[patriots] FW: [North_Maine_63733637] Interesting Reflection on Language
- From: annette rose smith <annette-rose-smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 09:28:24 +0100
To: eaif_group-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: North_Maine_63733637@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 12:31:14 -0700
Subject: [North_Maine_63733637] Interesting Reflection on Language
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/09/americas-war-language/
Begin forwarded message:
America’s war on language
Dennis Baron, Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of
Illinois.
2014 marks the centennial of World War I, time to take a closer look at one of
its offshoots, America’s little-known War on Language.
In April, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. In addition to
sending troops to fight in Europe, Americans waged war on the language of the
enemy at home. German was the second most commonly-spoken language in America,
and banning it seemed the way to stop German spies cold. Plus, immigrants had
always been encouraged to switch from their mother tongue to English to signal
their assimilation and their acceptance of American values. Now speaking
English became a badge of patriotism as well, a way to prove that you were not
a spy.The war on language was fought on two fronts, one legal, the other, in
the schools. Its impact was immediate and long-lasting. German was the target,
but the other “foreign” tongues suffered collateral damage. Immigrant languages
in America went into decline, and there was a precipitous drop in the study of
foreign languages in US schools as well.Speak English, it’s the lawBoycotting
German was the first step in the campaign, but legislating against the language
quickly followed. Scribner’s was urged to publish no German titles during the
war. Sheet music dealers refused to handle German songs. At least one American
Berlin was renamed Liberty. Even German foods were rebranded. Just as later,
during the Iraq War, French fries would become freedom fries, in the America of
World War I, German fried potatoes became American fries, sauerkraut morphed
into liberty cabbage, and superpatriots even caught the liberty measles.In
addition, new laws regulated the use of foreign languages. Responding to a
growing sentiment that using anything but English gave aid and comfort to the
enemy, the Trading with the Enemy Act (50 USC Appendix), passed in June, 1917,
suppressed the American foreign-language press and declared non-English printed
matter unmailable without a certified English translation.Across the country,
state and local ordinances forbade the use of foreign languages, urged
immigrants to switch to English immediately, and punished those who failed to
comply. On May 23, 1918, Iowa Gov. William Harding banned the use of any
foreign language in public: in schools, on the streets, in trains, even over
the telephone, a more public instrument then than it is today. For Harding, the
First Amendment “is not a guaranty of the right to use a language other than
the language of this country—the English language.”Harding’s English-only order
covered freedom of religion as well: “Let those who cannot speak or understand
the English language conduct their religious worship in their home.” And he
told one reporter, “There is no use in anyone wasting his time praying in other
languages than English. God is listening only to the English tongue.”Speaking
in Des Moines five days later, former president Theodore Roosevelt endorsed
Harding’s “Babel Proclamation,” introducing a phrase that would become a
refrain of today’s official English movement:America is a nation—not a polyglot
boarding house. . . . There can be but one loyalty—to the Stars and Stripes;
one nationality—the American—and therefore only one language—the English
language.Such attitudes had a chilling effect on language use. 18,000 people
were charged in the Midwest with violating the various new English-only
statutes.Although some of the wartime English-only laws were later repealed or
allowed to expire, the post-war period saw new laws restricting aliens and
reinforcing the decline in immigrant languages. In 1921 alone, for example,
various states proposed or passed laws making aliens ineligible to own property
or to bequeath it to their heirs; to buy stock in American corporations; to
hunt, fish, or own firearms; or to work in government offices or on public
works projects. 1921 was also the year that New York state instituted English
literacy tests for voters and entertained a law to ban any speech or talk in a
public manner, in any language other than English upon any subject relating to
the form or character of the government or the administration or enforcement of
the laws of this state or the United States.At the federal level, Congress
responded to a new wave of isolationism that was sweeping the country with the
Immigration Act of 1924. It slowed immigration from the nonanglophone countries
of Europe to a trickle and denied admission to nonanglophones from just about
everywhere else (Asians were banned completely, and in the debate over the
bill, Jews were singled out as particularly unassimilable). When immigration
re-opened again in 1965, Americans who, after more than 40 years of “reform”
simply assumed that their country had always been monolingual, reacted to the
new, unfamiliar immigrant languages by declaring English endangered, attacking
bilingual education, and passing new laws making English the official language
of government, the workplace, and the schools.Speak the language of your
flagThe schools opened up a second front in the Great War on foreign languages
in World War I America. In 1918, the New York Times reported that as many as 25
states had already removed German from the curriculum, an action the newspaper
applauded as “a matter of polity, of patriotism, of Americanism” and “good hard
common sense.”Schools banned foreign-languages from classrooms and schoolyards,
promoting English not just as the best way to succeed in life, but also as the
language for patriots. In 1918, the Chicago Woman’s Club launched Better
American Speech Week to further this agenda. With slogans like “Speak the
language of your flag”; “American Speech means American loyalty”; and “Better
Speech for Better Americans,” children were encouraged to learn English, and
those who already spoke the language were asked to speak it
better.Schoolchildren had to take a “Watch Your Speech” pledge which began, “I
love the United States of America. I love my country’s language,” and included
among its promises, “that I will say a good American ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in place of
an Indian grunt ‘un-hum’ and ‘nup-um’ or a foreign ‘ya’ or ‘yeh’ and
‘nope.’”Better American Speech Week reflected the spirit of wartime America,
encoding patriotism, the assimilation of immigrants, and a rejection of
minority languages and dialects. It resonated with popular opinion and was
embraced by schools and by the press from coast to coast. In addition to
pledges and posters, schools recruited students to spy on the usage of their
peers. Those caught committing crimes against the language were interned,
hauled before student tribunals certain to convict them, and made to wear signs
testifying to their shame. Exposing the enemies of English was the least that
children could do while their parents were busy exposing the enemies of the
state.After the war the US Supreme Court threw out laws in Nebraska and Ohio
banning foreign-language education (Meyer v. Nebraska [262 US 390] 1923), but
the damage was already done. Before World War I, 25% of American high school
students studied German. By 1922, that figure had plummeted to 0.6%, a level
from which it never recovered. World War II did not see the same language
restrictions as World War I, and by then learning the language of the enemy
rather than banning it had become an important tool for national security.
Still, in 1948, only 0.8% of American students were studying German in high
school.The War to End All Wars failed to do that. But the Great War on language
that began in 1917 rages on despite having met its goals. Today, with
immigrants abandoning their first languages faster than ever and
foreign-language enrollments still precarious, many Americans still regard
English, and therefore America, as under attack. States like California and
Arizona, where ongoing immigration creates large numbers of minority-language
speakers, ban bilingual education in the mistaken belief that this will hasten
the switch to English, and Iowa, where only 3% of residents speak a language
other than English (and many in that number speak English as well), revives the
Babel Proclamation and declares English the state’s official language to save
it from imminent destruction.American culture has always been hostile to
foreign languages, and to native languages that aren’t English, so even without
World War I, we still wouldn’t be celebrating National Heritage Language Day.
But even though the war didn’t make the world safe fordemocracy, it did its bit
to make the country “safe” for English.
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Posted by: James Sanchez <seattleplatypus@xxxxxxx>
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