The linguistics of Trump’s official English policy
Trump issued an executive order making English the official language of the U.S.—sort of. Here’s what that order does, and what language in the U.S. looks like today.
📋 Contents
- Types of official language policies
- What does Trump's official English order actually do?
- Language in the U.S.
This week Trump issued Executive Order 14224, making English the official language of the United States—sort of. In this issue of World of Words, I’ll explain the different types of language policies, what this order actually does, and show you the language demographics of the United States today.
Having said that, linguistics does have some relevant things to say about official language policies, most of which suggest that such policies are not effective, useful, or beneficial. So to anticipate the conclusion, this article will be largely critical of Trump’s official language policy. For some of you, these criticisms may not be as important as other factors when it comes to deciding whether to support Trump’s language policy.
Types of official language policies
What it means for a government to have an “official language” can vary quite widely. In some cases, the populace is forced to adopt the language of the state. Quechua, an indigenous language of Peru, was banned until relatively recently, and its speakers were often made to adopt Spanish. Likewise, Yiddish was banned from use for many years in the modern country of Israel in order to promote Hebrew. In the United States, the Bureau of Indian Affairs forced Native American children into boarding schools and punished them for speaking their indigenous languages, a practice that continued until the passage of the Indian Self-Determination & Education Assistance Act of 1975.
Often, languages are banned from any and all official/public contexts, but speakers can still use the language at home or in their community. Irish Gaelic was suppressed during British colonial rule in Ireland, and banned from schools and government use. During Franco’s regime in Spain, Basque was banned in schools, official documents, and the media.
Official language policies often impose requirements on both government agencies and private organizations to make services and documents available in the official languages, without necessarily preventing them from including other languages. For instance, Canada’s official languages are English and French. Federal employees are often required to know both, and companies are required to make product information available in both. Individual provinces and territories, however, have additional official languages. In Nunavut, Inuktut is also an official language; in the Northwest Territories, there are ten official languages: Cree, Dënësųłıné, Dene Yatıé, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Sahtúgot’įné Yatı̨́, and Tłįchǫ. In Quebec, the only official language is French, although recent court decisions have forced the province to expand its English-language services.
It’s also important to distinguish between an official language and a national language. Many countries have officially-designated national languages in the same sense that the United States has an officially-designed national bird (the bald eagle), but that does not make those languages official in the sense that they play a role in government. Kenya is a good example of this: the official language of Kenya is English, but the national language of Kenya is Swahili.
Even governments with official language policies, however, still frequently make services and documents available in non-official languages. Since 1986 the official language of California has been English, but residents today can take their driving test in 32 languages. The effect of this type of official language legislation is thus pretty narrow; it essentially says that the government will conduct its internal affairs in the official language, while it continues to offer additional language services to its citizens. Since governments tend to already be conducting business in the official language anyway, such legislation is largely symbolic.
What does Trump’s official English order actually do?
So which type of official language policy is Trump’s? I’d place it in the “mostly (but not quite entirely) symbolic / performative” category.
The order says that it “designates English as the official language of the United States”, but in reality the order only applies to the executive branch (which already operates in English), and doesn’t impose English language requirements on private organizations or individuals, or any other branch of government. Even citizenship tests aren’t affected, because applicants are already required to demonstrate English proficiency for citizenship. Trump had to keep the scope of the order narrow in part because of existing federal laws that explicitly state that various documents like ballots have to be made available in multiple languages in areas where there are a sufficient number of non-English speakers. Individual states have attempted to pass more restrictive English Only laws in the past, but they’re consistently struck down by courts as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act, where discrimination based on nationality is typically interpreted to include linguistic discrimination.
So while EO 14224 is indeed the first time in history that the U.S. has had any sort of official language policy at the federal level, the federal government is still legally required to provide services and documents in a variety of languages in certain contexts. In fact, the order even includes an exception that allows federal agencies to continue offering services and preparing documents in other languages:
Agency heads are not required to amend, remove, or otherwise stop production of documents, products, or other services prepared or offered in languages other than English.
So what’s the point of the order? Well, what’s actually happening here is that Trump is repealing an executive order issued by Clinton in 2000 which required federal agencies to provide access to services in languages other than English (EO 13166). That order was issued in an attempt to align federal policies with the Civil Rights Act, as explained above. The only effect of Trump’s new order is that federal agencies are no longer required to produce documents and offer services in languages other than English—not exactly the grandiose sweeping change the administration packaged it as.
The reason I say that Trump’s order isn’t entirely performative is because it is likely to reduce federal services made available in languages other than English—and already has. The Spanish version of the White House website has already been taken down, as have the Spanish versions of its social media profiles. But Trump had taken down the Spanish version of the White House website in his last term anyway, without the need for an executive order. (Ironically, the Spanish-language content on the site was first introduced by the previous Republican president, George W. Bush.) And Puerto Ricans are worried about the implications of the order, since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and where 94% of the population speaks Spanish.
Language in the U.S.
If English really is the language of success, the language of free enterprise, of global markets and job opportunities, as is so frequently touted, then it’s hardly necessary to force anybody to use it.
In issuing Executive Order 14224, Trump joins a long tradition of politicians who see linguistic diversity as anathema to national unity and state-building. In 1753, wily Benjamin Franklin penned the following about migrants to what were then still the British colonies:
They come in droves. […] Few of their children in the country learn English. […] Advertisements intended for to be general are now printed in Dutch and English, the signs in Our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German, they began of late all their bonds and other legal writings in their own language, which (tho’ I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in Our Courts. (Franklin 1753)
In 1780, John Adams proposed that English should be the official language of the new United States, but his proposal was rejected on the grounds that it was considered “undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty” (Knutson 1996).
