Eduardo D. Faingold: Language Rights and the Law in the United States and Its Territories
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Eduardo D. Faingold: Language Rights and the Law in the United States and Its Territories The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc, Lanham, MD, 2018, xiv + 119, Hb $80.00 ISBN 978-1-4985-7136-4 Joseph DeChicchis1 Received: 5 February 2020 / Accepted: 30 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The title and back cover recommendations will certainly entice many who may be interested in this very important topic, and most readers new to this subject will not be disappointed. The linguistic rights promulgated by “the constitutions, organic acts, and statutes of the United States and its territories” (p. 1) is the stated scope of this policy analysis, and Faingold does a good job in this regard. The writing is accessible to young readers, and the many important references and their discussion also recommend this book as a first read for anyone new to this topic. Moreover, Chapters 7 and 8, with lengthy extracts from important documents of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, are especially welcome inclusions, since so often Chamorro and Carolinian are ignored by North Americans, who tend to focus either on the English–Spanish and English-French dichotomies or on recent immigrant languages. Another highlight is the Chapter 4 discussion of the Maldonado case in Oklahoma. Although the argument for cognitive cost is based on less than definitive neurolinguistic research results, Faingold is attending to important aspects of an English-only work environment, and the sociolinguistic dimension of his argument (p. 44) is persuasive. Part 1 gives an overview of the codification of language rights in the US and its Freely Associated States. This is done by classifying the various governments with respect to their constitutional and state-level statutory provisions that recognize and protect language rights. Part 2 discusses some US Federal language rights legislation, namely, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Part 3 discusses the situation of Spanish speakers in the Southwest after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, including the potential for devolution which could support Spanish language rights initiatives. Part 4 reviews the language
* Joseph DeChicchis [email protected] 1
Kwansei Gakuin University, Sanda, Hyogo, Japan
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rights situation of non-English language speakers in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Unfortunately, the scope of this book is also its weakness, because any serious student of the American legal constraints upon linguistic freedom is already well acquainted with “the constitutions, organic acts, and statutes” (p. 1) discussed, especially since that body of law is online and readily accessible. Attracted by the title, the advanced student may thus feel a bit disappointed, as this book neglects other areas of public law, especially administrative and procedural law, which comprise the most relevant law impinging on the linguistic rights of persons in the USA and its territories. (The book similarly ignores langu
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