual education is thus regarded as an educational program that leads to segregation by enhancing the already strong ties between language and cultural identity (e.g. Barry, 2001; Rossell & Baker, 1996). This perspective is the one explicitly presented in conservative media (e.g. on television, for instance, FOX news is a good example) and implicitly accepted in less conservative media (e.g. CNN and PBS on television, and NPR on radio). In contrast with this view, I will argue that bilingual education can become a highly integrationist educational program by effectively softening the connections between language and cultural identification. More specifically, I propose that (at least some) bilingual education programs (cf. dual language programs) can help to promote a more encompassing view of the connection between language and identity than is normally presented in monolingual programs. That is, bilingual programs in which both majority and minority language speakers participate may be useful to make explicit and demistify the connection between language and identity, thereby making children more open to differing cultural viewpoints (indirectly represented in majority and minority language groups). In essence, contrary to popular opinion, bilingual schooling may help children become less identified with the strong version of monolingual allegiances. In turn, a broadened view of the connection between language and perceived identities can help future citizens develop a more representative and socially just mainstream society (cf. Appiah, 2005; Barry, 2001; Gutmann, 2003; Kymlicka, 1995; Kymlicka & Patten, 2003; May, 2001; Nussbaum, 1997, 2001; Pogge, 2003). 172

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Language and Cultural Changes in the US According to popular (and erroneous) beliefs, Spanish speakers, unlike previous generations of immigrants, are not learning English, preferring instead to speak Spanish both at home and at work. The recent success of Hispanic-based media (music, television, movies) and Hispanic-focused marketing serves to reaffirm the assumption that Spanish is moving from the home environment to the work environment, and mainstream society in general (e.g. Dávila, 2001; SuarezOrozco & Paez, 2001). As a consequence, Spanish is regarded as a threat to the use of English as the only lingua franca in the US.1 However, both sociolinguistic studies and demographic data show the fallacy of the argument about the vitality of Spanish in the US. In reality, this time is not any different than it was the case for previous generations of minority language immigrants (e.g. Alba, 2003; Brodie et al., 2002; Crawford, 2000; Del Valle, 2003; Ricento, 2000; Schmid, 2001; Silva-Corvalán, 1994). The only reason Spanish continues to be used to such an extent in the US is because there is a constant flux of new Spanish-speaking immigrants to this country. This first generation of immigrants is always mother tongue dominant (i.e. Spanish). The children and grandchildren of the immigrants, however, present a very different profile. For instance, in her study on immigrants from Los Angeles, Silva-Corvalán (1994) concluded that among the first native-born generation (i.e. second generation of immigrants), 90% of them are fluent in English and most are bilingual. Among the second native-born generation, 50% are monolingual English speakers, most others are bilingual speakers, and only in rare circumstances, some are dominant Spanish speakers. Demographic data provide further empirical support for the abovementioned contention. For instance, a study published by the Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation (Brodie et al., 2002) shows that 72% of immigrants to the US were monolingual Spanish speakers and 24% were bilinguals. Among the second generation of immigrants (first US native-born), in contrast, approximately half are English monolinguals and the other half are bilinguals. Most dramatically, by the third generation (second native-born), almost 80% are monolingual English speakers and the rest are bilinguals. The trend is unmistakable and is further confirmed by the analysis of the 2000 Census data carried out by the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research from SUNY Albany (Alba, 2004). These statistics are not surprising. As Del Valle (2003: 96) points out, ‘the biggest incentive to learning and using English continues to be economic, a rationale neither supported not mitigated by naturalization laws’. Cornell and Bratton

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(1999: 629) add, more specifically that ‘[t]he minority can retain its language and its economic independence only by restricting itself to segregated workplaces and to teams that are monolingual in the minority language’. The apparent lack of awareness of the above mentioned trend of rapid loss of mother tongue among second and third generation immigrants is probably due to a combination of several factors. For one thing, the topic of immigration is highly politicized; thus, any set of data is bound to have many differing interpretations depending on the political objectives of the analysts (or simply the inaccurate interpretation of statistical data). For instance, Crawford (2000) points out that many observers looking at the 2000 US Census data may conclude that nonEnglish speakers increased seven times faster than English speakers (103% versus 15% respectively). This conclusion, however, as pointed out by Crawford, is unwarranted given that the number of second language English speakers also increased by about the same percentage (99%). In fact, the more meaningful trend of the three reviewed by Crawford is the increase of second-language English speakers given that such increase shows that people who are not native speakers of English are actually becoming part of the English-speaking society at a substantially fast rate (at least as fast as new immigrants enter the country: 99% versus 103%). This trend give credence to the claim that should immigrants stopped coming to the US, the US would become a monolithic English monolingual nation within the span of two generations (the two generation language shift described above).

Bilingual Education: Segregation versus Assimilation Despite the above-mentioned trend towards language shift from Spanish to English across generations in the US, immigrants tend to make efforts to maintain their cultural heritage (especially first generation immigrants). Now and in the past, one of the ways by which immigrants have endeavored to maintain ties with their cultural and linguistic heritage has been through bilingual education (e.g. Crawford, 2000; Ricento & Burnaby, 1998; Schmid, 2001). Supporters of bilingual education (e.g. Crawford, 1992, 2000; Cummins, 2000; Ricento, 2005) emphasize the perspective of ‘language as a resource’ (Ruiz, 1984), along with reasons of social justice (e.g. Cornell & Bratton, 1999; Del Valle, 2003; Padilla, 1998; Piatt, 1990). For their part, scholars who have opposed bilingual education have mainly focused their criticism on the claim that (some types of) bilingual education are segregationist in nature, and thus isolate children from mainstream society and deprive

