ABSTRACT
It is against the backdrop of the increasing number of non-native English speakers in the US that the English Only movement or as its members prefer to call it, US English or Official English, operates (see www.us-english.org/). It has its roots in the late nineteenth century, until when although the languages of supposedly ‘inferior’ groups (African and Native American) were disparaged (see section B1), multilingualism was tolerated. But at this point, immigrants from southern Europe began to arrive in the US in substantial numbers. ese new immigrants were considered to be racially inferior by the northern Europeans who had initially colonised the territory. eodore Roosevelt’s 1907 response to their arrival, as the Milroys note, was “similar to the rhetoric of the contemporary English Only movement”:
We have room but for one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house
(quoted in Milroy & Milroy 2012: 157)
In order to safeguard their position, the US government began reversing the policy of allowing education for immigrants to take place in their native languages.
