Rhetorical Analysis Of English Only Laws Divide And Demean

The English Only movement has been around for a long time, but it has been overlooked by most. Most Americans speak English from the moment they learned to talk; many others learn English as a second language. For this reason, many Americans oppose to the existence of non-English languages being spoken in the United States. In Warren J. Blumenfeld’s essay “‘English Only’ Laws Divide and Demean”, the author speaks about the “English Only” Movement and how people who support and oppose it feel towards this situation. He uses rhetorical appeals such as ethos, logos, and pathos in order to make people understand the severity of the situation and for the writing to have an effect on its readers. Blumenfeld does a great job of giving the readers

The use of ethos helps with the author’s credibility and he succeeds at it by quoting credible sources regarding the issues discussed in his essay. For example, Blumenfeld quotes President Theodore Roosevelt and exposes his point of view regarding the presence of non-English languages in the United States and how the things that “we have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English Language” (1). Bluemenfeld uses quotes in order to present to the audience of his essay both point of views. In this case, he presents the ones who agree with English being the one and only language spoken in the U.S. Among other quotes, the Blumenfeld also cites people who do not support the discrimination of multicultural and multilingual presence in the country like the National Association for Multicultural Education whereas they state that “multicultural education is a philosophical concept built on the ideas of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity…”

One of the ways the author used logos in his writing was by stating that the English-Only campaign transformed into a movement in 1931 in order to ban all non-English languages in government documents and printed material regarding any federal, state, and local government information. Because of how difficult achieving this was, it was decided to create a law called “Language of Government” that mandates that the official language of the federal government is English. Since this happened, 27 states have passed laws that state English as the “official” language of their territory. Also, with this, the author is trying to make his readers see the severity of this situation by exposing the number of states that have dedicated time and resources into making sure that English is the only language being spoken in their territory. On the other hand, by citing the National Association of Multicultural Education, shows the importance of bilingualism and how it is stated is stated in various official government documents such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, constitutions of South Africa and the United States, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations. Another part of this essay where logos is presented is where the term “cultural genocide” by Joel Spring is defined as “the attempt to destroy other