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them from opportunities afforded by a democratic society (e.g. Barry, 2001; Porter, 1990; Rossell & Baker, 1996). Such criticism of bilingual education is framed within the larger critique of multiculturalism in general (e.g. Appiah, 2005; Barry, 2001; Nussbaum, 1997; Sleeper, 1997). In the following sections I will analyze in more detail the concern about the segregational nature of bilingual education, the drawbacks of the linguistic and cultural assimilation alternative proposed by opponents to bilingual education, and finally, the potential for developing an integrated identity through bilingual schooling (as represented in dual-language programs). Segregation through bilingual education Bilingual education in the US faces enormous challenges given the strong belief that minority students are segregated through bilingual programs. Indeed, the most damning judgment against bilingual education has been, without a doubt, the argument that bilingual education leads Spanish speakers to remain outside of mainstream society, thereby depriving them from opportunities (essential for all citizens of a liberal state to succeed) that are available to English speakers (e.g. Barry, 2001; Hochschild & Scovoronick, 2003). One form of the argument about the segregational nature of bilingual education has been that English is important for children to learn and, more importantly, that English literacy is essential to be able to succeed and reach one’s potential in today’s world, especially in the US. For instance, Schlafly (2001, stress added), one of the most vocal supporters of making English the official language in the US adamantly states that ‘[i]mmigrants . . . want to . . . enter our social, political and economic mainstream. Speaking English is the admission ticket to that road. Without it, immigrants are forever relegated to menial jobs’. This assertion is misleading for two important reasons. First of all, it is a fallacy because it opposes bilingual education to learning English when, in fact, by definition bilingual education cannot be against the development of literacy and proficiency in English (in the US where English is the mainstream language). Even the most superficial interpretation of the meaning of the term bilingualism shows that maintaining and developing a home-language through bilingual education cannot stand in opposition to learning the majority language. Second, the above-mentioned statement commits an error of oversimplification by reducing the complexity of achieving social, political and economic success to the achievement of proficiency in English. Indeed, the empirical evidence to substantiate such assertion is lacking. For instance,

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Kymlicka (1995) points out that among the numerous socially, economically, and politically subordinated groups who have been native speakers of varieties of English for generations are Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Chicano/as, and African Americans. In essence, the success stories that could be tallied to support the importance of learning English are belied by the also important failure stories of English-speaking groups who did not achieve the American dream. I should point out that the statement from Schlafly is echoed by some noted scholars (although not without the inclusion of relevant caveats). Barry (2001: 226, italics added), for instance, argues that ‘. . . so called bilingual education should be condemned if it fails to produce universal literacy and fluency in English, and that bicultural education should be rejected if it is intended — or works out in practice — as a distinctive curriculum taken virtually exclusively by Hispanic children’. A second form of the argument about the potentially segregational nature of bilingual education is represented by the administrative and funding structure of bilingual schooling. From this perspective, in practice, bilingual programs may conceivably lead to segregation. This may happen for a number of reasons, including but not limited to administrative procedures to fund bilingual education, For instance, if schools get reimbursed for LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students, there is an inherent financial incentive for school administrators to keep students classified as LEP students for as long as they can. Barry (2001), for one, describes some instances in which segregation due to the administrative structure of bilingual programs may have occurred. Nevertheless, the concern about the possible segregational nature of bilingual education programs due to administrative set-up is not necessarily valid, nor is the administrative challenge inevitably burdensome. For one thing, we should note that this type of concern does not become an argument against the educational value of a bilingual program, the same way no one would object to the educational value of the teaching of math or science simply because the administrative implementation of these programs turned out to be inappropriate or a difficult challenge. Furthermore, appropriate administrative oversight can take care of overstating the need for children to be in bilingual programs. More importantly, the appropriate dissemination of information to parents regarding the goals of the various types of bilingual programs should help parents become educated and enable them to choose the right type of educational program for their children. Moreover, despite the challenge that bilingual education programs face with regards to segregation due to logistical factors, we cannot overlook the fact that concerns about segregation are

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not addressed as urgently in other situations similarly affected by segregational patterns. Leistyna (2002: 217), for instance, argues that ‘the mainstream that supports US English-only is not the least bit interested in the assimilation of racially subordinated groups into their neighborhoods, places of work, educational institutions, clubs, and communities (i.e. in equal rights and universal access)’. Finally, a third element that may lead to segregation through bilingual education may be programmatic factors. For instance, whenever the main objective of bilingual education is to inculcate minority children with an ethnic sense of identity, we need to ask whether such objective is to be achieved at the expense of the integration of children with the mainstream society.2 In other words, the development of an ethnic identity may be intended to stand in contrast with the mainstream identity of the majority language speakers. From that perspective, Barry (2001: 107) questions the role of bilingual education to fostering solely or primarily Hispanic identity. Similarly, Hochschild and Scovoronick (2003: 159, italics added) claim that ‘[o]n the issue of bilingual education. . . (except where two way immersion is possible). But with evidence of a second-class education pervasive, separation is once again hard to defend in terms of the American dream’. In contrast with the two previous arguments reviewed above (i.e. language learning and logistical challenges), the third argument (i.e. the development of an ‘ethnic identity’ as opposed to an integrated identity) represents a substantive critique leveled against bilingual education. As I will argue, however, I believe that this critique is not necessarily valid, nor applicable to all bilingual programs. Assimilation through bilingual education A self-described liberal pragmatist such as Sleeeper (1997: 93) acknowledges that the cultural identity of the US society cannot be static: Since America really isn’t a mosaic but an organism whose composition keeps changing, we might pose the question this way: Who or what will help to channel the country’s protean energies away from Balkanization and dissolution and toward a better civic culture? As hinted by Sleeper, one alternative to segregation (and hence Balkanization) is assimilation. Arguably, however, the latter can be as politically and educationally unappealing as the former. Assimilation has been the status quo accepted almost without question whenever

