Shaping Language Policy in the U.S.: The Role of Composition Studies

3. The Defense Department’s National Security Language Policy

117 3 The Defense Department’s National Security Language Policy Composing Local Responses to the United States’ Critical Language Needs The Secretary of Defense . . . wants his young soldiers who are on the front lines of finding these killers to be able to speak their language and be able to listen to the people in the communities in which they live. That makes sense, doesn’t it, to have a language-proficient military—to have people that go into the far reaches of this world and be able to communicate in the villages and towns and rural areas and urban centers, to protect the American people. We need intelligence officers who, when somebody says something in Arabic or Farsi or Urdu, know what they’re talking about. That’s what we need. We need diplomats—when we send them out to help us convince governments that we’ve got to join together and fight these terrorists who want to destroy life and promote an ideology that is so backwards it’s hard to believe. These diplomats need to speak that language. —President George W. Bush, 2006 speaking before the 2006 u.s. university presidents’ summit on International Education, President George W. Bush unveiled the National Security Language Initiative, which put $114 million toward efforts to improve language education as a means to secure the nation. This initiative aimed to expand the number of Americans mastering what military and intelligence officials have labeled “critical-need” languages, particularly Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi. Throughout his speech, President Bush described foreign language education as a means 118 | The Defense Department’s National Security Language Policy to protect the United States in the short-term by “defeating [terrorists] in foreign battlefields so they don’t strike us here at home.” He also explained how foreign language education could protect the country in the long term by helping to “defeat this notion about . . . our bullying concept of freedom,” as learning the languages of other countries and cultures could be a way “to reach out to somebody” and let that person “know that I’m interested in not only how you talk but how you live.” President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative is one piece of an emerging, post-September 11 national security language policy that proposes to develop multilingualism in more U.S. citizens. In one way, such a policy challenges English-only legislation, as it proposes that U.S. students learn to communicate in multiple languages rather than in Standardized English only. In other respects, the national security language policy is based on troubling notions about language, identity, and the pedagogical aims of language arts teaching. The Modern Language Association (MLA) has initiated several activities in response to this policy debate, proposing alternatives to a language policy based solely on military concerns. Even though this language policy ostensibly pertains only to foreign language education, English-speaking scholars working in rhetoric and composition studies should also put this policy on their disciplinary map. Engaging this debate can invigorate the professional and civic commitments articulated in the CCCC’s own language policy statements, for the emerging national security language policy stands to influence language arts education, students’ literacy practices, and their concept of civic action. At a more fundamental level, this language policy debate also demands composition scholars’ participation because it involves questions about who defines the nation’s language needs and how language arts education should aim to meet them. As the two previous chapters suggest, the field of composition studies has already developed theoretical and pedagogical frameworks for promoting multidialectalism and multilingualism in the United States. These frameworks, however, were constructed as challenges to government policies and teaching practices explicitly concerned with English , specifically, policies and practices that would make Standardized English the language of communication in the U.S. public sphere and in its classrooms. The CCCC published the National Language Policy in 1988 as a counterstatement to the English-only movement, calling for composition scholars to encourage all U.S. citizens to learn and use multiple languages as a means to “unify diverse American communities” and “enlarge our view of what is human” (5). More recently, scholars The Defense Department’s National Security Language Policy | 119 such as Bruce Horner, John Trimbur, Suresh Canagarajah, Min-Zhan Lu, Gail Hawisher, Cynthia Selfe, Paul Kei Matsuda, and Anis Bawarshi have focused their efforts on just this type of work, advocating for...