In the November 1988 elections, three states—Colorado, Arizona, and Florida—passed measures making English the official language of those states. These victories were foreshadowed by the passage, in 1986, of Position 63 in California. Proposition 63 amended the state constitution to declare English the official language of California and charged the legislature and state officials with the preservation and enhancement of English as the common language of the state. The appearance of Proposition 63 on the political horizon brought language into public parlance, allowing us the opportunity to explore American language ideology. Preelection editorials and letters to the editor in California newspapers speculating on the need for and effects of Proposition 63 reveal the language attitudes of the writers. Certain themes that regularly appeared on both sides of the issue may be taken as elements of current American ideology.
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References
1.
1. In so doing, California became the seventh state to make English its official language and only the second to do so by constitutional amendment. The other six are Nebraska (by constitutional amendment, 1923), Illinois (by statute, 1969), Virginia (by statute, 1981), Indiana (by statute, 1984), Kentucky (by statute, 1984), and Tennessee (by statute, 1984). Martha Jimenez, “States Consider Bills, Referenda on English-Only,”EPIC Events Newsletter, 1(1):5 (Mar.-Apr. 1988).
2.
2. Text of Proposition 63, in California Voter Information Handbook (Sacramento: California Registrar of Voters, Nov. 1986), p. 45.
3.
3. In Arizona, Colorado, and Florida, English was declared to be the official language by amendment; in Georgia by resolution; and in Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, and South Carolina by statute. Mary Carol Combs, English Plus Information Clearing House, personal communication.
4.
4. Joshua Fishman, “ `English Only': Its Ghosts, Myths and Dangers” (Keynote address, delivered at the conference of the California Association for Bilingual Education, Anaheim, CA, 28-31 Jan. 1987).
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5. The data comprise all the editorial commentary referring to Proposition 63, bilingual education, or language published in several California newspapers—the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, La opinión, the Sacramento Bee, and the San Diego Union—during the period from 10 Sept. 1986 through 6 Dec. 1986. Also included is a selection of news articles from those same newspapers that contain interviews or quotes from individuals on the same topics, as well as campaign literature and a sampling of editorials from other U.S. periodicals, drawn from a data base produced by Kenji Hakuta, School of Education, University of California at Santa Cruz, and a corps of research assistants and correspondents.
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6. The data were first analyzed by reviewing the corpus as a whole and identifying recurrent ideas or themes. After isolation of the most prominent themes, the corpus, consisting of 84 California letters to the editor (33 in favor of Proposition 63, 37 against, 14 addressing funding of bilingual education and English as a second language), 33 California editorials (11 pro-63, 22 against), 20 California news articles, and 5 articles and 14 editorials (10 anti-63, 4 pro) from sources outside California, was subdivided into material supporting and opposing English as an official language, and themes that appeared in material from both sides of the issue were identified. Any themes that did not crop up at least three times on each side were discarded. The corpus was then reorganized into four categories representing four across-the-board themes: language as common bond, language as access, language as ethnicity, and language as symbol. The scope of this article prohibits discussing the last here although it is discussed in my master's thesis. See MacKaye, “California Proposition 63 and Public Perceptions of Language” (Master's thesis, Stanford University, 1987).
7.
7. S. I. Hayakawa, “English-Only: Linguistic Focusing... or Fixing a Non-problem?”San Diego Union, 12 Oct. 1986.
8.
8. “English Solidifies the Melting Pot” (Proposition 63 direct-mail campaign literature, Office of Frank Hill, Republican Assemblyman, Whittier, CA, n.d.).
9.
9. S. I. Hayakawa, J. W. Orozco, and S. Diamond, “Argument in Favor of Proposition 63,”California Voter Information Handbook, p. 46.
10.
10. Mark Phillips Green, “Language Barrier,”San Francisco Sunday Examiner/Chronicle, 5 Oct. 1986.
11.
11. Hayakawa, Orozco, and Diamond, “Argument in Favor of Proposition 63.” The ballot argument is the official argument in favor of Proposition 63, which appeared in the California voter information pamphlet distributed to all voters by the Registrar of Voters.
