Ethnic Identity and the Maintenance of Heritage Languages Essays

Ethnic Identity and the sustenance of Heritage linguistic communicationsNeither ethnicity nor mother tonguenor even identities can be treated as things, commodities, that one can choose and discard similar an old coat at willTove Skutnabb-Kangas (qtd in Fishman 55) Broadly speaking, row policy in the United States is thought of as a under-the-table policy. Schiffman (2000) writes of the challenges of researching this field, given that issues of lyric poem are usually addressed subordinately to other issues. In Schiffmans view, it is a fallacy to assume that the U.S. political science is neutral in regard to issues of linguistic process simply beca custom the U.S. does not rent an official oral communication in actuality, the strength of this covert policy lies in how the government deals with issues of expression in conjunction with, for example, education and immigration policies (Schiffman 211). Despite Americas history of immigration and linguistic diversity, the o nly overt piece of jurisprudence passed whose purpose was to protect a specific languages use was the Native American Languages Act of 1990 (Schiffman 263), which stated that protecting Native American languages was the policy of the United States government. From the 19th century onward, English, then, has served as a de facto language of the United States, although no polices in addition to the previously mentioned act have been enacted to protect the rights of speakers of languages other than English. Many researchers have pointed out how the federal government did not intervene in issues of language, because the right to speak a language was considered a natural extension of living in a popular society, and therefore did not have to be protected under the law (as cited in Bey... ...--if supportEmptyParas-- Steve. Personal Interview. 28 April, 2003. Works Consulted Gold Mountain Dreams, and between Two Worlds. Becoming American The Chinese Experience. Narr. Bil l Moyers. Producer doubting Thomas Lennon. PBS. 25-26 March 2003. Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. New York Vintage, 1997. Piller, Ingrid. Passing for a Native verbalizer Identity and Success in Second Language Learning. diary of Sociolinguistics 6.2 (2002) 179-206. Spolsky, Bernard. Sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press, 1997. Tong, Yuk Yue, et al. Language Use as a Carrier of Social Identity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 23.2 (1999) 281-296.