Saturday, February 20, 2010

Negative Language Stigmas

We have repeatedly seen from the articles that Spanish is tagged with a negative stigma, primarily due to its speakers being minorities. Yet minorities are the mayor growing population. Spanish is a language that will never cease even without the inflow of immigrants. If by miracle, the borders were blocked off to the extent that no new immigrants came to the U.S., would the negative stigma continue? Let's imagine that everyone learned and spoke English, would this bring an end to the fear of other languages becoming prestigious? Could other languages then be considered legitimate because they no longer were a threat? What would happen to Spanish? As we have seen, language and culture are connected; therefore, this cannot be flushed out of people unless they chose otherwise. You would think that since we live in such a diverse and progressive country, it would be acceptable to value other cultures and languages instead of mocking or justifying negative stigmas. I think it is normal for people to fear the unknown, but labeling other languages as disorderly or dangerous is just absurd.

1 comment:

  1. Diana estoy de acuerdo contigo mejor aún eliminemos las barreras y aprendamos más idiomas, la diversidad es parte de la sabiduría.

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