Abstract
The United States emerged from World Wars I and II as a dominant world power. At the same time, it developed a xenophobic resistance to immigration and foreign languages, especially as these conveyed information from foreign political economies. The US exercised its power as a monolingual hegemon, and “English” came to be understood as the study of all world literature and the central purveyor of meaning. “The languages” came to be seen as skills in the service of English, especially as narrowly defined by The National Defense Education Act of 1958. This monolingual ideology strengthens American exceptionalism and is maintained by cognitive repression and strong defense mechanisms that deflect counterinformation.
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Bonfiglio, T.P. (2017). Anglocentrism in the American Century. In: The Psychopathology of American Capitalism. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55592-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55592-8_10
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