Utopia 'Mother Tongue:' Why America

¶ … Utopia 'Mother tongue:' Why America needs to grow up and accept the realities of a multilingual world Making English the official language of America will only sow division within its borders, rather than create unity. America is such a diverse nation, aspects of its culture its citizens consider uniquely 'American' -- everything from pizza to the concept of individual liberty and the right to 'life, liberty, and property' -- are in fact exported from other nations.

It is in the blend of cultural traditions, including languages, that America finds its identity as a nation of immigrants. Creating 'English only' laws will exacerbate social divisions. Contrary to English-only advocates, many multilingual societies live in harmony across the globe. Switzerland has German, French, and Italian-speaking provinces. Canada is a bilingual nation: both English and French are spoken in most provinces. Europe as a whole, with the ease in travel restrictions between EU nations, has grown more multilingual.

The future of the world is multilingual, as to function in the global economy people will need to speak more than one language. Suggesting that Americans only need to speak English to function in the world sends the wrong message to its young citizens. Children should be striving for bilingualism and multilingualism rather than feel self-satisfied that they speak only one language. From a practical point-of-view, English-only laws are absurd.

"Official English obviously has a lot to do with concern about immigration, perhaps especially Hispanic immigration…The usual arguments made by academics against Official English are commonsensical. Who needs a law when, according to the 1990 census, 94% of American residents speak English anyway?" (King 1997). English-only laws are really expressions of profound cultural anxieties of a demographic shift. America is an increasingly non-white, multicultural nation.

Children must learn to speak English to survive in school, employees must speak English to 'get ahead' in the workforce, and schools already have a profound financial incentive to bring students to standard English proficiency, thanks to No Child Left Behind Legislation. There is a certain level of hypocrisy in the postures of politicians who cry for English-only legislation. Many promote such laws -- and then run campaign advertisements in Spanish, or speak in carefully coached Spanish to Hispanic audiences as they are soliciting votes.

(Although Hispanic voters, demographically, may seem to be aligned with the Democratic Party on class issues, on social issues they tend to be conservative and have been eagerly courted by the Republican Party in many states). Passing a mandatory English law would be a validation of racism against Hispanics, and even encourage discrimination in the name of anti-immigration sentiment. "Romanticism exalted language, made it mystical, sublime -- a bond of national identity.

At the same time, Romanticism created a monster: it made of language a means for destroying a country" (King 1997). If we have English-only laws, the natural implication are that those who speak English more proficiently (clearly not recent immigrants or at least not immigrants from non-European nations) are better citizens. If we have English-only laws, the implication is that speaking English is somehow superior to not speaking English, despite the need for Americans to function in the global economy.

Strive to freeze a language, as some nations have tried to do, and it becomes impoverished and it dies. English is a 'bastard' language, encompassing Romantic, Indo-European, Germanic, Native American, and seemingly innumerable other linguistic influences in its vocabulary and grammatical structure. To make it into an artifact of citizenship closes its open nature. English is now able to.