12.
12. “The Divisiveness of Proposition 63,”Sacramento Bee, 10 Sept. 1986. Copyright, The Sacramento Bee 1989.
13.
13. Thomas V. Philp, “Un anglo por el bilinguismo,”La opinión, 28 Oct. 1986.
14.
14. James Crawford, “Supporting Comments Reveal Animosity towards Ethnic Groups,”Education Week, 12 Feb. 1986, p. 20.
15.
15. “Language Law Upsets Duke Linguist,”Durham Morning Herald, 7 Dec. 1986.
17. Merrie Rich, personal correspondence to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg after he wrote a New York Times op-ed piece opposing Proposition 63.
18.
18. James Crawford, “Conservative Groups Take Aim at Federal Bilingual Programs,”Education Week, 19 Mar. 1986, p. 1.
19.
19. Gerda Bikales, “We Need New Laws to Protect English,”USA Today, 25 July 1986.
20.
20. Alfred J. Verstreken, “Proposition 63,”Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 1986.
21.
21. Guadalupe San Miguel, “One Country, One Language: An Historical Sketch of English Language Movements in the United States” (Paper commissioned by the Tomas Rivera Center, 1986), p. 2.
22.
22. William Trombley, “English-Only Proposition Kindles Minorities' Fears,”Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 1986. Copyright, 1986, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission.
23.
23. Smith Hempstone, “English Is Our Language, but Amendment Is Wrong,”Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1984.
24.
24. Quoted in Crawford, “Supporting Comments Reveal Animosity,” p. 14.
25.
25. Robert Kirschner, “Against: Veiled Attack,”San Francisco Chronicle, 1 Nov. 1986.
26.
26. Shirley Brice Heath, personal communication.
27.
27. Benjamin Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956).
28.
28. Quoted in Crawford, “Supporting Comments Reveal Animosity.”
30. Shirley Brice Heath and F. Mandabach, “Language Status Decisions and the Law in the United States,” in Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives, ed. J. Cobarrubias and J. A. Fishman (The Hague: Mouton, 1983), pp. 87-105.
31.
31. Philip Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov, and O. Handlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 31-58.
32.
32. Hans Kohn, American Nationalism (New York, 1957), as cited in ibid.
33.
33. Joshua A. Fishman, “Language Maintenance in a Supra-ethnic Age,” in Language Loyalty in the United States, ed. J. A. Fishman (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), pp. 392-412.
34.
34. Nathan Glazer, “The Process and Problems of Language Maintenance: An Integrative Review,” in Language Loyalty in the United States, ed. Fishman, pp. 358-367.
35.
35. Calvin Veltman, Language Shift in the United States (Berlin: Mouton, 1983).
36.
36. Ibid.
37.
37. Kevin F. McCarthy and R. Burciaga Valdez, “Current and Future Effects of Mexican Immigration in California” (Monograph R-3365/1-CR, Rand Corporation, Nov. 1985).
38.
38. “We Don't Need Laws to Protect English,”USA Today, 25 July 1986. Copyright 1986, USA TODAY. Excerpted with permission.
39.
39. S. I. Hayakawa, “For: A United People,”San Francisco Chronicle, 1 Nov. 1986.
40.
40. Philip Chiu, Letter to the editor, San Diego Union, 24 Oct. 1986.
41.
41. Geoffrey K. Pullum, “Write Sonnets, Not Initiatives,”Santa Cruz Sentinel, 28 Sept. 1986.
42.
42. Morris Freedman, “On Linguistic Diversity in the Classroom,”Education Week, 13 Nov. 1985, p. 28.
43.
43. Jim Moore, Letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 1986.
44.
44. Arnold Leibowitz, “Language and the Law: The Exercise of Power through Official Designation of Language,” in Language and Politics, ed. W. M. O'Barr and J. F. O'Barr, (The Hague: Mouton, 1976).
45.
45. San Miguel, “One Country, One Language,” p. 2.
46.
46. Kirschner, “Against: Veiled Attack.”
47.
47. Sherry Rice, Letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, 14 Nov. 1986.
