America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity

Chapter 7: Linguistic Incorporation Among Immigrants

143 Chapter 7 Linguistic Incorporation Among Immigrants T he social and cultural integration of immigrants and their children into American society is a critical issue for the immigrants , national descent groups, and American society. Theories concerning the social and cultural integration of national-origin groups in American society have largely focused on the language characteristics of immigrants as measures of the incompleteness of integration into a society firmly dominated by the English language and by English speakers. Speaking a non-English language has been assumed to attest to an attachment to a culturally defined group, and English skills have been viewed as a prerequisite for socioeconomic mobility. As noted in chapter 5, theories of incorporation, including both assimilation and cultural pluralism, often acknowledge the general possibility that convergence between minority and majority groups may result from changes in the attributes of both populations. In the case of language, however, processes of adaptation in the United States have tended, at least up to now, to be mostly one-sided; the dynamics of incorporation have been presumed to occur primarily within the minority-language group. Unlike other major immigrant-receiving countries such as Canada or Great Britain, the United States has never made the language characteristics of prospective immigrants an explicit part of legislation regulating the flow of migration into the country. (One exception is the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided an opportunity for undocumented aliens to gain legal status if they met certain conditions, such as demonstration of English literacy [Terdy and Spener 1990].) Instead, immigration policy has shaped the language characteristics of entering immigrants implicitly by affecting the numbers of immigrants from national populations typified by specific language repertoires, that is, by fluency in specific non-English 144 America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity languages and possession of lower or higher skills in English. Changes in the national origins of immigrants over the course of the last century thus have been accompanied by changes in the language repertoires of new immigrants, of the resident foreign-born population, and of their children. The significant shifts in the sources of immigration flows over the last third of the twentieth century are therefore in the process of shifting the linguistic characteristics of the foreign-born population, their immediate descendants, and the nation as a whole. The dynamics of linguistic adaptation are complex, especially in a context in which the linguistic characteristics of the newest entrants and of the larger society are changing. At the minimum, linguistic adaptation involves changes in the numbers of immigrants entering with certain language repertoires, processes of English acquisition largely occurring within the foreign-born generation, and processes of language shift toward English (or minority-language loss) occurring within and between generations. Moreover, the processes of English acquisition and minority-language shift are intertwined, although they need not occur simultaneously. Because immigrants’ language repertoires correspond to their national origin and race—though only roughly—processes of language adaptation are part and parcel of processes of cultural assimilation and discrimination. Processes of English acquisition are also strongly implicated in labor force–related attainments. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to consider processes of language adaptation apart from processes of cultural assimilation and social mobility. Discontinuities in the ability to speak a given language or dialect have the strong potential to divide communities, while a shared facility in a given language has the strong potential to unite. The Asian national-origin groups are strongly divided by language, whereas the Central and South American national-origin groups are not. The implications of these language differences in the formation of racially defined groups in the United States are still unknown. Unlike other cultural attributes, the ability to discard, maintain, or acquire a language is not entirely under individuals ’ control (Stromswold 2001). Acquiring a new language or maintaining a language first learned in childhood also requires individuals to have high levels of motivation as well as access to opportunities and resources to learn or continue to use the language, some of which must be available in or provided by the surrounding community. Finally, there is the issue of one-sidedness in the linguistic adaptation of immigrant groups in the United States. The image of America as a monolingual English-speaking nation has reigned for at least a century. Still, the country does not have a federal language policy Linguistic Incorporation Among Immigrants 145 favoring the English language (or any...