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majority and minority groups come in contact (e.g. Kymlicka, 1995; Kymlicka & Patten, 2003; Macedo, 2000; May, 2001). In most cases, the call for assimilation has been based on nation-building strategies that privilege the forging of a single, unified socio-political identity, an approach that almost invariably favors the adoption of the majority viewpoint (e.g. May 2001). Recently, however, the apparent political and judicial success of bilingual education prompted by the Civil Rights movement and landmark legal cases (Lau v. Nichols 1974) has prompted detractors of bilingual education to propose cognitive and educational arguments to discontinue bilingual education programs (as opposed to social or civic arguments as proposed by Barry and others as reviewed above). Cognitive factors: Critical language years Indeed, one of the main arguments put forth by Ron Unz to support his proposal to dismantle bilingual education in California was that ‘human brains at a young age are designed or wired up for language acquisition’ (as cited by Leistyna, 2002: 214). In a similarly impressionistic take on the issue, Barry (2001: 107) contends that ‘the experience of immigrants all over the world testifies to the ease with which young children learn the local language’. In other words, if children are endowed with an innate ability to learn languages, why should we subject children to education in their mother tongue when they could, as Unz and Barry would argue, jump into mainstream English-only classes with minimal instruction in English for non-native speakers (six months was determined to be enough to make the transition to an English-only class)? Unz’s and Barry’s argument about children’s abilities with language cannot be dismissed so easily given that there are a number of scholars whose research would, in principle, lend credence to the proposal of a critical period to acquire language(s) (e.g. DeKeyser, 2000; Johnson & Newport, 1989; Long, 1990). Notwithstanding the potential support of those studies and reviews, however, the scientific debate over the validity of critical periods of language acquisition is by no means settled (see Bialystok, 2001 for an argument against critical periods). Thus, before we can gather any overarching conclusions on the rather general and vague claim that young children are better language learners than adults, we need to review three important caveats that should rightfully constrain any extrapolation of research findings to political or curricular decisions about bilingual education. First, second language researchers are divided on the issue of critical periods; or, at a minimum, there remain important questions about a possible reduction in the ability to learn languages as we age. For

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instance, there is no agreement about the specific age period when the ability to learn languages is closed-off, although there is general agreement that after puberty it may be too late to learn a second language as well as a native speaker (e.g. Flege, 1989; Lenneberg, 1967; Patkowski, 1980; Scovel, 1988). However, the traditionally proposed cut-off age to achieve ultimate attainment (puberty) is contradicted by abundant and robust empirical evidence that show that children as young as six months of age, for instance, have already circumscribed the inventory of phonemes and allophones that correspond to their mother tongue (e.g. Flege, 1999; Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Werker, 1994). A subsequent theoretical move towards the proposal of a protracted sensitive period (e.g. Flynn & Manuel, 1991) should at a minimum raise important theoretical questions that cannot be summarily dismissed in favor of an oversimplified claim such as the one offered by Unz or Barry. Second, irrespective of the potential value of the claim about critical periods, the experience of schooling is more about the acquisition of literacy rather than the acquisition of basic oral conversational skills (e.g. Bialystok, 2001; Cummins, 2000; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). From this point of view, the argument about the abilities of young children to learn oral language should not be regarded as incompatible with developing literacy in more than one language. Furthermore, bilingual schooling should be a tempting curricular proposition for any concerned parent given that we have robust evidence that show that bilinguals develop metalinguistic skills earlier than monolinguals (e.g. Bialystok, 2001). In turn, metalinguistic skills are essential for the development of literacy, which is one of the main objectives pursued by every school. Finally, to advance the argument about the potentially unlimited abilities of children to learn a second language to support the agenda of an English-only education is disingenuous. Indeed, such a theoretical claim about language development can be turned on its head and may be construed as an argument in favor of bilingual education during the early years of childhood (cf. Padilla, 1998). In this respect, we need to differentiate between the debate on whether language acquisition/ development is subject to a critical period from the debate about assimilation versus multiple allegiances/identities. The latter is a much more encompassing topic that seems to be the real issue (consciously or not) behind proposals to dismantle bilingual education. I turn to the analysis of the latter issue in the next section. Educational factors: the best education As Pogge (2003: 115) argues, a basic education is necessary for a democratic society to succeed because it leads to the ‘informed exchange

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of opinions and views among equal citizens’. Furthermore, an ‘educated workforce is necessary for the operation of a modern economy from which all citizens benefit in a non-excludable way’. Thus, he proposes a fundamental principle of public education: ‘the best education for each child is the education that is best for this child’ (p. 118). Within the context of bilingual education, Pogge further posits that there are three options to fulfill the above mentioned principle of public education: (a) mandate education in mother tongue; (b) mandate education in English; and (c), make available education in various languages (letting parents choose among them). Pogge ultimately favors mandatory education in English (option b), but acknowledges that his claim can be rejected on empirical grounds asserting ‘that option (b) does not provide the most effective method for helping students develop fluency in English, that minority students will reach higher levels of English proficiency if they are first helped to develop full literacy in their native language’ (119). He concludes, however, that despite their potential relevance . . . these problems . . . do not alter the fact that children’s important long-term interest in being fully literate in English is best served by early immersion and that this interest is stronger than the interest in avoiding these temporary problems. Thus, Pogge argues that most minority children in the US are likely to be served best by instruction in English. This leads to a principle not of English-Only, but of English-First: while most minority children should be brought to full mastery of English, there is every reason to enable and encourage them to develop full mastery of their native language as well. Pogge’s argument is not very convincing. First, it is noticeable that Pogge dismisses the alternatives he lists above ((a) and (c)) without necessarily specifying why they are not viable (see also footnote (1) above). Second, ironically, Pogge acknowledges the existence of complementary options that would favor minority education: teaching some academic subjects in the minority language, further specifying that ‘such instruction should be continued through all grades’ (119–120). He nevertheless dismisses such options as a viable alternative. Finally, Pogge acknowledges that ‘the other line of attack [against mandatory English education] would appeal to other interests of minority children (besides their interest to develop fluency in English) (119). Along the lines of Pogge’s argument, Barry (2001) focuses on the teaching of non-standard varieties of language. Barry acknowledges that multicultural education can be dialogic in nature and thus embrace an

