It takes more than a language to unify a nation

[Salikoko S. Mufwene]

Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> A couple of thoughts.
>
> 2.  Previous waves of immigrants would conduct their lives in their native languages probably like Hispanics of today do.  You had German local newspapers, Yiddish theater, Italian markets, etc.  There were Lutheran churches here in Huntsville, AL that conducted services in German to accomodate the German rocket scientists that moved here in the 1950's.   But a modern difference that strikes me (and I could be wrong), is that English speakers used to be able to conduct their affairs without having the foreign languages pushed onto them.  Now, the Lowe's Home Center near me has signs in Spanish and English.  If I buy a consumer device, I have to find the English section of the owner's manual, and when I'm looking up something, I've got to flip past the Spanish and French pages to find what I want.  The Nashville I grew up in had a dial full of English radio stations, now there are some Spanish speaking stations.  If I'm looking at the specifications of a TV at Circuit City,!
  as often as not I've got to turn the box around because the side facing me is Spanish rather than English.
>
> All this is to say that probably some of the underlying desire for English-only laws is not so much to make immigrants conduct themselves in English, as it is to allow "natives" not to have to deal with foreign languages (primarily Spanish).
>
This sounds like one of those cases of heterostatic and homeostatic
forces operating in conflicting directions in a population, driven by
different kinds of interests and concerns. Merchants and businessmen use
Spanish to attract potential customers speaking this language, hoping to
increase their clientele but thereby encouraging Spanish speakers to
feel comfortable with/in their language. Others are made insecure, or
feel threatened, by a new language being used around them... just in
case it should change the norms of socio-economic competition in their
community. The Anglos of the 19th and first half of the twentieth
century may not have felt the same way; perhaps the sense businesses of
the time did not think of accommodating their customers in the latter's
language. Principles of economics and trade don't seem to have remained
the same.

Sali.
>
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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Salikoko S. Mufwene                    s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor
University of Chicago                  773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org