LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES—CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE OFFICIAL ENGLISH MOVEMENT, VOL. 1: EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF OFFICIAL LANGUAGE. Roseann Dueñas González (Ed.) with Ildiko Melis. Urbana, IL, and Mahwah, NJ: NCTE and Erlbaum, 2000. Pp. xlvii + 374. $33.95 paper. LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES—CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE OFFICIAL ENGLISH MOVEMENT, VOL 2: HISTORY, THEORY, AND POLICY. Roseann Dueñas González (Ed.) with Ildiko

Abstract

Language Ideologies is a two-volume anthology, published in conjunction with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and “designed for educators, administrators, ESL experts, scholars, and all those who are concerned about language as a source and product of discrimination in our schools and society” (Vol. 1, p. xliii)—not that a reader will learn very much about language ideologies, a topic that has surfaced in the 1990s (see Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994; Schieffelin, Woolard, & Kroskrity, 1998). The ideology here refers solely to the ideas and beliefs used by the Official English Movement and English Only to legitimate their interests, “specifically by distortion and dissimulation” (see Eagleton, 1990, p. 30). This ideology is mostly not analyzed but rather labeled with assertions of “hegemony of the dominant culture” and the like, whereas the ideology that motivates this publication is never problematized and barely acknowledged (but see James Cummins's intelligent Foreword to Vol. 1). The result is a curious sense of English Only bashing at the same level as H. L. Mencken's “If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you.”