LINGUIS 155AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Immigrant Language, First Language, Test Case
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
History, if census tell us about language attitudes, statistical data on linguistic diversity, immigrant language loss and learning of english. History of the u. s. census and its language questions. U. s. constitution mandates a census every 10 years. Since 1890 - included some sort of questions about language. January 24, 2008 population estimates: u. s. - 303,299,627,, world- 6,646,158,451. Why is language use of concern to the government (not just linguistics) Information for government agencies that serve foreign-born, like those that have difficulty with english. Voting rights act: if populations meet requirements for making materials available in other languages. Study needs of children served by different school districts. Only 1 in 7-10 households get long form that includes these questions. Lead to overreporting since smal population of speakers. Names of languages pose difficulty, like chinese is a language family. Affects mindset of rest of the nation (1 in 8 us residents live in ca as of 2005)