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inclusive common curriculum. With that caveat in mind, Barry reviews the teaching of the highly debated topic of non-standard varieties of English, in particular the case of Ebonics or African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Although not in agreement with supporters of the teaching of Ebonics, Barry contends that ‘being able to speak and write only in a non-standard form of English is a one-way trip to a dead-end job . . . Their [the schools’] task should be to attempt to make their pupils fluent in standard English as well’ (238, stress added). Barry’s proposal is similar to Pogge’s to the extent that they both are focused on providing speakers of a minority language with proper access to (and education in) the majority language (cf. Pogge’s definition of the best education). Furthermore, both proposals allow for the minority point of view to be incorporated to a common curriculum (cf. Spanish and Ebonics are taught in a complementary way). The main problem in the positions advocated by Barry and Pogge is that their perspectives are embedded in an assimilationist framework of analysis. That is, neither proposal helps us accomplish the goal of dialogic interaction among cultures as proposed by a more inclusive definition of multiculturalism: ‘Since events and institutions are multifaceted, so is the truth about them, and a balanced judgment on them can only be formed in a conversation between different perspectives’ (Parekh, 2000: 229, stress added). That is, the perspective that the heritage language of minority children is only a ‘crutch’ that can be accommodated by the educational system misses the point of what a true multicultural education should try to accomplish: an open interactive dialogue among different members of society. In essence, the true accommodation of minority points of view can only be accomplished through two-way interaction. This is the only way in which we can interpret Hochschild and Scovoronick’s (2003: 175) statement about the importance of ‘. . . learning about the many different ways to be American, and the ways that “being American” is itself changing . . .’

Accommodation Accommodation and multiculturalism The concept that a unified nation has space for only one language and only one identity relies strongly on assimilation concepts and assimilation policies (e.g. Crawford, 1992; Del Valle, 2003; Schmid, 2001). Assimilation, by definition, requires severing ties with heritage cultures, whereas accommodation (and ultimately integration) allows for the incorporation of some features or aspects of the heritage culture of

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minority groups to influence the evolving identity of the ever-changing mainstream national identity (see Sleeper’s quote above). Thus, by definition, the process of accommodation (i.e. the extension of rights to specific communities to be governed by their own institutions and traditions) is determined by the overarching concept of multiculturalism. The latter can be characterized as the doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country (Princeton’s Wordnet). The Columbia Encyclopedia describes Multiculturalism as ‘the coexistence of many cultures in a locality, without any one culture dominating the region’. In this respect, the argument for the accommodation of language rights has been advanced by many scholars (e.g. García, 2009; May, 2001; Rodríguez, 2001; Rubio-Marín, 2003; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, 2003). It should be acknowledged, however, that the concept of a multicultural society has been heavily critiqued (e.g. Appiah, 2005; Barry, 2001; d’Souza, 1991; Ford, 2005; Schlesinger, 1998; Sleeper, 1997). For instance, Schlesinger argues that the term multiculturalism ‘arises as a reaction against Anglo- or Eurocentrism’, but he wonders ‘at what point does it mutate into an ethnocentrism of its own?’ (p. 80). Even more strongly, Barry argues that ‘[p]arents should not be able to block their children’s access to [civic education] by saying that bigotry or ignorance are “a part of their culture”, any more than they should be able to keep them in straitjackets or locked rooms’ (p. 325). In part, the reaction against multiculturalism is very much against what can be regarded as ‘deep diversity’ (e.g. Aguilar, 2004; Barry, 2001). Deep diversity refers to the extreme position that different cultural communities should be allowed to live their own ways of life in a self-contained manner (an interpretation that is possible within the basic definitions of multiculturalism provided above). The problem is, as Barry explains it, that ‘. . .accommodation of “deep diversity” among groups . . . goes along with the suppression of diversity within groups’ (p. 327). There is however, an alternative interpretation of multiculturalism best represented in the basic constitutive principles advanced by Parekh (2000): (a) human beings are culturally embedded; (b) different cultures represent different systems of meaning and different visions of the good life; (c) every culture is internally plural and reflects a continuing conversation between its different traditions and strands of thought; and, more importantly, (d) multiculturalism requires that all cultures be open, self-critical and interactive in their relations with each other. The latter point, in particular, implies that the notion of multiculturalism is not relativistic. Parekh explains further:

