[lg policy] Are laws requiring English signs discriminatory?

[Dennis Baron]

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

Are laws requiring English signs discriminatory?
English on business signs? It’s the law in New York City: According to the “true name law,” passed back in 1933, the name of any store must

be publicly revealed and prominently and legibly displayed in the English language either upon a window . . . or upon a sign conspicuously placed upon the exterior of the building. [General Business Laws, Sec. 9-b, Art. 131]

Failure to comply is technically a misdemeanor, but violations carry no specific penalty.   Now two city councilmen want to give that little-known and long-neglected law some teeth. Republicans Dan Halloran and Peter Koo have introduced a bill authorizing the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs to draft regulations to enforce the English sign law.

Opponents of the measure charge that requiring signs in English is discriminatory. But Halloran and Koo say that businesses must display English signs so that police and firefighters can identify an address when they respond to emergency calls. To the bill’s sponsors it’s a matter of public safety, not an insult to anyone’s heritage.


Read the rest of this post on the Web of Language:  http://bit.ly/oYLQsP

____________________
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

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

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








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