<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There's a new post on the <a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">Web of Language</a>:<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre; ">English, brought to you tonight by the Republican Party</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Grande'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Grande'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; white-space: normal; "><p class="MsoNormal" mce_style="line-height: normal;" style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">The </span><a href="http://gopplatform2008.com/2008Platform.pdf" mce_href="http://gopplatform2008.com/2008Platform.pdf"><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2008 Republican Party Platform</span></a><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; "> supports English as the official language of the United States.</span></p><div style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">That fact may have gone unnoticed this week as speakers at the Republican National Convention spent most of their time celebrating war, teen pregnancy, creationism, subprime mortgages, and the constitutional right of Americans to ignore any inconvenient truth they like.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">Now the Republicans, who have already </span><a href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1288&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286" mce_href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=1288&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286"><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gone on record</span></a><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; "> favoring an employer's right to choose English in the workplace, want big government to intrude even further into the lives of Americans by making English official. If more Americans spoke English, they argue, Americans could demonstrate their patriotism while at the same time making it easier for the government to read our emails and tap our cell phones.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">But official English is a move that the founders never thought necessary. America in the 18th century was multilingual, a land permeated by speakers of English, German, French, Swedish, Dutch and Spanish, not to mention the many African languages brought here by slaves, and the even greater number of native languages spoken by the residents of the new world long before the Europeans declared it to be new (the term "native American" referring instead those American Anglo-Protestants who thought that Indians, Africans, Catholics, Jews, the Irish, and just about anybody else who wasn't like them should go back where they came from).</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">However, that was then and this is now. Today the United States is a different kind of multilingual land, one permeated by speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Japanese, French Creole, Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Gujarati and Armenian, <a href="http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/USlanguages.html" mce_href="http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/USlanguages.html">according to the 2000 U.S. Census</a>.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; ">... today's America displays the kind of linguistic diversity that strikes fear in the hearts of red-meat, small-town nativists, and the Republicans are justifying their official English plank because for them English not only symbolizes national unity, it is also "the fastest route to prosperity in America."</div><div style="line-height: normal; "><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><span mce_style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;" style="color: windowtext; ">Ignoring for the moment the inconvenient truth (it's not a theory) that English-speakers brought us the current financial crisis, surely a threat to prosperity, English, as delegates to the convention might have put it, serves as a convenient shibboleth allowing the real Americans to spot the illegal ones.. .</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="line-height: normal; ">angry? sympathetic? whatever your political leanings or your feelings about language, read the rest on <a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage">the Web of Language</a></div></div></span></span></font><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>____________________</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Dennis Baron</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Professor of English and Linguistics</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Department of English<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">University of Illinois<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">608 S. Wright St.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Urbana, IL 61801 </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">office: 217-244-0568</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">fax: 217-333-4321</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron" title="My faculty home page" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a></span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">read the Web of Language:</font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" title="The Web of Language blog" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a></span></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><br></span></font></div></span></div><div><div><br></div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>