“The Sociopolitics of Multilingualism in the US: The Intertwining of Language, Race, and Nation,” a chapter by Professor of Spanish Jennifer Leeman, was recently published in Language Contact, edited by Jeroen Darquennes, Joseph C. Salmons, and Wim Vandenbussche.
Arguing that an understanding of US language ideologies and policies requires attention to the ideological entanglement of language, race and national identity, Leeman provides an overview of the historical and contemporary sociopolitics of multilingualism in the United States. She examines the role of race and racism in the treatment of different languages and their speakers as well as in national belonging and citizenship; the construction of language as a racial characteristic and of English as a key element of US national identity; the linking of language and ethnoracial identity in inclusionary policies and language rights; and the enactment of racial discrimination and racialization via language. In addition to analyzing language ideologies and policies surrounding multilingualism, the chapter presents statistics on the languages most commonly spoken in the United States today and explains how and why these have changed since the 1980s.
Download the chapter here
May 26, 2025