Abstract
Bilingualism is the ability to use two languages with some fluency. More Americans are bilingual than ever before, not only residing in large metropolitan areas but also widely dispersed in rural counties. Using a map that shows counties where 10% or more of the residents age five and older speak a language other than English at home, we discuss the current geographic patterns of language in the United States. Because languages within the same country interact in many situations, we review Mackey’s three concepts of geolinguistics: power, attraction, and pressure. That model helps us understand why immigrant language minorities usually shift over three generations from monolingualism in their native language to bilingualism and finally to monolingualism in English. The arrival of new immigrants, however, can reinforce a minority-language group and introduce new languages. We review the history of US bilingualism in its many ethnic varieties and the nativist reactions in favor of English. The largest bilingual community consists of English/Spanish speakers. We analyze this non-monolithic community’s increasing use of Spanglish, a liberal mixing of Spanish and American English. Emergent bilingualism among children who speak a heritage language at home requires bilingual instruction in the classroom. Three types of bilingual education programs are discussed. Although political forces have hampered bilingual education, two-way immersion programs have become popular. We close with a prognostication of the future state of bilingualism and multilingualism in the United States.
References
ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages). (2016). Available at www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows. Accessed 22 Apr 2016.
Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2010). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive correlates of bilingualism. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 207–245.
Afendras, E. A. (1969). Sociolinguistic history, sociolinguistic geography and bilingualism. Québec: Centre international de recherche sur le bilinguisme, Université Laval.
Arsenian, S. (1937). Bilingualism and mental development. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Baker, C., & Jones, S. P. (1998). Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. London: Cambridge University Press.
Bills, G. D., & Vigil, N. A. (1999). Ashes to ashes: The historical basis for dialect variation in New Mexican Spanish. Romance Philology, 53(1), 43–66.
Bills, G. D., Hernández Chávez, E., & Hudson, A. (1995). The geography of language shift: Distance from the Mexican border and Spanish language claiming in the Southwestern U.S. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 114, 9–27.
Blume, H. (2015). New California tests present sobering picture of student achievement. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 10, 2016, from www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-new-test-results-20150908-story.html
Bon, S. C. (2016). Lau v. Nichols. Retrieved March 28, 2016, from http://usedulaw.com/362-lau-v-nichols.html
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (J. B.Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bramlet, K. (2010). Mennonites bring change to, accept change in Gaines County. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://lubbockonline.com/faith/2010-11-07/
Butters, R. R. (2000). The internationalization of American English: Two challenges. American Speech, 75(3), 283–285.
California Proposition 58, Non-English Languages Allowed in Public Education. (2016). Available at www.ballotpedia.org. Accessed 13 Nov 2016.
Center for Applied Linguistics. (2016). Available at www.CAL.org. Accessed Sept 2016.
Chin, A., Daysal, N. M., & Imberman, S. A. (2013). Impact of bilingual education programs on limited English proficient students and their peers: Regression discontinuity evidence from Texas. Journal of Public Economics, 107, 63–78.
Christian, D., Howard, E. R., & Loeb, M. I. (2000). Bilingualism for all: Two-way immersion in the United States. Theory Into Practice, 39(4), 258–264.
CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana). (2014). Available at www.crt.state.la.us/cultural-development/codofil/. Accessed 21 Dec 2015.
Collier, V. P., & Thomas, W. P. (2014). Creating dual language schools for a transformed world: Administrators speak. Albuquerque: Fuente Press.
Correa-Zoli, Y. (1981). The language of Italian Americans. In C. A. Ferguson & S. B. Heath (Eds.), Language in the USA (pp. 239–256). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crawford, J. (1995). Endangered native American languages: What is to be done, and why. The Bilingual Research Journal, 19(1), 17–38.
Driever, S. L. (2003). Demographic and census trends of Latinos in the Kansas City area. Retrieved May 30, 2016, from www.cambiodecolores.org/Library/Driever_KansasCityLatinos2003.pdf.
Driever, S. L. (2004). Latinos in polynucleated Kansas City. In D. Arreola (Ed.), Hispanic spaces, Latino places: Community and cultural diversity in contemporary America (pp. 207–223). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Ebsworth, M. E. (2002). Comment. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 155(156), 101–114.
Field, F. (2011). Bilingualism in the U.S.A.: The case of the Chicano Latino Community. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fought, C. (2003). Chicano English in context. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan.
Frazer, T. C. (1996). Chicano English and Spanish interference in the Midwestern United States. American Speech, 71(1), 72–85.
Friedman, A. (2015). America’s lacking language skills. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 26, 2016, from www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/filling-americas-language-education-potholes/392876/.
