WaPo on LCT languages in the FBI

As if we didn't know.

I think it's fair to say there's ample evidence that our national language policy has failed to provide us the resources it should supply.

That's what I wrote for this post originally, but there's a lot to unpack in there. In no particular order:

1. What is a "national language policy"?
2. Do we really have one? Should we?
3. What are the objectives of such a policy?
4. What exactly have we gotten out of it?

Others have made the cogent point that whether it's explicit or not, all nations have a national language policy. I largely concur - policies can congeal from all types of action or inaction in a variety of domains (education, judicial, etc.) In the case of the US, I'd argue that the primary conduit of language policy is in the schools and is largely covert. Across the country, there are all types of programs and initiatives, bilingual and monolingual alike, under the radar.

So the question of whether we should have a NLP or not is moot; we have one either intentionally or accidentally. The real question is how we want it to evolve. We can choose to maintain the current system, which is largely distributed and decentralized, or we can try to articulate what the goals and methods are. The main problem with a decentralized approach is inconsistency; the main problem with a top-down approach is that it's impossible to get politicians to agree on anything.

So what's the current policy? I'd say "keep quiet until election years, then rail against foreigners". Notice that immigration is only an issue when people try to get elected, and then the rhetoric is on how immigrants fail to assimilate vis-a-vis English. Of course, it's not like nothing happens during the two years between elections, we just don't talk about it. But again, the focus is on transitioning from other languages to English - it's a rhetoric of carve-out, not add-on.

I would argue that what a policy should attempt to achieve is abundance of linguistic resources. That is, right now the focus is on uniformity: of first language, of language "loyalties", and of culture. However, if we'd be better off if we tried to cultivate strategically important languages, such that we could grow a pool of native Arabic (or Hindi, or Mandarin) speakers. Then we wouldn't be in such a bind when we needed translators or language specialists - we'd have Americans with similar competence ready to go.

But instead, we're so fixated on English and Only English that we forget why other languages are important. And it's not that English isn't an important, it's just not the only language. And when we need to communicate (or eavesdrop, as the case may be), our targets aren't always going to be nice enough to speak English to us. That's why it's so important to develop speakers of other languages - not because of multiculturalism, not because English "isn't good enough", but because they're the ones who will be able to connect America to the rest of the world when parts of the rest of the world doesn't want to talk to us.