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When defined in this way, multicultural education is not open to the criticisms generally made of it. It is argued that it fosters the cult of ethnicity, undermines common culture, leads to the Tower of Babel, distorts history and undermines social unity. Far from ethnicizing education, it deethnicizes cultures and makes them a shared human capital. It is committed to the basic values of liberal society, broadens them to include others and helps create a plural and richer common culture. It encourages a dialogue between cultures, equips students to converse in multiple cultural idioms, and avoids the cacophonous incomprehension of the Tower of Babel. (p. 229) Parekh’s position is not unique. Nussbaum (2001: 432), for instance, specifically argues that the promotion of cultural empathy ‘does not commit us to cultural relativism, to the view that every culture is equally good, or to any sort of hands-off attitude towards cultural criticism’. In fact, this is also true for within-culture relations. Nussbaum (1997: 100) points out that real cultures (a) are plural; (b) contain argument, resistance and contestation of norms; (c) are not necessarily (or completely) represented by what the most famous artists and intellectuals think; and (d) have varied domains of thought and activity. It is interesting to note that once we remove any possible implication of deep diversity from our definition of multiculturalism, we can find more agreement about the inherent positive qualities of integrating diverse cultural groups within a liberal state. For instance, Ford (2005: 50, stress added) argues that ‘the cure is not racially segregated safe havens or racial diversity cheerleading, but rather racially integrated “living and learning” environments wherein minority students can meet and get to know their fellow students of all races . . . So diversity of a particular sort is the answer’. The hidden costs of accommodation Despite the apparent benefits of a principled definition of multiculturalism, there are some ‘strategic disadvantages’ brought up by such a definition for at least some members of society. For starters, the development of a multicultural viewpoint may require a substantial investment of resources (e.g. training and testing teachers, restructuring curricula, providing transportation to and from different neighborhoods). Indeed, Aguilar (2004: 215) points out that the goal of accommodation (cf. affirmative action) is not necessarily to improve the self-esteem of minority groups (and minority languages), but rather to provide minority

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groups with the same opportunities that members of the cultural majority have. For that to happen, however, there needs to be a substantial investment in education (e.g. some types of bilingual education) that, as Aguilar points out, ‘the majority of Americans are simply not willing to make’.3 On the other hand, it can be argued that any change in an educational system will be expensive. The question that Aguilar raises may be more properly framed within the perspective of the list of educational priorities that parents, educators and politicians have, bilingual education being one among many of the options for educational reform. There is also a second, less tangible ‘cost’ for the majority groups brought up by accommodation. Indeed, Appiah (2005: 198) is very much aware of this when he cogently concludes that ‘[i]nasmuch as our identities are social things — products of social conceptions and of our treatments of others — a shift in normative stereotype changes who I am.’ Del Valle (this volume) shares this concern: ‘Nervous native US citizens fear becoming the outsiders; their existence, precarious and irrelevant to the future of their country; a country that is quickly becoming unrecognizable’. To be more precise, Cameron (1995: 219), notes that [t]he underlying fear is not the literal fear of being unable to make yourself understood. It is the fear that the meanings which anchor your own view of the world are not, after all, shared by everyone; which in turn expresses a more general fear of difference, otherness, relativity. Thus, the biggest cost of a multicultural agenda is that if faces us with the fear that we may become someone else, perhaps closer to the ‘other’ in the process of trying to learn about others. Arguably, these fears are explicitly channeled through many everyday decisions that we make in our lives. For instance, decisions related to bilingual education are associated not only with the analysis of educational issues per se, but with specific views about who our children will relate to and the cultural make-up of our society in general. The obvious ‘costs’ required by the development of a multicultural society bring up one important question: why would speakers of the majority culture/language give up privileges they have as members of the majority group? In principle, this question may prove to be an insurmountable challenge if the majority group is not willing to share some of the power of decision over language rights that the majority group, by definition, already has. On the other hand, it can be argued that, even

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if members of the majority groups give up some privileges in the short term, in the long term they also reap some benefits that a multicultural society bestows to all its members. That is, accommodation within the framework of a multicultural society represents a valuable resource. For instance, within the specific realm of the US educational system, Hochschild & Scovoronick (2003: 170) propose that [m]ulticultural education endeavors to enrich the understandings of American students by incorporating a variety of cultural perspectives into the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant framework of schooling, and thereby to change it into something new and more inclusive. Accommodation and bilingual education Let us now turn to the analysis of accommodation with reference to bilingual education in particular. Most critics of multiculturalism find fault with the promotion of bilingualism because the latter seems to be, prima facie, antithetical to the notion of a liberal democracy. Thus, Appiah (2005: 138) contends that the ‘liberal state has a role in protecting the autonomy of children against their parents, churches and communities’; thus, it follows that children should not be deprived of an education in the majority language. More specifically, Barry (2001: 220) states that ‘[i]f non-segregated classes conducted in English are . . . the best way of improving academic results, state paternalism demands an end to bilingual/bicultural education’. Similarly, Hochschild & Scovoronick (2003: 159) argue that ‘with evidence of a second-class education pervasive, separation [of heritage language children] is once again hard to defend in terms of the American dream’. Notice, however, that the opposition to bilingual education seems to hinge on the specific definition of multiculturalism that we already rejected as overly simplistic and outdated (i.e. based on the notion of deep diversity). We should arrive to a different conclusion if we were to consider a more inclusive, more dialogic view of multiculturalism as proposed by May (2001), Nussbaum (1997, 2001), Parekh (2000) and others. Thus, May (2003: 150, stress added), for instance, explicitly rejects the claim that education in a minority language can deprive children of the opportunity to succeed in society: Children are constrained by many aspects of compulsory education without these being deemed to be ‘illiberal’, so why should the maintenance of a minority language via schooling not also be

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included here, particularly when, as I have argued, such a process is not at the expense of acquiring a majority language? To be fair, we should note that both Barry and Hochschild & Scovoronick qualify their strong positions. For instance, at the same time that Barry (2001: 220, stress added) demands ‘an end to bilingual/bicultural education’ he nevertheless argues that such position is, of course, consistent with saying that courses in Spanish language and literature ought to be available in all schools — and for all students. . . . a reasonable accommodation to the fact that the United States shares a continent with several hundred million people whose first language is Spanish. For their part, Hochschild and Scovoronick state that their opposition to bilingual education is valid ‘except where two way immersion is possible’.

