The English Language Amendment: A Case Study on Language and Politics

English language teaching has always been affected by the political system. This article discusses the English Language Amendment (ELA), a proposed constitutional amendment before Congress which states that English should be made the language of the United States. A brief historical background is provided, followed by a discussion of arguments for and against the ELA. The motives behind the ELA are examined, and an assessment of how the bill affects ESL professionals is outlined. The goals of the article are to alert readers to the dangers of the ELA, to counter arguments made by its supporters, and to urge opposition to the Amendment. A language is more than a grammatical or communicative system. It is a symbolic system laden with emotional attachments that can arouse the deepest passions. Such feelings about a language are not only individual in nature; often they develop collectively into a group ideology and as such can affect the language policy of a country. Composed of a mixture of historical facts, mythology, and half-truths, the ideology often becomes a rationale either for existing language policy decisions or for efforts to create new policy directions. This article is a study of one such case: the English Language Amendment (ELA) currently before the U.S. Congress. The attempt by the proponents of this constitutional amendment to make English the language of the United States has engendered bitter debate between the supporters and detractors of the concept and has spawned a series of similar proposals for making English the official language in various states and municipalities, the most recent instance occurring in California with the passage of Proposition 63.