RETHINKING LANGUAGE POLICY IN U.S.SCHOOLSLanguage scholars now accept the fact thatbilinguals are not simply two monolinguals inone (Grosjean, 1982). Even so, much languageteaching in the United States today continues toteach the language other than English in isolationfrom English and expects students to perform inEnglish and the other language as though theywere monolingual. When students fail to performto those expectations, we consider our languageteaching enterprise a failure instead of imaginingbetter ways of promoting the nation's bilingual-ism in schools.In our globalized and technology-mediatedworld, simple additive bilingual policies wheretwo languages never meet or come into contactmay not succeed. The strict traditional separationof languages in teaching does not reflect the inter-active multilingual spaces in which speakers com-municate today. Bilingualism is dynamic (Garcia,2009), with bilingual speakers accommodating tothe ridges and craters of communication withother speakers as they leverage their full linguisticcompetence. Yet, in viewing school language poli-cies with a monoglossic lens that only recognizesnational languages as autonomous and separate,we miss much of what will support a true multilin-gual policy for the future, a policy able to incor-porate the linguistic competence of multilingualspeakers and the ways in which these speakers usetheir full language repertoire to transcend namedlanguage boundaries.Some educators and scholars have taken upthe term translanguaging, firstcoined to refer tobilingual pedagogies in Wales, to refer to the het-eroglossic language practices of bilinguals and theways in which these language practices can beleveraged in education (see Blackledge & Creese,2010; Canagarajah, 2011; Garcia, 2009; Garcia 8cLi Wei, 2014; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Lewis,Jones, 8cBaker, 2012; Li Wei, 2011). Otheguy,Garcia, and Reid (2015) define translanguagingas "the deployment of a speaker's full linguis-tic repertoire without regard for watchful adher-ence to the socially and politically defined bound-aries of named (and usually national and state)languages" (n.p.).The use of translanguaging theory by differ-ent scholars points to what we might call a weakand a strong version. The weak version supportsThis content downloaded from97.202.41.185 on Sun, 02 Nov 2025 21:45:19 UTCAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

FAMILY LANGUAGE POLICYThe role of families to intergenerationallytransmit home languages, or to exert efforts, fi-nancial and otherwise, to enable their children tobecome bilingual has often been directly linkedto the governmental top-down policies with re-gard to bilingualism, especially as carried out inschools. That is, historically multilingual Ameri-can families have often been reluctant to speaktheir home languages to their children preciselybecause monolingual U.S. schools have tabooedthe use of those languages and have insisted thatall learning and assessment take place in Englishonly. Additionally, monolingual American fami-lies have often been unwilling to demand thattheir children be taught additional languages inschool, because bilingualism is still seen in manyinstances with suspicion. However, the role of U.S.families in the enactment of language policy, bothin schools and in the heart of the family, is begin-ning to evolve, a response to the greater mobil-ityand economic globalization of late modernity,which we will explore in a later section.

LANGUAGE POLICY IN U.S. SCHOOLSAs noted, educational institutions in the UnitedStates have historically played a significant rolein both shaping and implementing languagepolicy. Especially since the advent of publicschools, educational institutions have functionedmainly to promote the development of 'standard'English among the masses and the acquisition ofEnglish among immigrants. Despite this empha-sis on 'standard' English, U.S. schools have alsoplayed a role in attempting to advance the bilin-gualism of the country's citizens. They have doneso by establishing programs to teach foreign lan-guages, as well as programs that use languagesother than English as the medium of instruction,that is, bilingual education programs. We next de-scribe these two types of programs

LANGUAGE DEMOGRAPHICS ANDMIGRATION IN THE UNITED STATESThe relative position or rank of languages otherthan English tends to follow global migrationflows. However, these have been strongly influ-enced by immigration policies. Late 19th-centuryU.S. immigration policies, for example, restrictedimmigration from Asia, firstwith the Chinese Ex-clusion Act of 1882. Subsequent restrictions fol-lowing World War I used a national origins for-mula that also excluded immigrants from easternand southern Europe. Gradually, racially and eth-nically based exclusionary policies were relaxedand, ultimately, substantially changed followingthe passage of the Immigration and NationalityAct of 1965. Figure 1 shows the relative changesin the languages other than English spoken in theUnited States between 1980 and 2010. Europeanlanguages such as Italian, German, French, andPolish declined sharply, whereas Spanish grewdramatically. More recendy, significant increaseshave also been noted for Chinese and a numberof Asian languages.As noted, the large number of potential bilin-gual learners, that is,students living in homeswhere a language other than English is spoken,constitutes a potential pool of learners that couldexpand the linguistic capabilities within the gen-eral population. Among 5- to 18-year-olds, wholive in homes where languages other than Englishare spoken, approximately 20% of the school-agechildren live in homes where Spanish is spoken(Fee, Rhodes, 8cWiley, 2014).The demographics of children living in homeswhere languages other than English are spokenpoint to a missed opportunity to promote mul-tilingualism along with the dominant language.Table 1 presents a comparison of enrollmentsfrom selected states with the American Commu-nity Survey (ACS) data focusing on the num-ber of school-age children living in homes wherelanguages other than English are spoken andcompares actual enrollment data based on theACTFL enrollment data for selected states. Thefour states of California, Florida, New York, andTexas all have large numbers of speakers of lan-guages other than English. Enrollment data donot disaggregate 'foreign' language learners from'heritage' language learners. Nevertheless, thediscrepancies between enrollment data in mostcases indicate the dramatic mismatch betweenactual enrollments in specific languages versusThis content downloaded from97.202.41.185 on Sun, 02 Nov 2025 21:45:19 UTCAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Language policies can be differentiated interms of their degree of formality or explicitness.Thus, itis useful to distinguish between explicitor official policies and those that are implicitor even tacit. They may also be distinguishedin terms of their goals or orientations rang-ing from (a) promotion-oriented policies, (b)expediency-oriented accommodations, (c) tole-rance-oriented policies, (d) restriction-orientedpolicies, (e) repression-oriented policies, (f)polices aimed at erasing the visibility and even his-torical memory of various languages, and (g) nullpolicies, which refer to the significant absencesof policies (see Wiley, 2004, for elaboration)

THE ROLE OF AGENCY IN LANGUAGEPOLICY AND PLANNING

As noted, status planning is focused on thelanguage itself, rather than on itsspeakers, butobviously the status of a language has implicationsfor itsspeakers. Conversely, the status of the speak-ers may also have implications for the languagevariety spoken. Status planning is often tied tothe formal promotion of one or more languagesby national, state, or international governingbodies. In the United States, status planning hasalso been linked to formal laws or codes designedto diminish or restrict the teaching or uses ofvarious languages during times of war (Wiley,1996, 1998). Status planning also has implicationsfor which varieties or registers of a language aretaught. In essence itinvolves the 'privileging' ofa language variety, typically as a written standard.This selection thereby influences social judg-ments concerning what is 'proper,' 'correct,' or'preferred.' When a language is taught with theliterature of 'high' culture as its object, prestigevarieties become privileged.