Frost, J. (2014). Bill to repeal English-only law moves toward ballot. CATESOL News. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from www.catesolnews.org/2014/09/repeal-english-only-to-ballot/
Galicia, L. (2007). Americanization. In L. D. Soto (Ed.), The Praeger handbook of Latino education in the U.S. (Vol. 1, pp. 31–35). Westport: Praeger Publishers.
Garcia, E. E. (1983). Bilingualism in early childhood. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Garcia, E. E. (2002). Bilingualism and schooling in the United States. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 155/156, 1–92.
García, O., Flores, N., & Chu, H. (2011). Extending bilingualism in U.S. secondary education: New variations. International Multilingual Research Journal, 5, 1–18.
González, J. C., & Portillos, E. L. (2007). The undereducation and overcriminalization of U.S. Latinas/os: A post-Los Angeles riots latcrit analysis. Educational Studies, 42(3), 247–266.
Gonzalez-Barrera, A., & Lopez, M. H. (2013). Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in U.S. homes, even among non-Hispanics. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/113
Haugen, E. (1969). The Norwegian language in America: A study in bilingual behavior (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hills, E. C. (1929). Linguistic substrata of American English. American Speech, 4(6), 431–433.
Jensen, J. V. (1962). Effects of childhood bilingualism. Elementary English, 39(2), 132–143.
Jones, B. (2012). LAUSD English learners to move faster into mainstream classes. Los Angeles Daily News. Retrieved April 15, 2016, from www.dailynews.com/article/77.20121124/NEWS/121129601
Kena, G., Aud, S., Johnson, F., Wang, X., Zhang, J., Rathbun, A., Wilkinson-Flicker, S., & Kristapovich, P. (2014). The condition of education 2014 (NCES 2014-083). Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch
Krogstad, J. (2016). Rise in English proficiency among U.S. Hispanics is driven by the young. Retrieved April 28, 2016, from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/20
Lau v. Nichols. (1974). 414 U.S. 563, Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5046768322576386473&q=lau+v.+nichols+1974&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&as_vis=1
Lerner, I. (1974). Arcaísmos léxicos del español de América. Madrid: Insula.
Lindenfeld, J., & Varro, G. (2008). Language maintenance among “fortunate immigrants”: The French in the United States and Americans in France. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, (189), 115–131.
Linnes, K. (1998). Middle-class AAVE versus middle-class bilingualism: Contrasting speech communities. American Speech, 73(4), 339–367.
Liu, N., Musica, A., Koscak, S., Vinogradova, P., & López, J. (2011). Challenges and needs of community-based heritage language programs and how they are addressed. Heritage Briefs Collection. Retrieved April 27, 2016, from www.cal.org/heritage/pdfs/briefs/challenges-and%20needs-of-community-based-heritage-language-programs.pdf
Mackey, W. (1973). Three concepts for geolinguistics, Publication B-42. Quebec: International Center for Research on Bilingualism.
MAPS (Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers). (2016). Our community in Massachusetts. Retrieved May 13, 2016, from http://www.maps-inc.org/our-community/portuguese-speaking-community-in-massachusetts/
Marian, V., Shook, A., & Schroeder, S. R. (2013). Bilingual two-way immersion programs benefit academic achievement. Bilingual Research Journal, 36, 167–186.
Marshall, M. M. (1982). Bilingualism in Southern Louisiana: A sociolinguistic analysis. Anthropological Linguistics, 24(3), 308–324.
Martínez, R. A. (2010). Spanglish as a literacy tool: Toward an understanding of the potential role of Spanish-English code-switching in the development of academic literacy. Research in the Teaching of English, 45(2), 124–149.
Maxwell, L. (2011). ELL programs get overhaul in New York and Los Angeles. Education Week. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/28/09ell_ep.h31.html
McDermott, J. F. (1941). A glossary of Mississippi Valley French, 1673–1850. St. Louis: Washington University.
Menken, K., & Solorza, C. (2014). No child left bilingual: Accountability and the elimination of bilingual education programs in New York City schools. Education Policy, 28(1), 96–125.
Monzó, L. D. (2005). Latino parents’ “choice” for bilingual education in an urban California school: Language politics in the aftermath of proposition 227. Bilingual Research Journal, 29(2), 365–386.
Mydans, S. (2007). Across cultures, English is the word. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/asia/09iht-englede.1.5198685.html?_r=0
NABE (National Association for Bilingual Education). (2016). No child left behind. Retrieved April 27, 2016, from www.nabe.org/NCLB
NCES (National Center for Education Statistics). (2015). English language learners. Retrieved April 26, 2016, from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=96
Nuñez-Janes, M. (2002). Bilingualism education and identity debates in New Mexico: Controlling and contesting nationalism and identity. Journal of the Southwest, 44(1), 61–78.