Integration through Bilingual Education In part, the disagreement between supporters and detractors of bilingual education is predicated on the type of educational program evaluated (e.g. Craig, 1996; Krashen, 1996; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). This is especially valid with regards to the criticism about the segregationist nature of bilingual education, on the one hand, and the assimilationist view on the other hand. However, not all bilingual education programs are alike. New and improved types of bilingual schooling rely on a different conceptualization of bilingual education: dual language education. Dual language programs Dual language programs (also called two-way language programs) present teachers and students with a more ambitious and expansive view of bilingual education (e.g. Cazabon et al., 1998; Freeman, 1996; Lindholm-Leary, 2001, Thomas & Collier, 2002). In essence, unlike previous implementations of bilingual education (especially during the 70s and 80s), dual language programs are — by definition — strongly anti-segregationist and highly integrationist. In dual language programs, children from both majority and minority language backgrounds study school subjects through the use of both the majority and the minority language. Although there are different variations of how the integration of languages is accomplished, one common method is to sequence instruction by grades by giving emphasis to the minority language at

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first (90/10 program) up to the point when instruction is offered in equal percentages per language (50/50 program). By definition, thus, dual language programs provide children with the opportunity to develop an integrated linguistic and cultural civic identity. The caveat is that neither a majority nor a minority cultural viewpoint is intended to prevail: Dual language programs strive to provide children with a third integrated viewpoint. This third viewpoint is unlike the majority or minority viewpoints that children could have experienced within their own local environments had they not had the chance to interact with children with a different language background and, by association, with a different cultural identity. The promise of dual language education To be sure, bilingual education has become a highly politicized topic simply because it is a highly political subject. Indeed, the allocation of resources to a minority group for the purpose of developing two languages represents a differential treatment that, in principle, would put the majority group at a disadvantage, or, it would lead to further separation among groups belonging to the same society (cf. Aguilar, 2004; Appiah, 2005; Barry, 2001). The topic of bilingual education is perceived differently, however, if we focus on the idea of providing resources towards learning more than one language to ALL children irrespective of cultural or linguistic background. For instance, Hochschild and Scovoronick (2003: 175, stress added) point out that ‘ . . . all students need to understand how American society changes as its population changes, so that they come to see inevitable transformation as a possible gain rather than a likely loss’. In this respect, it is important to note that even scholars opposed to the ‘politics of cultural identity’ seem to support the beneficial role afforded by second language education (provided to all students irrespective of background): . . . language study puts the problem of cross-cultural understanding before the student in a way nothing else does. Expressing your own ideas in a foreign tongue is a good way of seeing the relationship between sameness and difference; it should shape all cross-cultural study. (Nussbaum, 1997: 146) And even authors who do not explicitly address the issue of learning a second language in school indirectly offer support for the type of education provided by second language learning: . . . if intolerance of other identities is built into an identity, or if learning the views of others except as shameful error is one of their

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norms, we will be seeking, in public education, to reshape those identities, so as to exclude this feature. (Appiah, 2005: 211) In essence, the adoption of a curriculum that incorporates at least to some extent the objectives pursued by bilingual programs in general (and more specifically dual language programs) can help bring together children from different backgrounds. This is a valuable objective as Macedo (1998: 73) notes that ‘. . . (assuming that public schools are important agents of liberal socialization, at least by virtue of mixing people of different backgrounds), then we have a powerful pragmatic argument for accommodation’. The challenge of dual language education Despite the argument about the benefits of dual language programs as part of a bilingual curriculum to achieve integration of various cultural/language groups, there are significant challenges. Valdés (1997a) cites three dilemmas faced by dual language programs: the possible limitations in the quality of the minority language used in a class in which half of the students has little competence in the non-majority language (pp. 410-412), the possible negative effects of the views of majority children about minority children (pp. 412–413), and finally, the incompatibility of the agendas of majority and minority language groups brought together to accomplish a common goal (pp. 413–414). The first problem mentioned by Valdés is an educational one: will students competent in the minority language be negatively affected in their academic progress by the majority-language speakers if the teacher needs to spend more time teaching the language rather than academics?4 In principle, however, we could argue that the same could happen in the opposite direction.5 In fact, when Valdés uses the term ‘the language’ she is actually making reference to the plural “languages” that by definition comprise a dual language program: the language in which both majority and minority children receive instruction, especially in the early grades, is a language that must be modified somewhat in order to respond to the needs of those children who are in the early stages of acquisition (p. 410, stress added) As Valdés points out, what is important to note is that there is still more research to be done to identify what potential problems — if any — the use of two languages may bring about for overall academic proficiency.

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It may be that the modification is slight, or, even if the modification is significant, it might make little difference. But there is no evidence to support either position. What the research has not told us is how using language in an even slightly distorted fashion influences the language development of children who are native speakers of that language (p. 410) After closer scrutiny, however, the problem that seems to be the concern of Valdés is not really educational, but rather programmatic. That is, the real challenge is that the academic subjects taught in the majority language receive preferential treatment over the ones taught in the minority language. This is why the minority language speakers will be more affected than majority language speakers by a situation (i.e. quality of language) that, in theory, should affect speakers of both languages used in the dual language program. This preferential treatment is the consequence of the established assessment procedures, which in turn reflect the perspective of society at large. This is a point cogently made by García (2006: 206): ‘the tension is between the plurilingualism of the classroom, exercised by children and teachers with little power, and the monolingualism of assessment of the all-powerful state educational authorities’. More specifically, García points out that ‘[f]aced with . . . legislation that mandates strict English-only assessment guidelines for all children, the present structure of dual-language models cannot be successful in sustaining the multiplicity of voices and heteroglossia that they were meant to develop’ (p. 169). Evidently, the monolingual bent of the assessment procedure will favor the majority language and, in turn, this overall objective will trickle down into classroom practices that will favor the focus on the majority language to the detriment of the minority language. The second challenge mentioned by Valdés is an important one because it represents a structural problem that lies beyond the control of schools administrators and teachers. As Valdés describes it, ‘even when there is a conscious effort by school personnel to construct an alternative discourse and practices, it is difficult to counter the impact of the larger society on both teachers and students’ (p. 412). This concern is echoed by García (2006: 159) who claims that, despite the lack of a long-term goal to sustain minority languages, transitional bilingual education programs serve the important goal of creating a sense of cultural comraderie that may help minority groups survive and perhaps even thrive. That is, ‘transitional bilingual education programs are useful “safe houses” for these newly arrived students’. Interestingly, however, García (2006: 163) points out that ‘most of the children who attend the Spanish/English

