Rhetorical positioning of US policy statements about multilingual education – with reference to the EU

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on US language policy statements that govern the priorities for teaching languages other than English in public schools and the language ideologies implied by specific management moves by the federal government to regulate language education, starting with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968. Following introductory comments on language ideology, rhetorical positioning, and claims-making, this paper provides an overview of language diversity in the USA as the context for examining four major policy statements by the federal government up through the present: (1) the ‘BEA of 1968’; (2) ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB), which replaced the BEA when it became law in 2002; (3) the ‘National Security Language Initiative of 2006’; and (4) the current proposal from President Barack Obama's administration, titled ‘A Blueprint for Reform’, which – if enacted – will replace ‘NCLB’. The next section provides an overview of European Union (EU) language policy in recent years to highlight the sharp contrast between the EU and US approaches. This paper closes with a comparison of the EU and US approaches, with emphasis on how the EU approach could be instructive for US policy-makers.