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Bilingualism in Politics

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March 1, 2012
Week 7 Checkpoint Summary 2 Bilingualism in Politics

In the article A Critical Mass Model of Bilingualism among U.S. Born Hispanics, written by April Linton, which talks about how government reacts bilingualism and rather than find a solution to the problem they tend to go the opposite way. “The government makes choices about what language or languages they (minorities) will communicate in” (Linton, 2004). The government has passed laws that only made it acceptable to speak English and disregard any other language in the schools, citizenships and government. For example, the author writes about in 1906, if you wanted to become a citizen you need to know English (Linton, 2004). There were also many laws that were passed that supported bilingualism. For example, the author writes about 1968 Congress passed The Bilingual Education Act, which wanted to “improve the poor school performances of immigrant children by providing fund for “transitional” programs to help children of limited English speaking the ability to learn English before transition into regular classroom (Linton, 2004). The article also discusses assimilation and how not speaking English can make people not feel wanted or at home. By saying that everyone in the U.S needs to speak English is singling out everyone who doesn’t speak it, which isn’t fair. If the tables were turned around and the majority of the language was Spanish and the minority was English, would it then be fair to prohibit the use of the English language? No, it wouldn’t they would consider that to be judicial and goes against the amendments. More work needs to be done in order for this issue to be resolved, but with the immigration issue and trying to control issues with terrorism the need to fix the bilingual system will stay the same. References.

Linton, A. (2004). A Critical Mass Model of Bilingualism

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