Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. xiv, 119 pp. US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-7136-4.
Language policy (and the lack thereof) has been a common tactic used by colonizing and abusive states to marginalize and dominate indigenous and minority groups across the globe, but it has also been a fruitful way to resolve language conflicts. Building on more than a decade of study, most of which has been published previously, Eduardo Faingold explores this tension through a detailed study of (the lack of) language policy in the United States, its territories, and its Freely Associated States (FAS). This is a social field where “speakers of minority languages were conquered or incorporated and the languages spoken by them were suppressed or neglected” (1). His overall aim is both practical and theoretical. By presenting a series of diverse case studies, he hopes to facilitate an improvement of implicit and explicit language policies while bringing to the table a comparative basis to develop “new theoretical perspectives about the operation of languages in the legal, social, educational, and political contexts” (2). He meets these goals with varying degrees of success.
Chapters 1 and 2 (part 1) are similar in their analytical approach and their policy orientation meant to aid the drafting of language legislation. Chapter 1 remains within national borders while chapter 2 looks at overseas territories and FAS. Faingold describes the US as a country in which language legislation is used both to resolve language conflicts between minority and majority speakers and to “enshrine the dominant rights of one language group over another” (7). Whereas only four states make provisions for minority speakers in their constitutional or statutory provisions, 19 are silent on language, while the remaining 27 have English as an official language without provisions for minority speakers. Together, this makes 23 non-nativist and 27 nativist states. The unsurprising conclusion he draws from this is that “language conflict could be minimized by adopting a less nativist, more inclusive, approach to the enacting of language laws in state constitutions and statures” (13). This struck me as a bit vague to meet its explicit policy aim, but it is more concrete than the lack of conclusion presented in chapter 2, a lack that renders it superfluous.
The next two chapters (part 2) take a normative, though academically informed, turn. In chapter 3, Faingold argues that the US should explicitly recognize the language rights of minority groups within its borders. He analyzes how the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been used in court cases centered on alleged discrimination of minority language uses. He finds that neither legislation defines the right of language minorities de jure, which means that individual judges have a lot of leeway in deciding whether the rights of language minorities have been violated. Faingold expands upon his reason for why language rights of minority groups should be recognized in the next chapter, arguing that bilinguals will suffer neurocognitive costs if restrained from code-switching (shifting between languages) in their workplace. Though I sympathize with his argument that code-switching is a natural capacity, it relies too heavily on overstatements to be as effective as it could be.
Part 3 shifts the gaze to the US southwest and opens with an important intervention by analyzing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with respect to the language rights of Mexican Americans. Faingold argues against the consensus position, adopted by scholars as well as language rights activists, by showing that, in fact, the treaty “cannot be used in an American court of law to protect the linguistic rights of Spanish speakers living in [the southwest]” (50). Instead, he argues, one should look towards Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (especially if revised as according to his analysis in chapter 3). Putting on his policy hat for chapter 6, Faingold draws inspiration from Spain and the UK to argue for the devolution of language rights within the southwestern states to protect the language rights of Spanish speakers.
Chapters 7 and 8 (part 4) develop two contrasting case studies of language rights in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), respectively. The aims of both chapters are identical: to aid the US and its territories in improving the quality of language legislation, within and beyond each particular case. Though their historical trajectories have been different, both territories faced colonial policies that effectively suppressed native languages and both experienced social revivals and legislative protection after World War II. Even so, Chamorro remained ineffective in official record keeping and for the enactment of laws in Guam, while the CNMI failed to protect the maintenance and use of indigenous languages in schools. Today, indigenous languages in both territories are weakening to the point of a possible extinction within this decade.
Despite clear policy aims, Faingold does not provide a clear conclusion or an answer to what is to be done. Even when pointing to shortcomings in Guam’s legislation, we learn in the conclusion that, “[t]he decreasing use of Chamorro in Guam seems to be due to a lack of indigenous Chamorro population buy-in of the importance of using the Chamorro language for the purpose of maintaining a modern-day Chamorro identity” (82). If that is the case, then what sort of policy and legislation should they enact and how does that help language legislation beyond Guam’s shores?
Overall, this is a well-researched book with balanced shifts between detached analyses and normative arguments. Its clear prose and fine-tuned policy aims make it an easy read and an important intervention, and one can only hope that Faingold has the ears of policy makers.
Ola G. Berta
University of Oslo, Oslo