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dual language schools seem to be Latino’. Thus, the portrayal of the stark cultural contrast between majority and minority language students enrolled in dual language programs may not strictly correlate with the most common target population of so-called majority language speakers of dual language programs.6 Thus, we need to clearly define who a majority language speaker is. More precisely, we need to clearly identify the perspectives about language, culture etc. of the majority students and parents who actually participate in dual language programs (not just the average majority group in general irrespective of local contexts). In essence, addressing the counteracting force of majority views (outside the confines of the dual language school) may continue to be problematic for the design and development of dual language programs. On the other hand, we should recognize that the contrasts between majority– minority views are not as black-and-white as one could imagine at first blush. Finally, the third challenge faced by dual language education programs mentioned by Valdés is an interesting one to the extent that it also represents one of the actual objectives (if not the most important one) of dual language curricula: If we are truthful, perhaps we will admit that supporters and proponents of dual-language immersion programs face a dilemma. They want to find ways to support language study among majority group members, and they want to provide minority children with access to the curriculum in a language they can understand. These two objectives, however, have very different agendas. (p. 414) That dual language programs face the challenge of bringing together two segregated groups (minority and majority language speakers) is inherently true by definition. Valdés is right in that we could privilege one agenda over the other one (and, as she argues, the agenda of the majority will usually prevail). On the other hand, this problem is, by definition, the target of a dual language program. It is possible that this challenge is insurmountable, although, as Valdés recognizes, some data do seem to provide some reasons to be cautiously optimistic. The cost of dual language education Apart from strictly educational and cultural challenges, there are also financial challenges that could, in principle, become an obstacle for the development of dual language programs. Barry (2001: 107), for one, points out that the ambitious and encompassing proposal of providing

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‘genuine equality of opportunity without linguistic assimilation by immigrants would be, if not absolutely impossible, almost unimaginable burdensome’. At first blush this is a very compelling argument. After all, bilingual education would logically entail more expenses given both substantive and logistical factors. First, the hiring of bilingual teachers could, in principle, be more expensive not only due to the credentials required from bilingual teachers, but also due to the ongoing training these teachers would need to maintain their abilities in two languages and in dual-language pedagogy. Indeed, García et al. (2007: 21) point out that dual language teachers have to ‘deal with the added complexity of a linguistically heterogeneous student group’. Second, dual language program schools typically struggle to find an equal proportion of speakers of both majority and minority language within any single neighborhood given the high levels of demographic segregation across neighborhoods. However, both of these constraints are not necessarily insurmountable. For one thing, bilingual teachers are not necessarily more expensive to school districts, despite the fact that perhaps they should cost more. For instance, as of 2005 Houston Independent School District provided bilingual teachers with an additional yearly stipend of $3000 over the regular salary. Even though the extra stipend per person can become a significant sum when multiplied by the number of bilingual teachers receiving the stipend, on the basis of the proportion of the annual salary, the amount is relatively modest. With regards to segregated neighborhoods, schools can solve this dilemma by providing bus transportation to students who may bring the necessary diversity of speakers to the program but who do not necessarily live in the given school district. ‘Busing’ students to school may be a rather expensive item for a school budget. Nevertheless, this may turn out to be a good investment as the popularity and success of the concept of ‘magnet schools’ already requires the same additional expenses assigned to the transportation of students. More importantly, beyond the debate over the magnitude of the expenses required for the set-up and maintenance of dual-language programs, we will also need to consider the benefits afforded by these schools in order to obtain a complete picture of any financial investment (see Grin, 2003 and 2006 for an extensive discussion of the economic costs of multilingual education in general). Indeed, as Piatt (1990: 151) coherently points out, Barry’s view considers only ‘the expenditures involved in the recognition of limited language rights. Ignored are the benefits such an approach produces. It also ignores the costs involved if

