Making English Our Official Language

 

The Trump administration’s nativist rhetoric and policy has sparked consistent, widespread critique and protest. And yet, there’s one unprecedented anti-immigrant policy move that has garnered relatively little attention.

In March, the President signed an executive order declaring English the official language of the United States. This historic order marked the first time in US history that the federal government has declared an official language. As a sociolinguist who studies the connection between language and repressive politics, I worry that we ignore a move toward linguistic “unity” at our peril.

The executive order does not require federal agencies to stop offering services, websites, or materials in multiple languages, yet this is exactly what many federal agencies are doing. In July, the Justice Department was instructed to minimize “non-essential multilingual services” across federal agencies. In August, the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pulled down translated materials from their website, announcing that moving forward the department would speak “with one voice and one language.” 

Contracts for translation services have been reportedly canceled. The Department of Education rescinded key bilingual education guidance. While the 1974 Supreme Court ruling that requires public schools to help students learn English and understand academic content is still in force, it’s up to the Department of Justice and Department of Education to enforce it—and combined with the elimination of offices and personnel that monitored compliance, the Presidential directive creates a ready environment for discrimination and exclusion.

In a historically multilingual nation, a government that insists on an English-only approach is less responsive, representative, and accountable to constituents. Over 27 million people in the U.S. have limited proficiency in English and may be affected by decreased access to language access services, with disproportionate impacts on immigrants. For people seeking health, education, or law enforcement services, the consequences can be dire. When these building blocks of family and community wellbeing are inaccessible, families become isolated, vulnerable, and less able to thrive.

When it comes to political participation, an English-only federal government transforms language from a means of communication into a systemic barrier. Linguistic disenfranchisement prevents individuals from seeking justice, challenging unfair regulations, or holding officials accountable. A person who cannot communicate with court officials, tax officials, or managers of workplace conditions is a person whose human and civil rights are at risk.

Not only does the executive order place a heavy linguistic burden on US residents seeking information or accountability from their government, it also has immense symbolic weight. The order’s stated aim to “cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens” elevates a false ideal of homogeneity. It’s not hard to imagine that the use of “citizen” here is meant to exclude non-citizen residents from the national culture, especially since this line of argument echoes nativist, nationalist rhetoric of repressive regimes past and present.

One of Francisco Franco’s early acts in his decades-long nationalist rule of Spain was to persecute the public use of regional languages such as Catalan, Galician and Basque. Basque students caught speaking their heritage language were forced to write lines stating, “I must not speak Basque at school.” In apartheid South Africa, the white-minority government used language policy to maintain control, designating English and Afrikaans as the only two official languages. Here in the US, Native American children forcibly sent to boarding schools were punished for speaking their heritage language.

So, what can we do to push back against the stifling rhetoric and laws that seek to enforce English-only environments?

We can first reject scapegoating aimed at American residents whose primary language is not English. In authoritarian movements, scapegoating is a central tactic used to consolidate power, unify followers, and deflect blame for societal problems away from leaders and systemic issues. It relies on identifying a supposedly deviant “other” as the cause of the public’s frustrations and fears. We can redirect that blame where it belongs.

We can also remind ourselves that public opinion isn’t fixed, which means that the way we talk about these issues matters. Most Americans hold misconceptions about multilingualism, its history, and its implications for a society—but with the right approach, these very same people can be persuaded to value and support its flourishing. Based on research my colleagues and I conducted at the FrameWorks Institute, these three framing strategies are especially effective in building support for expansive, inclusive language policies:

Change the Metaphor: People often think of the nation as if it’s a container with a fixed volume for language—and reason that adding other languages could displace English. This assumption is wrong: both minds and societies have great multilingual capacities. A simple way to prompt more expansive thinking is to explain that language works more like an abundant garden, where plant variety strengthens and enriches the entire ecosystem.

Focus on the Gains, Not the Deficit: When advocating for multilingualism, emphasize the significant cognitive advantages it confers. Explain that for young children, learning more than one language early in life strengthens their executive function skills, metacognition, and ability to understand other perspectives.

Highlight the Human Cost of Loss: Talk openly about the real costs faced by children and adolescents who lose a heritage language. Unless children use a language regularly, they can lose fluency, which can mean losing connection to family, culture, history, and often, identity. Explain that language policies can either help or hinder language maintenance, and that we can create systems that work with, rather than discourage, the multilingualism that has always been part of our nation’s social fabric.

Finally, we can all pay attention to whether and how the heritage language speakers in our communities are scapegoated or supported. We can vocally reject anti-immigrant sentiment. And we can insist that our local and state governments commit to linguistically inclusive services.

Making English our official language does not make us stronger as a nation; it makes us smaller, colder, and less humane. To abandon our commitment to a multilingual government is to abandon both freedom of expression and the expectation that our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” A true commitment to “one voice” means ensuring every voice has the opportunity to be heard, understood, and supported.

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Julie Sweetland, PhD, is a sociolinguist and a senior advisor at the FrameWorks Institute.

-The Contrarian