In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt writes:
We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house. (Roosevelt 1919)
Benjamin Franklin was worried about Dutch because New York was originally a Dutch colony, and retained much of its Dutch language and culture for many decades. Trump’s executive order states:
Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English.
But in order to garner enough support to ratify the constitution, translations of it were printed in Dutch for New York and German in Pennsylvania (National Archives). Trump’s executive order claims that:
From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language.
This may be true in a certain sense, but the United States has always been a strongly multilingual nation, and that multilingualism has never threatened the status of English as the lingua franca within what is otherwise an incredibly diverse populace. The New York Times notes:
Early American history is full of examples of bilingual government, experts said. In the 19th century, Midwestern states translated laws and messages from their governors into Norwegian, German and Welsh. California’s 1849 Constitution required laws and decrees to be published in both English and Spanish.
And in WWI, the U.S. government produced propaganda posters in various languages in order to convince the public to buy war bonds and enlist in the military.
This is one of the ironic truths of official English movements: U.S. politicians frequently rely on languages other than English to build their base of support and broadcast their agenda. Trump himself released Spanish language ads during his campaign targeting swing states with large Spanish-speaking populations, and participated in a town hall meeting on the Spanish-language channel Univision, where audience members asked questions in Spanish (The Conversation). One hilarious example of this is a social media post from Republican Senator Mike Lee, written in Spanish, saying that English should be the “idioma oficial” [official language] of the U.S.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Trump administration did shutter the Spanish versions of the White House Instagram and X accounts (@LaCasaBlanca), which had 115k and 170k followers respectively. Those numbers may seem small compared to those of the English version of those accounts, but take it from me: accounts that size have real impact. You’d think that Trump—or any politician—would want to reach as many people as possible by doing so in their own languages, analogous to the way Catholic priests in the colonial era documented indigenous languages and translated the Bible so as to convert the local populace (a tradition which the Wycliffe Bible Translators and Summer Institute of Linguistics continue today).
Regardless, all these concerns about linguistic diversity being a threat to national unity have turned out to be unfounded. None of the languages which at one point were viewed as a cultural threat—Dutch, German, Irish, etc.—have retained any significant linguistic presence in the country after the period of their influx had ended. This is because the children of immigrants almost all learn English fluently. A study conducted in 1998 showed that 93.6% of all children of immigrants spoke English well or very well (Portes & Hao 1998). According to the U.S. Census:
In 2018-2022, 70.0% of those ages 5-17 spoke Spanish. Of these Spanish speakers, 79.8% spoke English “very well.” In comparison, in 2013-2017, 72.0% of those ages 5-17 spoke Spanish, and 80.3% of these Spanish speakers spoke English “very well.” (US Census)
More recent census reports suggest that English proficiency has improved in the past several years. Even though 22% of U.S. resident report speaking a language other than English at home, only 8.4% of those residents speak English less than “very well” (US Census).
This is despite the fact that the number of people speaking languages other than English in the United States has tripled since 1980, from 23.1 million (1 in 10) to 67.8 million (1 in 5) (US Census). Clearly the growth of other languages in the U.S. has not threatened the use of English. This is because languages do not compete with each other for space in our brains. Children are language-learning machines, and can easily learn two or more languages at the same time. Speaking Spanish or other languages at home in no way threatens their ability to use English proficiently outside the home, in school, at work, etc.
Moreover, both immigrant children and their parents generally want them to learn English in addition to their heritage language. As Trump’s order states:
Speaking English not only opens doors economically, but it helps newcomers engage in their communities, participate in national traditions, and give back to our society. This order recognizes and celebrates the long tradition of multilingual American citizens who have learned English and passed it to their children for generations to come.
If English really is the language of success, the language of free enterprise, of global markets and job opportunities, as is so frequently touted, then it’s hardly necessary to force anybody to use it. And this is precisely why immigrant languages in the U.S. gradually wane over time. As we’ve seen above, people already are using English, at a high degree of proficiency, in addition to their heritage languages.
In this country we speak multitudes, and English is merely a lingua franca.
Today, the U.S. population either speaks or signs approximately 430 languages, 177 of which are indigenous to the U.S. (the many Native American languages such as Navajo, Cherokee, etc.) (Ethnologue). Approximately 43 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish as their primary language (14% of the population). If one includes people who speak Spanish as their second language, then the U.S. is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world (after Mexico) (The Guardian).
Moreover, only a minority of people seem bothered by the fact that the United States is a multilingual country in the first place. A majority of voters, Democrat and Republican, are comfortable with people speaking a language other than English in public:
So when Republican Senator Eric Schmitt states that Trump’s order is a “long, long overdue” acknowledgment that “in this country, we speak English” (NYT), he is simply incorrect. In this country we speak multitudes, and English is merely a lingua franca.
Recommended Reading
🗞️ Press Coverage
The White House
Daniel J. Olson
Danny Hieber
📑 References
- Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2: Philadelphia, quoted in Robert Lane Greene, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity (New York: Delacorte Press, 2011), 227.
- Knutson, Cody L. 1996. National language policy in the United States: A holistic perspective. Nebraska Anthropologist 13. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/96/
- Portes, Alejandro & Lingxin Hao. 1998. E pluribus unum: Bilingualism and loss of language in the second generation. Sociology of Education 71.
- Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Series 3: Letters Sent, 1888-1919; Subseries 3A: Carbon Copies of Letters Sent, 1894-1919; Vol. 198, 1919, Jan. 1-Feb. 5
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