Legislating restrictive language laws is not a new phenomenon; however, in the U.S., our history of such macrolevel language planning has been limited and relatively uninformed by language policy and planning research concerning the role that language legislation plays in any society. The current agenda of an organization called U.S. ENGLISH, promoting the legislation of English as the official language of the U.S., deserves the attention of all language teaching professionals as not only a thought‐provoking example of hegemonic language planning, but one which, if approved, will affect our professional lives as well as the balance of power in the country. History indicates that restricting language rights can be divisive and can lead to segregationist tendencies in a society. At the same time, such legislation rarely results in a unified society speaking solely the mandated language(s). This article presents a critical documentary analysis of the complex issues at stake in the debate on the role of language legislation in the U.S.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
L. Thomas (1996) studied this question.