President Donald Trump signed an executive order March 1 designating English as the official language of the United States. The order aims to create a unified society and streamline communication, but multilingual students and staff at Boston University are concerned about its potential implications.
The order revokes a previous one from the Clinton administration, “Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency,” meaning government agencies are no longer required to offer documents, products or services in languages other than English.
Marisol Santiago, director of policy and organizing at MassVote, an organization dedicated to building a culture of active political participation, said language assistance is at the “core” of the organization’s priorities because access to information is important.
“When it comes to voting access and language justice, we’re looking at people’s ability to advocate for themselves, to be able to point out the things that they need,” Santiago said. “You create policy, but policy is only as good as it reaches the people.”
Santiago said the larger wave of pushback against immigrants can create fear for those who don’t speak English fluently when they need to access community resources.
“The more there’s polarization in our country, the more people feel isolated, the more less likely they are to reach out against services, the more less likely they are for their kids to actually have access to medical care or support within their schools,” Santiago said.
Jennifer Altavilla-Giordano, lecturer and program director of the TESOL Multilingual Learner Education program at the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, said the order will not immediately affect language assistance in schools but she is concerned by the order’s broader symbolism.
Though it may not affect English language learning students directly, the rhetoric it promotes is harmful, Altavilla-Giordano said. She has experienced students not wanting to participate in class because they aren’t confident in their English.
“They may have really complex thoughts in their other language, but they don’t yet have the English to express those complexities,” Altavilla-Giordano said. “So, they feel like, ‘Well, I just won’t say anything,’ or ‘I won’t write anything at all because maybe the teacher or my peers are going to think that I’m dumb.’”
Freshman Lou Lou Le Breton Kupner grew up speaking many languages at home, but said her family was informed that speaking too many languages would slow her English development, so she focused on just English and Spanish around age four.
Le Breton Kupner said her early decision to focus on English caused her to lose the ability to speak with her grandmother.
“Losing my fluency in French disconnected me from my dad’s side of the family because I was super pressured by America and American standards to learn English and treat that as my most proficient language,” Le Breton Kupner said.
Altavilla-Giordano said the order is counterintuitive to language development for multilingual children because it may discourage people in the U.S. from speaking or learning languages other than English.
“If you are coming at language education with this idea that we have this target language of English, and we really don’t care or don’t want you to use the other languages that you know, it’s really hard for people, especially adolescents and adults, to develop English,” Altavilla-Giordano said.
Jack Osmond, co-president of the BU Undergraduate World Languages and Literatures Association, is currently studying in China to improve their Chinese. They also speak French and are learning Cantonese and German.
For Osmond, the order and its effect on broad attitudes toward language are not new.
“The rhetoric that politicians have used about foreign language learning for all of our history has tried to teach us that foreign languages are something that, if they’re not evil and a threat to our country, they are at the very least a tool,” Osmond said.
Le Breton Kupner said unlike the U.S., language learning is encouraged in many countries as a way to connect with cultures. As a result, she said she has always “tried to be the least Hispanic version” of herself in the U.S.
“It’s just so interesting to see how other countries explore culture and diversity, and just comparing it to the negative side of America, I feel like it’s not really explored at all other than maybe a Spanish class in every high school,” Le Breton Kupner said.
Freshman Duru Yuceturk is from Turkey and has been learning English since kindergarten. Yuceturk said learning English felt like a necessity if she wanted to be able to come to the U.S. for college.
“I feel like everyone who lives in a non-English speaking country feels, not the obligation, but feels like English is a necessity to learn, if you want to be a global citizen,” Yuceturk said.
Santiago said she is concerned about the order affecting Massachusetts citizens even when it does not represent their views.
“This is not by any means, anything that we’re hearing of right now in our communities,” Santiago said. “No one is banging down our doors and saying that we should shift resources like this. I think, if anything, we’re continuing to say, ‘How do we continue to be welcoming and supportive to you, no matter who you are?’”
Le Breton Kupner said the order also represents the American government’s attitude toward native non-English speakers, not just those learning other languages.
“There’s just this slow, but very effective, push out of everybody who isn’t a native English speaker, who isn’t the exact American that our government or our president want to be in the country,” Le Breton Kupner said.
