It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:


After centuries of welcoming the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses  
to our shores, Americans are sending out a new message: “Speak  
English, or get out.”  ... Anti-immigration forces are pushing for  
official English on the federal level as well.  On Feb. 12, Rep.  
Steve King (R-Ia) reintroduced the “English Language Unity Act of  
2007” (H.R.997), ... which would make English the official language  
of the United States.  ... King’s bill also reveals the paranoia  
behind all official language legislation. It privileges the English  
versions of our laws because the bill’s sponsors, who surely don’t  
object to translating the Bible into English, insist that translating  
our laws, not to mention sacred secular texts like the Star-Spangled  
Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance, will distort or pervert their  
meaning. ... The English Language Unity Act .... [is]  actually aimed  
at Mexican immigrants, whose numbers Steve King is eager to reduce.   
In addition to mandating English, King actively supports an  
electrified fence across our border with Mexico ...  and he opposes  
the current practice of automatically granting citizenship to anyone  
born in the U.S.  .... King introduced the English Language Unity Act  
on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday because Lincoln brought a nation torn  
by Civil War back together again, and King thinks that a nation  
threatened by Mexican immigration can be held together by a border  
fence and an official language.  ...

But he's wrong; read the whole post on

Web of Language

DB



Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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