Jessie Ede Blog 3, Language and Access

I am a native English speaker. The dialect I speak is most likely North Midland American English, but it is not something I have really looked into. When I think about language in America, especially as a means for access, my mind immediately jumps to the immigration debate and pushes for English-only legislation in some states. Even outside the context of state regulations and requirements with regards to ESL standards, many states have made headlines with their efforts to make English the official language of their state, thus requiring all official government documentation to be written in English and only English. There are also bumper stickers, popular with some, that read "I shouldn't have to press '1' for English in America!" or some variation thereof. This stance has always irritated me for multiple reasons, but I always attributed at least part of it to plain xenophobia or, less kindly, to ignorance of America's history of immigration among other things. The Anderson reading made me realize that it is really all about blocking access. It is much easier to subjugate a people with the official establishment and documentation conducted exclusively in a language that is not their own. The guest lecture in class yesterday about minstrelsy reinforced this impression. By denoting some languages or even variations on English as "lesser" in the public sphere, a dichotomy is created where any type of English that is not up to "standard" is a source of shame. I posit that America has simply shifted from making this distinction with the dialect of English mimicked in minstrel shows to decrying non-English languages as the symbol of someone occupying a lower status in society. Granted, this shift has not been a total one, as forms of English with any sort of dialectical specifics (basically, English with no discernible accent or other markers of variation) are still viewed by some as "lower" forms of English, but with the influx of people speaking a different mother tongue than the European settlers the locus for language shaming and access blocking has shifted.