Publications

Publication details [#62972]

Barros, Sandro R. 2017. Rejecting Babel: examining multilingualism without citizenship in the U.S. postnational scenario. Current Issues in Language Planning 18 (2) : 117–135.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

Despite the long history of multilingualism in the U.S., language rights debates have tended to focus almost solely on the acquisition of English as an issue of equity for citizens who are speakers of other languages. Policies advanced in the name of “access” and “equity” continue to frame English as the only viable means via which citizens can enjoy the full benefits of national membership. Seldom, however, is the legislative culture that surrounds monolingualism explored as being contradictory to the liberal principles of liberty and equality upon which Western democracies are founded. The aim of this paper is to explore how legislative discourse adds to the regulation of monolingualism as a culture within super-diverse linguistic landscapes like the U.S., and how the legislation of language rights in federal courts unduly promotes the “dis-citizenship” of speakers of languages other than English [Ramanathan, V. (2013). Language policies and (dis)citizenship: Rights, access, pedagogies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters; Wodak, R. (2013). Dis-citizenship and migration: A critical discourse-analytical perspective. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 12(3), 173–178. doi:10.1080/15348458.2013.797258]. This paper explores, specifically, how federal courts’ pronouncements on language rights disputes have constantly supported monolingualism as a corollary of citizenship. The paper concludes with a discussion on the challenges and advantages of rearticulating linguistic rights within the U.S. current postnational scenario through the lens of an “ethnolinguistic democracy” [Fishman in Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Phillipson, R. (1995). Linguistic human rights: Overcoming linguistic discrimination. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter].