In the cover story of the April 1997 Atlantic Monthly, writer Robert D. King notes that it has been more than 15 years since former U.S. senator and chancellor of the University of California S. I. Hayakawa proposed a constitutional amendment that would have made English the official language of the United States.
Although the amendment failed, momentum has grown to the point that today more than a dozen states have passed English Only/Official English laws, and numerous others, including Ohio, have similar legislation pending. At the federal level, last August the House of Representatives passed the Emerson Bill, which specifies English as the official language of government, by a large margin cutting across party lines. King notes that passage in the Senate may be more difficult. Several western Senators do not wish to alienate the growing number of Hispanic voters in their states; Texas Governor George W. Bush has stated his opposition to the initiative in his state; and 1996 presidential candidate and Texas Senator Phil Gramm was against English Only.
According to 1990 census data, 94 percent of American citizens speak English. The chairman of U.S. English, Inc., one of two major national groups pushing these initiatives, cites an even higher figure of 97 percent. Recently, I had a chance to see two adult English classes, one in Los Angeles, the other in Lorain, Ohio. Both classes were filled to capacity with eager pupils-it makes it hard to imagine that today's immigrants prefer not to learn English and retain their native tongue.
Why, then, the need for these laws? As King notes, the controversy is tied up with other hot issues such as immigration, bilingual education, tolerance, and cultural diversity in schools and in American society in general.
The English Only/Official English movement sends several wrong messages not just to citizens and residents of the U.S., but to the rest of the world as well. First, it says the U.S. does not tolerate or appreciate language diversity. This can be extended to mean that immigrants speaking languages other than English also aren't appreciated. And speaking of immigration, perhaps it means that large numbers of immigrants are not tolerable, especially if they speak Spanish.
Second, it sends a message that English is the only language of value, not just in the U.S., but in the rest of the world. In general in American education, a foreign language is not a required course of study. One can graduate from Oberlin without taking a single course in a foreign language. Yet the rest of the world knows that most Americans are severely limited because they speak only English.
An old joke that goes back to my high-school days of foreign language study goes like this: What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. And one who speaks two languages? Bilingual. And one who speaks one language? An American!
In his article King makes the case that countries that have problems with more than one language (such as Canada, Belgium, and Sri Lanka) also lack a strong national identity. Despite two centuries of immigration and millions of citizens and residents of various backgrounds, the U.S. certainly has a strong national identity. Not only do we believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free elections, and representative democracy, but we also identify with other things that are uniquely American, like baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.
My biggest fear is that these English Only efforts unnecessarily alienate the large number of citizens and residents for whom English is not a first language. If English were legislated as the official language of the U.S., would that invite an initiative to make Spanish the second official language, something that is not presently being advocated, something that would create division where none presently exists?
We harm national unity by making English the official language of the United States. King says, "History teaches a plain lesson about language and governments: there is almost nothing the government of a free country can do to force its citizens to use certain languages in preference to others." For the good of the United States, let us take a laissez-faire attitude toward this issue.
--David G. Arredondo
The author, a native and lifelong resident of Lorain, is associate director of admissions. From 1973 to 1975, he did postgraduate study as a Mexican government fellow at la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.
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