Alan Thomas Kohler Abstract

Alan Thomas Kohler Abstract

 

Alan Thomas Kohler
  Ph.D. Candidate
  Second Language Acquisition & Teaching GIDP

   American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2015  Conference
  Toronto, Canada
  March 21-24, 2015

 

Language and Ideology Strand
AAAL 2015 Proposal
Individual Papers

ABSTRACT

How to feel good about bigotry: A multimodal critical metonymy analysis of two Official English websites

Authors: Alan Thomas Kohler & Linda R. Waugh

Professional Abstract

Lay Audience Abstract

Abstract:

From the 1980’s through the early 2000’s, pushed by the Official English (OE) movement concerned with the increasing presence of non-English speaking immigrants, states like California, Arizona, and Massachusetts dismantled their bilingual education programs, replacing them with restrictive, untested language policies and programs like Structured English Immersion (SEI). Research has demonstrated, however, that these unrealistic and destructive programs (Rios-Aguilar et al., 2010) preserve academic and linguistic achievement gaps (Garcia et al, 2010a), systematically deny services to and violate the human and educational rights of English language learners (Lillie et al., 2010; Garcia et al., 2010b), and increase their isolation and impair their social/emotional development (Gandar & Orfield, 2010). And

yet, SEI and other such programs persevere, and backing for continued OE initiatives remains robust. 33 states now have OE legislation, 83% of Americans support OE in education and governmental policies, and in 2013, 90 Congressional cosponsors introduced “The English Language Unity Act” (H.R. 997) calling for unparalleled federal-level OE legislation. How is it that this narrow, monolingual OE ideology can bear such impoverished and damaging fruit, yet continue to enjoy sustained, committed support?

Recent critical research on OE discourse and metaphor (Johnson, 2013) sought answers, but our present study unites the more potent explanatory power of metonymy (Catalano & 2nd Author, 2013), with multimodality/Social Semiotics (Machin & Mayr, 2012; van Leeuwen, 2005) and CDA to reveal how ProEnglish and US-English, the driving forces of OE, remain influential and relevant. After close analysis of the textual and visual metonymies embedded in these organizations’ websites, our results have uncovered systematic use of ideologically persuasive essentializing tropes of national unity, prosperity, patriotism, and antidiscrimination (Barker, et al., 2010) that mask underlying racial/ethnic anxiety and bigotry and promote the preservation of assimilationist, conservative, white dominance (Combs et al., 2011; De Jong, 2013; Hill, 2000).

Summary:

This critical multimodal study analyzes how textual and visual metonymy work together on the websites of prominent Official English activist organizations to evoke ideologically persuasive, essentialized notions of patriotism, unity, and antidiscrimination in order to mobilize support for policies and programs that otherwise retrict and disempower language minority speakers.

Abstract (for Lay Audience):

 While it is often and widely assumed that communication happens primarily through written and spoken language, the truth is that ideas are constructed and conveyed through a variety of modes. This is especially true today, in the digital age, where everything from color schemes to images to text font type to the placement and organization of photos and content on a website can influence how users perceive and react to that site and its intended message. Whether the audience is always aware of how these various elements of communication work together to deliver such a message is another question. Indeed, when persuasion is the goal and when the message is controversial, the subtle interplay between the visual and written components (modes) of a text can be as effective as it is dangerous. This current research is predicated on such a view of communication, and marries a “multi-modal” analysis with the power and persuasiveness of figurative language to shed light on a particularly enduring and corrosive crusade within the United States’ educational and political apparatus: The Official English Movement.

Beginning in the early 1980’s, elementary and secondary educational systems throughout the country that had once supported bilingual education initiatives began discarding programs that supported students’ parallel development in their native languages in favor of fast-paced, “sink or swim” English immersion programs. These programs were ideologically tied to the belief that English is and should be promoted as the natural, primary, and official language of the U.S. Despite substantial evidence in the decades that followed pointing to the emotionally, socially, linguistically, and academically destructive consequences of these policies, the Official English movement endures and has enjoyed increasing political support in the recent years within both educational and governmental policy planning. The question is, in the face of such widespread evidence of their negative impacts, how do Official English policies continue to draw such popular support? In an attempt to provide some answers to this question, this paper analyzes the websites of the two most prominent Official English organizations to uncover the nature of this movement’s appeal. What is revealed through our analysis is that these organizations use a combination of visual imagery, symbolism, and figurative language to reduce the movement’s argument to concepts of national unity, pride, and inclusiveness. Selling restrictive language policy in this way engenders uncritical backing from those already inclined to support so-called “traditional” American values while obscuring the very real, very damaging, and very  discriminatory consequences of these programs.