世新大學圖書館

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 62-02, Section: A, page: 0432.

Major Professor: Frederick Jenks.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 2001.

Since the time of the founding fathers there have surfaced movements and factions calling upon the United States government to declare English as its official language. The call for a national language is currently embodied by the modern Official English (OE) movement, initiated in 1981 when Senator Hayakawa (R-CA) introduced H.R.72, a proposal for an amendment to the United States Constitution. Since that time, no fewer than forty-three bills have been introduced into the United States Congress seeking to establish, through a constitutional amendment or an amendment to Title 4 of the United States Code, English as the official language of the United States government.

The breadth and duration of interest in declaring a national language has never reached such hegemony. The issue evokes heated and, at times, caustic debate by elected officials, advocacy groups, editorialists, and the public at large. The issue, however, raises constitutional and statutory concerns. The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection, may ultimately invalidate any OE bill passed at the federal level. Furthermore, federal statutes, along with guideline issued to clarify such statutes, may act as boundaries to OE legislation.

Inherent in the OE movement is the notion that there exist, at the national level, social problems that will be remedied by official language legislation. According to Rossi and Freeman (1989), social problems are not objective phenomena, but social constructions which emerge from the parties involved. Of chief importance, then, are the problems explicitly and/or implicitly defined in the legislative proposals and congressional presentations made by sponsors and co-sponsors of the legislation.

Lacking in the field of Multilingual/Multicultural Education is an objective, in-depth articulation of the construct of a national language and its educational implications. To reach this goal, a careful deconstruction is needed of both policy proposals introduced at the federal level along with congressional presentations made in support of such proposals. Through this deconstruction, the researcher hopes to ascertain what proponents deem the current and/or future social problems which can be remedied by a national language declaration. This study is a significant contribution to the knowledge base of the field of Multilingual/Multicultural Education, and will serve as a foundation for future research on OE legislation at both the state and national level. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

School code: 0071.