World Language Education in an Era of Growing Nationalism

The United States is undergoing a political tug-of-war between globalism and nationalism with world language education caught in the middle of this sociopolitical debate. The current political trend towards nationalism and isolationism is rendering world language education vulnerable to further cuts such as the 5.3 percent decline in language courses offered at colleges and universities between 2013 and 2016 as reported in 2019 by the Modern Language Association (MLA) (Johnson 2019). It is vital for the American people in general, and language educators and program administrators in particular, to be aware of the devastating effects that these political and social trends are having on second and world language (L2) programs in academic institutions nationwide.

In the 1970s and 1980s, foreign investments, trade, and immigration played a major role in the expansion of the US economy. Over the past fifty years, the world has seen the United States internationalizing its labor market and its economy. American companies are expanding their footprint worldwide to capture a greater market share outside its borders as the global economy has become more interconnected. In turn, this globalization has been driving a demand to improve the overall global competence of Americans. In today’s increasingly competitive global economy, a workforce with more market-relevant L2 skills is a strategic economic asset for the United States (Wiley et al. 2012).

Merriam-Webster defines globalism as a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence (“Globalism”). Another often cited definition is from Giddens (1990), who defined globalism as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa (64). Over the past three decades, globalism has been propelled by improvements in telecommunications, high-speed internet, satellite technology, rapid transit, cloud computing, digital streaming, and even artificial intelligence—the world as we know it has become a much smaller place. We can now send an instant message to friends and family in Europe, Asia or South America and expect a reply within minutes, if not seconds. We can conduct videoconferences with peers located around the world; businesses can promote and sell their products almost instantly around the world using e-commerce services, and students in small rural communities in the United States can enroll in online courses offered by the University of Salamanca in Spain or the University of Porto in Portugal to name just two institutions with online programs open to international students. Recent free trade and multilateral agreements have revolutionized commerce globally. In addition to the free flow of goods and services, the mass movement or migration of people between countries and across continents has become a more common phenomenon and a major factor in the globalization of the world’s economy. According to Stroud et al. (2018) roughly 258 million people or four percent of the world’s population lives outside their country of birth, and the World Migration Report 2018 (International Organization for Migration 2017) predicts this number will increase to 405 million by 2050. The United States alone had roughly 45 million foreign-born residents in 2018 according to the Migration Policy Institute (Batalova et al. 2020). This massive increase in mobility, transnationalism, and free-market capitalism has created a large demand for a workforce with world language skills and cross-cultural competence, in other words, with the ability to understand and effectively engage people from different nations and cultures.

The results from a 2019 survey of 1,200 US employers conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), highlight the dire need for language skills other than English in the US workplace and the negative impact that this shortage of multilingual workers is having on the US economy. According to the survey, 9 out of 10 US employers rely on employees with language skills other than English; 1 in 3 language-dependent US employers report a language skills gap, and 1 in 4 report losing business due to a lack of language...