Language Rights in the United States of America

Abstract

Language Rights in the United States of America 1. Introduction The field of language planning and policy (LPP) was only recognized and formalized as a separate academic topic during the 1960s. However, activities and policies related to language use, choice maintenance, correctness, and diffusion preservation have always attracted the interests of authorities, groups, and individuals over several millennia. In fact, societies have always valued appropriate, maintenance and correctness usage of languages to ensure respect of language's standards and norms. As an illustration, in approximately 3,000 BC, the much-revered Pānini recorded the sutras of Sanskrit grammar; subsequently creating consensus and uniformity in the language usage (Misha & Prakhasan, 1982; Thieme, 1935). In the scope related to the new language policy as a separate academic subject, it has highly benefited from many other disciplines, such as history, political science, psychology, economic, linguistic and sociology. Namely, what Ricento describes that language planning and policy has been shaped by epistemological factors. Ricento points out that epistemological factors "… concern paradigms of knowledge and research, such as structuralism and postmodernism in the social sciences and humanities, rational choice theory and neo-Marxism in economics and political sciences, and so on." (2000, p. 196). Although language planning and policy is rather a new field, nowadays it has an important role in every society and its scope has been expanded. Language planning and policy outcomes are a critical issue for social coherency, political reformation, economic growth, human rights, history, and identity. In this work language planning and policy is understood as strategic, oriented activity, interventions, deliberations, rules, instructions, law manipulations, negotiations or tactics are undertaken by the federal government, a state, institution, or any authority with the effect of implementing and influencing language attitudes or behaviors. Fundamentally, today's US linguistic picture is no accident nor an ordinary phenomenon in history. The domination of the English language in widespread communication in the US has appeared to be the result of deliberate, careful and purposeful strategies whose main goal has been to maintain an ideological dependence and a linguistic domination(Schmid, 2001). However, English achieved significant hegemony over other languages including indigenous, immigration and foreign languages throughout the US history, not through official policies but by its status achievement(Hornberger, 1998). Language planning and policy in the United States of America has been mostly tolerance orientation throughout its history. LPP in the United States has varied remarkably over time and has been shaped by language ideology that could broadly be pointed out as monolingual and multilingual(Wiley, 2014). Both ideologies have historically been reflected in the US's LPP at different times with different reasons. Hence, there is confusion occu...