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we fail to recognize language rights’ (see also Cornell & Bratton, 1999 for additional arguments against the cost factor of bilingualism). More importantly, Padilla (1998) has pointed out that one of the most cruel ironies of the popular debate about bilingual education is that a very valuable asset such as language is decried and condemned to oblivion during the primary school years, only to be rescued from condemnation, and regarded as a valuable resource at a time when it is perhaps too late to achieve only minimally adequate language proficiency during the college years. Padilla comments that schools are intent on wiping out ‘skills in the non-English mother tongue that students might bring with them to the first grade . . . only to insist later on foreign language study in high school as a college entrance requirement and for graduation from college’. Padilla goes on to explicitly condemn this approach as eminently elitist and unfair (not to mention wasteful): ‘Those for whom a foreign language is not foreign are forbidden from mastering it. In short, what is a great education for the well to do is forbidden learning for the poor and the immigrants.’ Rescue the baby from the bathwater The list of challenges faced by dual language programs shows that there are no easy solutions. Furthermore, it appears that the solutions valid for one school may not be completely adequate for another school given the acute relevance of the community in which the school is situated (e.g. García & Bartlett, 2007). Nevertheless, there are some structural changes that may lead to a more positive outcome in dual language education. For instance, García (2006) proposes two basic pedagogical modifications to make dual language education programs more viable. First, we must recognize that today’s multilingual society is not as diglossic as multilingual societies in the past were (García et al., 2007). That is, in their effort to teach a version of the standard language, ‘uncontaminated’ from the influence of other languages, and in particular from the majority language, dual language schooling may have gone too far. In practical terms, García argues that teachers should provide ‘opportunities to compare and contrast the students’ languages, and on instances, use code-switching for instructional purposes’ (p. 172). This procedure leads to two important beneficial outcomes: it provides more opportunities for metalinguistic analysis that should help students improve their overall academic skills (Bialystok, 2001), and it reflects a reality in which a bilingual – in the words of Grosjean (1998) – is not two monolinguals in one. The second pedagogical modification advanced by

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García is that students should be occasionally separated ‘for specific targeted instruction in the child’s first language’ (p. 172). This second substantive change is relevant to address the concern raised by Valdés about the possible lack of exposure to appropriately complex levels of use of the language because of other less-competent users of the language. This is especially important for the group of minority-language children. Of course, targeted separate instruction to each group in their strongest language is an advantage for both groups of learners (majority and minority language speakers).

Conclusion May (2001: 194) argues that schools act as instruments of social engineering by means of including minority language education or, alternatively, by excluding minority language education. In other words, it is naïve to believe that maintaining a status quo mostly based on traditional views of language education (and education in general) side steps the challenge of making value judgments when it is time to decide curriculum design. This argument is in line with Kymlicka’s (1995) view that there is a tendency to mistakenly assume, without adequate reflection, that majority interests are aligned with civic goals, whereas minority interests are associated with ethnic goals. Therefore, it behooves us to thoroughly analyze the two alternative viewpoints on bilingual education (assimilation vs. integration) without committing ourselves prematurely to the alternative favored by the status quo (i.e. assimilation). Bilingual education has the potential to develop a more coherent and demographically representative new mainstream civic identity (e.g. Barry, 2001; Hochschild & Scovoronick, 2003; Macedo, 1998, 2000) by bringing together children from diverse backgrounds as the latter are represented by diverse home language backgrounds. I proposed that the most promising types of bilingual education in the US (dual language programs) are, by definition, antithetical to any type of straightforward assimilation to mainstream views that devalue minority affiliations, and by the same token, antithetical to the development of a (segregationist) Hispanic identity. Ironically, however, in the US dual language programs are inaccurately perceived as a programs that are intent on helping children forge exclusive cultural and linguistic ties to the heritage community and to avoid integration with mainstream society. By design, however, dual language programs can provide children with a more encompassing cultural viewpoint that neither a mainstream educational

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approach, nor a minority language educational program could ever achieve on their own. Ultimately, dual language programs are capable of providing children with the type of cosmopolitan viewpoint proposed by Appiah (2005), Gutmann (2003), Nussbaum (2001) and other proponents of a new type of multiculturalism embodied in a cosmopolitan civic culture. On the other hand, it is fair to say that dual language programs are no panacea, as the critiques of García, Valdés, and others reviewed above have shown. Interestingly, however, the list of challenges faced by dual language programs seem to coincide with the list of factors that make dual language education appealing in the first place. For instance, as acknowledged by Valdés (1997a: 412, stress added) Majority children bring to their interactions with less privileged peers a mixed bag of attitudes and feelings. And while we know that these attitudes can change — and, indeed, that is one of the benefits attributed to dual language immersion programs — we know little about what impact mainstream children’s original attitudes have on minority children with whom they interact. No doubt, the difficult structural problems faced by dual language education will require well-researched and innovative solutions, some of which I described in more detail above (cf. suggestions advanced by García, 2006). The challenge, however, should not detract us from what dual language education represents: ‘brave attempts to extend the bilingualism of the few in the United States to the many who are English monolinguals’ (García, 2006: 168). Notes 1. In fact, even well informed and well-respected scholars seem to be unaware of the facts about the perceived ‘vitality’ of languages other than English in the US. For instance, Pogge (2003: 121, stress added) states that ‘there is little doubt that [Spanish] will survive and even thrive as a native language . . . It is not inconceivable that the Spanish language will in fact one day become co-equal with English in the US’. This position is hardly substantiated by the available empirical evidence. 2. We note that imbuing children with a sense of identity correlated with a majority view is very common in most nation states. For instance, most children sing the national anthem in school. In other words, as correctly argued by Kymlicka, May and others, the notion of civic identity cannot be opposed to the one of ethnic identity. In the end, all identites are ‘ethnic’ to the extent that they represent and preserve specific cultural values. 3. Translated from the original in Spanish: ‘Una inversión masiva en la educación que la mayoría de los estadounidenses, simplemente, no está dispuesta a hacer.’

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4. This is also the point made by García, Skutnabb-Kangas and Torres-Guzmán (2007: 21) when they argue that dual language teachers may not be ‘prepared linguistically and educationally to deal with the added complexity of a linguistically heterogeneous student group’. 5. That is, majority language speakers may be ‘slowed down’ in their progress when the teacher has to pay attention to the linguistic needs of the minoritylanguage speakers who will be less linguistically competent in the majority language. 6. Valdés (1997a) explicitly describes a member of the majority group (‘Andrew is a bright seven-year-old boy with flaming red hair and blue eyes’) in a way that seems to contradict the aparent reality of the representation of the majority group as referenced by García above.

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