[lg policy] bibitem: "'No More Strangers and Foreigners': The Dual Focus of the LDS Church Language Program for Scandinavian Immigrants, 1850-1935, " Mormon Historical Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 23-53.

[Harold Schiffman]

LDS Language Policy Swedish Immigrants
May 24, 2011

Throughout its history, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints has employed various means to cope with the challenges
connected with linguistic plurality. When Mormon converts have left
their native lands to gather with the main body of Saints in America,
language differences have often impeded their attempts to unite with
the larger Church community. This article examines the LDS Church’s
language policy and programs that were developed for the first major
group of minority language speakers to join the main body of the
Latter-day Saints—the Scandinavian immigrants who came to Utah between
1850 and 1935. This examination of LDS Church language policies and
programs developed for the early Scandinavian immigrants may allow
contemporary questions regarding the language challenges faced by
immigrant converts, as well as the Church’s policy toward them, to be
seen in a clearer light.



Based on historical evidence, it is apparent that the Church’s policy
has had a dual focus. The first focus, assimilative in nature, has
been on the importance of learning English, the language of the
majority. In the Book of Mormon, we find an example of the Church
dealing with a similar linguistic challenge as the people of Nephi,
led by King Mosiah, discovered the people of Zarahemla, whose
“language had become corrupted.”  To help unify the people, King
Mosiah “caused that [the people of Zarahemla] should be taught in his
language” (Omni 1:17-18). In contrast, the second focus has been
pluralistic and accepting or transitional in nature, allowing minority
language speakers to continue using their native tongues in order to
cushion their integration into the new environment as they become “no
more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens in the Kingdom of
God” (Eph. 2:19).



In investigating the Church’s language policy regarding Scandinavian
immigrants to Utah in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, this article first provides a historical overview of the
demographics of the migration, followed by a discussion of the
Church’s support for the Scandinavians’ acquisition of English. It
concludes with an examination of the actions and policies regarding
the Church’s tolerant stance toward native-tongue maintenance.



"'No More Strangers and Foreigners': The Dual Focus of the LDS Church
Language Program for Scandinavian Immigrants, 1850-1935," Mormon
Historical Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 23-53.

-- http://linguistics.byu.edu/news/183/
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