Questioning the questions: The interplay of policy, ideology and measurement in the US Census Bureau’s language statistics
Scholars, advocates, private interests and the general public all make frequent use of the U.S. Census Bureau’s language use statistics, which are based on questions about home language use and English-speaking ability contained on the American Community Survey (ACS). For example, linguists use these statistics to assess rates of language maintenance and shift, Spanish-language media outlets use them to court advertisers, and activists use them to support any number of divergent agendas such as English-Only legislation and multilingual schools. However, users of the Census Bureau’s ACS statistics often take them at face value, without considering why the Census Bureau asks about language the way that it does, or what respondents’ answers actually mean. This talk addresses these questions about the questions from the perspectives of language policy and survey methodology.
Emphasizing the role of official policies in determining data needs, I begin with an overview of the kinds of language questions—such as mother tongue, language knowledge and language use—that have been used in censuses around the world at various historical moments. I highlight the role of ideology in shaping language policy as well as the understanding of what language is and how it is related to individual and national identities. Next, I recount the development of the US Census Bureau’s current language questions, detailing the policy initiatives that led to their introduction in 1980. The second part of the talk focuses on survey methodological research on the language questions, including a recent qualitative study I conducted for the Bureau. Among other goals, that study sought to determine the criteria respondents’ employed in their responses, as part of a broader effort to evaluate the language statistics for current policy needs. In the discussion I highlight the implications for policy as well as for scholars who utilize the data, and I identify directions for future research on the language questions.
----
On the press: ASU Havasu holds first academic conference.
September 20, 2015
