'Talking while Spanish' on trial in Wichita

[Dennis Baron]

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

''Talking while Spanish' on trial in Wichita

In 2007, St. Anne School, a Wichita Catholic elementary school ordered  
its students to speak only English while on school grounds. Students  
and parents were asked to sign formsacknowledging the new policy.

A separate letter to students signed by the principal, Sister Margaret  
Nugent, threatened consequences for noncompliance, and several  
students who didn't sign were expelled.

Three families whose students were expelled then sued St. Anne's in  
federal court to reverse the school's English-only policy and  
decriminalize "talking while Spanish."

At the trial, which began in Wichita earlier this week, one student  
became so emotional while testifying about the discrimination he faced  
for speaking Spanish that the judge had to call a recess. Later the  
same day, the student's mother told the court about a hate-filled  
email, written by a student and sent to other students and parents,  
telling Hispanics to go home if they didn't like the new language  
policy.

Although the school already had a no-bullying policy, Sr. Nugent  
testified that she implemented the English-only policy to stop  
students from using Spanish to bully children and make derogatory  
comments about the staff. The principal didn't indicate why the "go  
back where you came from" email was not considered bullying.

WKSN, Wichita's NBC affiliate, reported the trial on the air and on  
its web site, and allowed readers to comment. Responses show that  
language choice is an emotional issue, one that reflects attitudes  
about immigrants and cocnern about who gets to make the rules.

Support for the school ranged from "it's a private school, they can do  
what they want" to arguments where "we" (true-blue American speakers  
of English who, even though "we" are the descendants of immigrants,  
are tired of the self-serving demands of immigrants) are invariably  
opposed to "them" (ungrateful and unpatriotic foreigners unwilling to  
make an effort to assimilate and who talk about "us" in a language we  
can't understand):

read what WKSN viewers actually said, and why they felt "talking while  
Spanish" is either a crime, or a conspiracy to commit a crime, on the  
Web of Language

____________________
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://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

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







-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20080815/eb030e50/attachment.htm>