Aquí No Se Habla Español: Stories of Linguistic Repression in Southwest Schools

Abstract

For some Americans, the growing number of heritage language speakers in the United States signals a threat to the cultural fabric of U.S. society. For these individuals, English is the only language that is appropriate for the indoctrination of youth into our nation's social order. Recent events in the United States' political landscape, such as the passage of California's Proposition 227 and Arizona's Proposition 203, attest to the notion that schools remain one of the most ardent battlegrounds for the English language policy debate. Nonetheless, school-based language policy decisions have been made too hastily, often relying on rash assessments of public opinion or personal biases. What school language policymakers have failed to consider are the potential long-term consequences to the social, academic, or linguistic development of heritage language speakers these policies affect. In the present paper, several accounts of Spanish speakers whose heritage language clashed on school grounds are provided. The stark memories from their youth reveal that the establishment of formal or informal English-only policies at school, and the manner in which those policies were enforced, often did shape their personal, scholastic, and language development over time.