Olson, W. J., & Woll, A. (2002). An historical examination of the English literacy requirement in the naturalization of aliens. Retrieved April 10, 2016, from www.lawandfreedom.com/site/special/English.pdf
Palmer, D. (2011). The discourse of transition: Teachers’ language ideologies within transitional bilingual education programs. International Multilingual Research Journal, 5, 103–122.
Pew Research Center. (2015). Modern immigration wave brings 59 million to U.S., driving population growth and change through 2065. Retrieved April 28, 2016, from www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/
Read, A. W. (1937). Bilingualism in the middle colonies, 1725–1775. American Speech, 12(2), 93–99.
Read, A. W. (2002). The embattled dominance of English in the United States. Milestones in the history of English in America. PADS 86, Supplement to American Speech, 77, 22–29.
Real Academia Española. (2014). Diccionario de la lengua española (23rd ed.). Barcelona: Espasa Libros.
Reforming No Child Left Behind. (2016). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/reforming-no-child-left-behind
Roosevelt, T. (1919). Letter to R. M. Hurd. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC Retrieved April 10, 2016, from www.snopes.com/politics/graphics/troosevelt.pdf
Rothman, J., & Rell, A. B. (2005). A linguistic analysis of Spanglish: Relating language to identity. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 1(3), 515–536.
Rubal-Lopez, A. (2007). Bilingual education. In L. D. Soto (Ed.), The Praeger handbook of Latino education in the U.S. (Vol. 1, pp. 45–52). Westport: Praeger Publishers.
Ryan, C. (2013). Language use in the United States: 2011. American Community Survey Reports. Retrieved April 16, 2016, from www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf
Shin, H. J., & Alba, R. (2009). The economic value of bilingualism for Asians and Hispanics. Sociological Forum, 24(2), 254–275.
Siebens, J., & Julian, T. (2011). Native North American languages spoken at home in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2006–2010. American Community Survey Briefs. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr-10-10.pdf
Singer, H. (1956). Bilingualism and elementary education. The Modern Language Journal, 40(8), 444–458.
Soto, L. D. (1997). Language, culture, and power: Bilingual families and the struggle for quality education. Albany: State University of New York.
Statistical Atlas. (2015a). Available at www.statisticalatlas.com. Accessed May 2016.
Statistical Atlas. (2015b). Languages in Gaines County, Texas. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://statisticalatlas.com/county/Texas/Gaines-County/Languages
Thompson, K., & Hakuta, K. (2012). Education and bilingualism. In J. P. Gee & M. Handford (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 396–411). London: Routledge.
Travis, C. E., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2013). Making voices count: Corpus compilation in bilingual communities. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(2), 170–194.
Turner, L. D. (2002). Africanisms in the Gullah dialect. Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2007–2011, 2009–2013). American Community Survey. Retrieved May, 2016, from http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_14_5YR_1601&prodType=table
U.S. Census Bureau. (2015a). Quick facts. Retrieved May 13, 2016, from www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00
U.S. Census Bureau. (2015b). Census Bureau reports at least 350 languages spoken in U.S. homes. Retrieved May 10, 2016, from www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-185.html
U.S. English, Inc. (n.d.). Linguistically isolated household rates in the United States 2000 to 2009. Retrieved December 22, 2015, from www.us-english.org/userdata/file/LIH2000to2009.pdf
U.S. immigration since 1965. (2010). Retrieved April 21, 2016, from www.history.com/topics/us-immigration-since-1965
Urciuoli, B. (1985). Bilingualism as code and bilingualism as practice. Anthropological Linguistics, 27(4), 363–386.
Valdés, G. (1997). Dual-language immersion programs: A cautionary note concerning the education of language-minority students. Harvard Educational Review, 67(3), 391–429.
Valdés, G. (2002). Enlarging the pie: Another look at bilingualism and schooling in the US. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 155/156, 187–195.
Vera, C. (1971). Consideraciones antropológicas y políticas en torno a la enseñanza de “Spanglish” en Nueva York. Río Piedras: Ediciones Librería Internacional.
Wiley, T. G., & Valdés, G. (2000). Editors’ introduction: Heritage language instruction in the United States: A time for renewal. Bilingual Research Journal, 24(4), iii–vii.
Wilkerson, M. E., & Salmons, J. (2008). “Good Old Immigrants of Yesteryear” who didn’t learn English: Germans in Wisconsin. American Speech, 83(3), 259–283.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Driever, S.L., Bagheri, N. (2018). Heritage Languages and Bilingualism in the United States. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_28-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_28-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences