Intercultural Communications Post 5

The article Language Ideologies and Policies: Multilingualism and

Education, written by Marcia Farr1 and Juyoung Song2, talks about the controversy over monolingualism and multilingualism. For the most part, many countries speak a variety of languages that they have learned through out their education. The one that seems to be the most spread official language of countries is English. Although the countries mother tongue is still one of the official languages, English continues to be the number 2 official language. America is one of the countries that appears to be pushing for this monolingual country and making standard English as the only official language. “Thus both liberals and conservatives share a belief in the culture of monoglot Standard: everyone should (learn to) speak Standard English. But what is Standard English (Farrl and Song2, 4). According to the article, Standard English is “not an empirical reality, but an abstraction, an ideal use of what is deemed ‘best’ linguistic practice. In the U.S., what is considered Standard varies regionally, and what distinguishes any particular language use as ‘Standard’ is actually the absence of stigmatized linguistic forms, not the presence of particular forms (Farr and Daniels 1986). For me when I think of Standard English I think of the grammar, readings, and writing that we learn in school and are tested on through out standardized tests. Since I have been in third grade I have been learning that there is only one correct standardized form of English. But who is to distinguish this? It was not until last semester when I took English 241, the history of the English language, where I learned about the diverse dialects and linguistic characteristics of the language in other regions in the country. We do not all speak the same English. However, for the most part we can understand each other. Different words may be used for the same thing but the word is unknown to the speaker from a different region. Due to not having a clear definition of what is “Standard English” I feel that conflicts arise from this even to make it the official language of America. Along with that, America is made up of people that are from every where around the world that speak their mother tongue. Dorian argues that “the pairing of nationalization and language standardization yielded an ‘ideology of contempt’ toward minority languages and dialects, which in turn contributed to the disappearance of ‘small languages’ worldwide”. I believe that in order to stand by the American dream we need to allow for this country to be multilingual. There is too much history and significance of languages that have disappeared and are continuing to disappear due to their lack of use and the focus on only English. For me, I think that multilingualism is a good thing. It will open up for better communication with those that do not speak English in other countries. Also, we will not be as ignorant to others cultures and languages if we begin to learn about them. In my future classroom I will be teaching Spanish. Therefore I will be teaching in support of multilingualism. My students will be exposed to different cultures. Those cultures include cultures of Mexico, South America, and Spain. I can only hope that by having them learn this language will encourage them to learn other languages and cultures.