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Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching in the United States pp 55–76Cite as

The Discourse of Foreignness in U.S. Language Education

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Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 21))

Abstract

Levine’s chapter presents and analyzes public discourses about the teaching and learning of languages other than English in the U.S. It proposes that several interrelated and often superficially opposing messages create a “discourse of foreignness” that may help inform our thinking about U.S. language education. The strands of this discourse are discussed in categories that embrace both its historical forms and more currently dominant ones. Individual acts of discourse in public venues, such as Congressional hearings, TV interviews, op-ed pieces, and political speeches, complementary arguments supporting “English only” movements as well as positive discourses that stress the utility and global need for an American citizenry that is bi- or multilingual are presented. Because the public discourse about language education lags behind current best practices recommended by current language research, it is suggested that educators need to engage in shifting such perceptions by entering into media discussions of why foreign language study remains significant both personally and in the national interest.

I believe that language pedagogy is a significant tool of political power. I believe that only where the tools of power are openly known, openly critiqued, and accessible to everyone can anything like a true democracy work.

(Scollon 2004, p. 275)

Regardless of what they are called, in U.S. schools languages other than English are in fact perceived, by both adults and students, as profoundly foreign.

(Reagan 2002, p. 23)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am also guided in the examination of public statements about language learning and teaching by four of Blommaert’s five principles for the analysis of discourse (2005, pp. 14–15). These include focusing on what language use means to its users, the ways language operates differently in different environments, the unit of analysis of actual and densely contextualized forms in which language occurs in society, and communication events that are influenced by the structure of the world system.

  2. 2.

    It would exceed the scope of this chapter, but a further dimension of the Luxury strand relates to gender identity. Some scholars have observed and analyzed the ways that foreign language learning has long been regarded as a particularly “feminine” undertaking, which may help explain why there is a disproportionate number of female students in language classes at all levels, and in the choice of particular languages (see Carr and Pauwels 2006; Chavez 2001; Pavlenko 2004; Schmenk 2004; Sunderland 2000).

  3. 3.

    This retraction, despite his apology for his choice of words, had in fact gone on the record because Mr. Gingrich had expressed similar sentiments before. In his 1995 book, To Renew America, he wrote: “Without English as the common language, there is no (such) civilization” (Gingrich 1995, p. 162, cited in Lo Bianco 1999, p. 48).

  4. 4.

    For the full transcript of Ms. Bachman’s statement, see Appendix. It should be stressed that both the moderator’s and Ms. Bachman’s assessment of and assertions about the situation in France in 2005 were fairly inaccurate. According to the “The Uptake” section of the Huffington Post, “the unrest was no jihad, had nothing to do with religious faith or Muslim culture or al Jazeera. It was more akin to the riots in the U.S. for expanded civil rights in the 1960s or those that followed from the Rodney King police beating in Los Angeles in 1991. The European riots came after two suburban youth were killed in a police chase. The unrest centered on decades of discrimination that had manifested itself, for example, in school acceptances and hiring practices and police force racial profiling” (Michelle Bachman 2008).

  5. 5.

    Moreover, U.S. English has profited from this shift; in earlier decades, British English was the standard for educated speech.

  6. 6.

    See Kramsch (2005) for a critique of the relationship between governmental responses in the public sector and the foreign language education community.

  7. 7.

    Interestingly, the overall decline of U.S. global competitiveness may be due more to macroeconomic instability than to a lack of workforce skills and knowledge, according to a recent study by Mathis (2011).

  8. 8.

    According to a 2009 report in Time, Rosetta Stone “generated $209 million in revenue in 2008, compared to $25.4 million in 2004—that’s a 723 % increase.” They point out that around 95 % of Rosetta Stone’s revenues came from the U.S. market (Gregory 2009). While their stock has since fallen considerably (see http://quotes.wsj.com/RST for the trends), the drop may in fact be due to the increase in competition from other sources prospective language learners find in the digital world.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the participants in the 2012 symposium in Austin, Texas, for their feedback and ideas in developing this chapter. I am very grateful to Janet Swaffar, Per Urlaub, Katie Arens and the anonymous reviewers for their outstanding feedback and editing of the manuscript.

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Leo van Lier, whose work has taught me so much. He was one of the rare scholars who could convey through every page he wrote the profound importance of the study of language as a human phenomenon. His many contributions on language and the teaching and learning of languages will continue to serve countless scholars and teachers for a long time to come.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Glenn S. Levine

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  1. Glenn S. Levine
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Correspondence to Glenn S. Levine .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Germanic Studies, C3300, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

    Janet Swaffar

  2. Germanic Studies, C3300, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

    Per Urlaub

Appendix: Transcript of Michele Bachman during the Minnesota Republican 6th Congressional District Debate Sponsored by the Taxpayers League, November 2005 (Michelle Bachman 2008)

Appendix: Transcript of Michele Bachman during the Minnesota Republican 6th Congressional District Debate Sponsored by the Taxpayers League, November 2005 (Michelle Bachman 2008)

Moderator: Given the recent rioting in France that is the result of a sub-culture that has not assimilated, what would you do to make sure that a similar situation does not take place in America? […]

Michele Bachmann: I just want to say only in France, only in France could you have suburban youth rioting because the welfare benefits aren’t generous enough. And that’s… that’s what they’re telling us now is happening there. And only in France could that happen.

And what we’re seeing is just the fruits of leftism. It’s suburbanites, the kids, that are watching cable TV, did you know that? In a lot of these high rises where a lot of the suburban youth are doing rioting or doing they have cable TV in their apartments. They’re listening to al Jazeera, and they’re being encouraged and prompted to go ahead and start these riots all over France.

There is a movement afoot that’s occurring and part of that is the whole philosophical idea of multi-cultural diversity, which on the face sounds wonderful. Let’s appreciate and value everyone’s cultures. But guess what? Not all cultures are equal. Not all values are equal.

And one thing that we’re seeing is that in the midst of this violence that’s being encouraged by al Jazeera and by the jihadists that’s occurring, is that we are seeing that those who are coming into France—which had a beautiful culture—the French culture is actually diminished. It’s going away. And just with the population of France they are losing Western Europeans and it’s being taken over by muh… by a Muslim ethic. Not that Muslims are bad. But they are not assimilating.

And that’s what I had mentioned in my previous response is that America is a great nation, with great values. We are equal opportunity for all. And it’s because we all came here and we came together as one. Out of many one. Multi-cultural diversity says out of one many. And if we go with tribalism we will not long be one nation united under God.

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Levine, G. (2014). The Discourse of Foreignness in U.S. Language Education. In: Swaffar, J., Urlaub, P. (eds) Transforming Postsecondary Foreign Language Teaching in the United States. Educational Linguistics, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9159-5_3

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