Language education policy in Arizona has been on a rollercoaster over the last five years. Between 2019 and 2024, the state shifted from strict English-only enforcement to loosening restrictions and encouraging dual language approaches, then back to strict English-only enforcement. In this forum piece, we use approaches from critical discourse…

This paper critically examines the notion of 'sheltered' pedagogies for English language teaching in English-dominant contexts. I specifically explore how the increasingly popular Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) model has been interpreted in certain contexts to further monolingual language ideologies. Drawing on critical and poststructural…

Despite the long history of multilingualism in the U.S., language rights debates have tended to center almost exclusively on the acquisition of English as an issue of equity for citizens who are speakers of other languages. Policies advanced in the name of "access" and "equity" continue to frame English as the only viable means…

Language policy is a mechanism determining the uses of language generally; here it examines the role of the English language in the emerging USA. Inspired by Spanish riches deriving from the "New World" during the sixteenth century, the first English people to settle permanently in North America hoped for similar riches. In North…

Richard Ruiz wrote "Orientations in Language Planning" in 1984, and it became an influential article in several language disciplines. How is it that this article became so popular and had such lasting impact? In order to answer this question, I undertook to understand the language political scene at the time, looked at his contribution…

Each new demographic shift and economic or social change bring seemingly new issues into popular and political focus--questions, debates, and policies about the role of language in education and society and the recent claims that transnational migrations and globalization are resulting in unprecedented forms of ethnolinguisic…

This article examines the unique contributions that bilingual and bilingually credentialed teachers make to the instruction of emergent bilinguals in the United States. This mixed methodological study involved 474 teachers in Arizona, California, and Texas, which represent distinct language policy contexts. Results revealed that, irrespective of…

This article examines how Arizona's teachers of English learners negotiate between restrictive language policies and complex teaching conditions. This case study explores how middle school teachers in an urban school district make sense of the 4-hour English language development block, Arizona's recent English-only policy. Findings indicate that…

Language education for students of color is a neutral process. The education of linguistically diverse students is situated in larger issues concerning white supremacy and the distribution of wealth and power. In this article, I argue that the English-only language policy contained within No Child Left Behind (NCLB) justifies a hierarchical racial…

In the small border town focalized in this article, just north of the Mexican and US border stations, daily businesses, including city council meetings, retail, and public services, are conducted in Spanish. Only the schools insist upon English, this insistence backed by state proposition 200, funded primarily by Ron Unz, but passed by Arizona…

This book examines the ways in which people belonging to different language and cultural communities live together in the same political community, and how political and structural tensions arise to divide them along language lines. It analyzes the historical background and recent controversy over language in the United States, then compares the…

This paper reports on a study done with Anglos and Hispanics in Texas, focusing on the pending English Only legislation and their awareness of and attitudes towards it and what biases these attitudes were based upon. A 1-page, 2-sided, questionnaire was distributed to 328 Anglo and Hispanic subjects in a predominantly Hispanic city. Forty-seven…

Written for the layperson, this books presents perspectives in support of cultural diversity in America and against language restrictionism and establishment of English as the single official language. In a series of topical discussions, the book brings what linguists have learned about language acquisition to the issue of how the United States…

This edited volume of conference papers contains the following titles: "Presentation: Realism and Idealism in Language Conflict and Their Resolution" (Douglas A. Kibbee); "Legal and Linguistic Perspectives on Language Legislation" (Douglas A. Kibbee); "The Linguistic Rights of Non-English Speaking Suspects, Witnesses,…