If You Cant Read This Thank a Marine Bumper Sticker
"It'southward not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Barack Obama
The bumper sticker on the back of a construction worker's pickup truck caught my heart: "If y'all can read this, thank a teacher . . . ."
This homage to education wasn't what I expected from someone whose bitterness typically manifests itself in vehicle art celebrating guns and religion, only there was more: "If you can read this in English, thank a soldier."
Information technology was a "back up our troops" bumper sticker that takes language and literacy out of the classroom and puts them squarely in the hands of the military.
It'southward one thing to say that nosotros owe our national security and the survival of the gratis globe to military might. It'due south something else again to exist told that we need soldiers to protect the English language language.
But according to this bumper sticker, any chink in our armor, any relaxation of our abiding vigilance, whatever momentary lowering of the gun barrel, and we'll all be speaking Russian, Iraqi, or even Mexican.
Bloom ability worked in 1967, when a hippie put flowers in the rifle barrels of National Guard troops, only disarm soldiers today and you'll be kissing English good-bye.
Supporters of official English debate that information technology's the linguistic communication of democracy -- the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not to mention the "Star-Spangled Imprint," "American Idol" and "Who Wants to Exist a Millionaire?" (it doesn't matter that Millionaire was a British show starting time, since Americans were British once themselves). English, goes the merits, is the "social gum" cementing the many cultures that underlie American culture. As Teddy Roosevelt said back in 1918, "This is a nation, not a polyglot boarding house."
Excerpt from the New York Times report of a wartime speech by erstwhile president Theodore Roosevelt in May, 1918, in Iowa Urban center. Iowa'south governor, William Harding, had just banned the utilize of all strange languages in public anywhere in the state.
But evidently fifty-fifty the official language laws that states, cities, schools and businesses have put in place aren't doing the task, and so what we really demand is to put a gun to people'south heads to make them utilize English language.
Only that won't work. The large number of translators killed in Republic of iraq, or drummed out of the army for being gay, are two of the many indicators that our armies aren't keeping the earth condom for English language.
The linguist Max Weinreich is credited with quipping that a language is a dialect with an ground forces and a navy. But guns tin can't literally keep a language prophylactic at dwelling any more than they tin can effectively seal a border to keep other languages out.
In a bold deed of authorities change and a glaring breach of homeland security, French streamed across the English language borders in the 11th century along with the Norman armies, but French soldiers were unable to convert most of the Brits they encountered to the parlez-vous, at least not in the long term.
And while the Royal Navy helped spread English around the earth as part and parcel of the British Empire, what really undergirds English language today as an international language isn't war machine might, but the appeal of global commercialism, science, computer technology, t-shirts, and good quondam stone 'n' roll.
It didn't take an army to make English all the rage on t-shirts in Japan
Immigrants coming to the United States are learning some English; their children are learning a lot of English; their children'due south children are speaking almost cypher but English. And the only soldiering involved in the process is when the immigrants or their children join the Army.
On the other hand, the armed services is more oftentimes associated with suppressing language than with protecting it. Call up the World State of war 2 slogan, "Loose lips sink ships"? Wartime is all almost non talking in any language.
This WPA poster from the Library of Congress "American Memory" collection is one of many counseling Americans to go on "mum" during the war (that was Earth War II).
Which is why it's fifty-fifty more important to keep linguistic communication a matter ofcivil rights, not a armed services consequence. Yes, it'due south important to support the troops. Just the freedom to use linguistic communication,any language, fifty-fifty an immigrant language, is even more than vital to the nation in times of war or other crises, when every languageincludingEnglishseems like the language of the enemy, and when it's easier to feel antipathy towards immigrants and others who seem outside the mainstream, than it is in those rare moments when things are going just fine and it seems o.m. to let people say any they want in the language of their choice.
This WPA poster advertises a lecture in Iowa by Max Lerner, who was skeptical about the military'southward want to "protect" our linguistic rights.
Source: https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/4785
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