[lg policy] The English Language Unity Act: Big government that only a tea partier could love

[Dennis Baron]

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

The English Language Unity Act: Big government that only a tea partier could love

Tea partiers seem intent on throwing more and more of the American government overboard. Yet there's one area where both these wing nuts and many ordinary conservatives support more big government, not less: they want the government to make everyone in America speak English.

Christine O’Donnell, an upstart Tea Party candidate who beat a more traditional Republican congressman in Delaware’s senate primary, says that she “will fight to make English America’s official language for all governmental purposes,” adding, “We cannot be one people without speaking ONE language in common.” In 2007 O’Donnell told FoxNews that American scientists deep in their underground laboratories had created mice with “fully functioning human brains”—experiments which she opposes, unless of course the researchers can guarantee that the mice will speak English.

read the full post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
____________________
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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