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Linguistic persity has existed in the United States since the beginning of its history as a nation and it did not become a major theme until the beginning of the 20th century. With the sharply increased immigrants from 1880 to 1920, the Americanization campaign arose and language restriction flourished in response to fears that the new comers are resisting assimilation into the American mainstream society and unwilling to learn English (Hsu, 2007: 220). The persistent battle over language such as the English-Only movement since the 1980s has brought language policy issues into controversy.
The ongoing English-Only movement, though still unable to achieve its ultimate objective of a constitutional amendment making English the official language of the USA, has successfully led to the adoption of English-Only or official English measures by 23 states during the past two decades (Hsu, 2007: 220). What’s more, several states in recent years have passed ballot initiatives that impose English-Only instruction and substantially restrict bilingual education, including California (Preposition 227), Arizona (Preposition 203) and Massachusetts (Question 2). At the federal level, the No Child Left Behind Act has been passed, which emphasizes the quick acquisition of English and the rapid transition to English.
Bilingual education in the U.S. is generally regarded as remedial programs for linguistic minorities who are limited English proficient. Opponents against bilingual education argue that the master of English is equated with political loyalty to the United States and what is meant to be an “American”. However, proponents of bilingual education argue that immigrants’ maintenance of their original languages and culture is a basic human right and a symbol of democracy.源'自:751:"论-文'网www.751com.cn
Pragmatism is an important factor underlying American language policy, which is fully reflected in the attentions to foreign language education in recent years. In the last decades, American government paid special attention to language policy and has associated it with national security. A study on American language policy can help us to have deep inspection of American national policy and the essence of American culture. At the same time, we can use American language policy for reference in the formulation of China’s language education policy.
China’s language education is being criticized by more and more people and it is one of the main areas for reforming in the process of education reform. At present, the ignorance of mother tongue education in school is becoming more and more serious and the time for the teaching of Chinese has been dramatically reduced because of the attention given to other subjects, especially to English. What’s more, the teaching of Chinese generally ends up with the high school education and most college students spend little time improving their Chinese. The result is that many young people in China worship western culture and English, and they are just satisfied with a smattering of knowledge about Chinese and Chinese culture. The condition of Chinese students’ lack of knowledge about Chinese and Chinese culture may be fully reflected in some Chinese-English translations. For example, in a test for certificate of interpreter held in Shanghai, many students just translated “华佗再见” as “Goodbye, Huatuo” and “富贵不能淫” as “One cannot conduct a licentious life after getting rich”. Thus, it is urgent to improve current language education in China for the further development of our country and students themselves.
This paper critically examines American language policy after the 20th century by taking a few symbolic events as subject, i.e. the bilingual education, English-Only movement and foreign language education policy. The paper is pided into five sections. The first section introduces the topic for study, the content and aim of this paper. The second section gives a literature review on this topic. The third section provides an overview of vicissitudes of language policy in the U.S. history after the 20th century. The fourth section examines the implication of American language policy for China’s language education. Finally, the paper concludes with an overall illustration of the topic.