School children across the United States begin the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge involves, in addition to the recitation of words, a series of other rituals: nonreligious headdress is removed, students turn to stand at attention facing the flag, the right hand is placed over the heart, and when the pledge ends, students quietly and quickly sit down at their desks.
These types of pledges combine with national crests, colors, songs, and flags to give a sense of material reality to the otherwise abstract notion of the modern nation, while social practices such as reciting a pledge draw citizens into a sense of nationalism.
The messages imbued in the symbols of nationalism are basic and easy to interpret; thus, the thirteen stripes of the flag correspond to the thirteen original colonies, while the fifty stars correspond to the fifty states. Every schoolchild in the United States learns this story. The meaning-making potential of the material symbols is as effective as it is basic: the nation can be imagined to exist because the semiotic resources that represent it materially are so clear.
When at the end of the French Revolution the French declared une langue, une nation, they introduced to the world the idea that language could itself be a symbolic resource for the burgeoning notion of the nation, right along with crests and flags and emblems and anthems. French was a symbol of France as much as the French flag. In Chapter 4, we discussed the many implications of the historical association between language and nation, including the consequences for minority languages.
In the United States, the English language is as emblematic of the nation as the American flag. This is in spite of the historical reality in which the United States has never had an official language and in spite of the empirical reality in which the United States is and has always been a multilingual nation.
From its historical beginning in the diverse Native American language scene, to the widespread use of German in the eighteenth century, the explosion of Polish, Italian, Yiddish and other European languages during the nineteenth century, the growth of Chinese and Spanish during the twentieth century, and the remarkable multilingualism of today, the United States has never been as monolingual as the lore would suggest. Despite this fact, many Americans think of English as being as fundamental to national identity as the stars and stripes or even the fifty states themselves.
In 2006 the symbolic relationship between English and the United States was put to the test. Millions of Americans took to the streets in March, April, and May of that year to protest proposed legislation that would have classified undocumented immigrants – many of whom were Spanish speakers – as felons. The largest single protest took place in Los Angeles, when 500,000 people marched through the streets of downtown. They carried U.S. flags and Mexican flags.
They carried posters with pro-immigration reform slogans written in English and in Spanish. And they chanted in both languages. The protestors were mobilized by Spanish language radio stations that played a Spanish language version of the Star Spangled Banner, entitled NuestroHimno. For many Spanish-speaking Americans, a Spanish language version of the National Anthem was a great source of national pride.
[VIDEO: Listen toa version of the Nuestro Himno sung by Haitian native Wyclef Jean and Puerto Rican stars Olga Tañon and Carlos Ponce.]
The mainstream English language news media seemed unable to understand how singing in Spanish could be a sign of American patriotism, especially when what was being sung was the Star Spangled Banner, an enduring and quintessential emblem of American nationalism. A nationwide controversy ensued. English language talk show hosts bemoaned NuestroHimnoas unpatriotic.
In Arizona, a militant group known as the Border Guards burned Mexican flags in front of the Mexican consulate. And Americans debated the role of Spanish in national life.Une langue, une nation had finally come up against its twenty-first century counterpart – globalization – and many English speakers were not happy about it.
One of them was President George W. Bush, who told a group of reporters thatpeople who want to be citizens of the United States should learn English and ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.His comments presupposed that all who participated in singing NuestroHimnoneither spoke English nor were U.S. citizens. But many of the protesters were already U.S. citizens and many more spoke both languages, English and Spanish, demonstrating once again that realities about language can easily get lost in ideologies about nations.
Lonn Taylor is an historian who wrote a comprehensive history of the Star Spangled Banner. In an interview with Steven Colbert, he points out that although the song was declared the national anthem by an act of Congress, there has never been an official version and Americans have always been able to sing the song however they please, including in languages other than English. Watch the interview here.