Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Dean, Erin

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

English dominance has been the overwhelming trend of US history. Native languages have long been eradicated alongside their speakers. Boarding schools were established to Americanize indigenous peoples both culturally and linguistically (Warhol 2011). Naturalization laws mandated English proficiency for migrants, minimizing the number and size of language enclaves across the country, enclaves which used to define the colonies. States individually established English only clauses and banned foreign language education in schools (Malakoff and Hakuta 1990), and though the civil rights era presented hope for language rights, a subsequent wave of English-only sentiment swept the country again in the 1980s. Now, the xenophobic rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration threaten language minorities in new ways. The institution of education has been one of the primary tools of language inculcation in the United States. The language ecology of the classroom affects that of the nation by teaching children not only literacy in the dominant language, but which other languages are permitted or not in the academic context. The classroom has become a political stage where the debate different models for language instruction plays itself out on a daily basis. Due to its turbulent past, language rights in the classroom will be explored historically before being grounded in the experiences of ten participants who learned English in Florida public schools. The possibilities for the future of language education will be explored in light of the current administration as both product of and departure from the language trends of the past.

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