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4 - Resisting and Rewriting

How People Undo English-Only Policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2024

Katherine S. Flowers
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
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Summary

Language policies are difficult to enact, but they may be even more difficult to undo. Frederick County is one of the rare communities to ever repeal an English-only policy. I analyze how activists and politicians worked in concert to dismantle the ordinance, both in terms of actually passing a repeal bill and by marshaling community support more broadly. I find that people used four strategies: flipping the economics script, linking language to race and racism, questioning whether English can even be defined and separated from other languages, and highlighting the role of collective action. At the same time, focusing on the economic benefits of multilingualism nearly eclipsed the other approaches, with the end result that the repeal bill itself offered a more limited vision of language policy than the rest of the repeal campaign and the interviews. Ultimately, I argue that there are advantages as well as risks to cultivating and combining different alternatives to English-only policies. In light of these people’s successful advocacy, I also conclude that scholars have much to learn from activists’ expertise.

Type
Chapter
Information
Making English Official
Writing and Resisting Local Language Policies
, pp. 112 - 143
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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