The "Official English" Movement and the Symbolic Politics of Language in the United States

Abstract

neous nations in the world, linguistically it is one of the most homogeneous (Thernstrom 1980). Nevertheless, in recent years policy has sparked political conflict in many states and localities as demands for bilingual government services have provoked concern about the continued primacy of This article explores elite and mass reactions to the ongoing confrontation between language rights and official English and reveals a significant gulf between the positions of opinion leaders and ordinary voters. As in the case of the tax revolt, the initiative process is the device that has allowed populist sentiment in favor of official English to prevail over elite opposition. Our main purposes are to identify the social and political conditions that have stimulated linguistic conflict and to determine the motivational bases for the mass appeal of official English. We argue that for most members of the majority group in the United States the tangible personal costs and benefits of bilingual government services or official English are neither clear nor substantial. On the other hand, challenges to the of one's typically engage deep-seated feelings about national identity and group worth (Horowitz 1985; Edwards 1985). With this in mind, we employ the familiar conceptual distinctions between economic and status politics (Gusfield 1963) and self-interest and symbolic politics (Sears, Tyler, Lau, and Allen 1980; Sears and Citrin 1985) to explore the sources of public opinion on issues.