Should Congress pass legislation making English the nation's official language? How does language impact on a person's sense of identity or a community's coherence?
These and other related questions will be considered in a conference titled "Language and National Identity," which will be hosted by the Whitney Humanities Center on Friday-Saturday, Nov. 15-16.
The conference will bring together scholars from Yale, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia and other universities to discuss English-only laws, bilingual education, multicultural studies, ethnic separatism, and related issues. Anthropologists, historians, legal experts, literary scholars, political scientists, and sociologists will participate in a series of panels and a roundtable discussion. The conference, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
The first panel, 1:30-3:30 p.m. on Friday, will place the issue in its historic context. Topics to be discussed will include "The Fall of the Universal Tongue: Language and National Identity in Modern France," "Nationalism and Language: Some Historical Connections and Theoretical Implications" and "Language Lessons: Linguistic Colonialism, Linguistic Post-Colonialism and the Early-Modern English Nation."
The second panel, 3:45-5:45 p.m. on Friday, will examine the myths and realities of national and international languages. Speakers will present the following talks: "Observations on Language and National Identity," "Prospects for Global English: Back to BASIC?" and "Local Universes: Myths of a National Language."
The third panel, 9:30-11:30 a.m. on Saturday, addresses three specific cultures. Topics will be "Class, Gender, and the Nationalist Language Project in Catalonia," "Our AmeRica," and "What If the Gettysburg Address Had Been Given in Japanese?"
The final session, 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m. on Saturday, will be a roundtable discussion featuring all participants.
The Yale faculty members who will take part in the conference include Vera Kutzinski, Michael Holquist, Joseph Errington and Benedict Anderson. The latter, from Cornell University, is currently in residence at the Whitney Humanities Center as a Luce Scholar.