It seems like many of the candidates weren’t really saying anything. Typical.

Since you brought in doublespeak from your linguistics class, I am going to bring in the idea of “othering” that we are talking about as a part of Post-Colonial theory in my capstone class. Much of the discussion of bilingual education relates to fear (either blatant or implied) of “others” and their differences. Given the choice, many parents would want their kids to be in classrooms with other kids “like them.” This would indeed be familiar and comfortable, but it’s not practical, it’s not welcoming, (and it’s boring).

This issue was addressed in my high school, and that’s what actually made me think about it. You used the phrases “foreign language” and “foreign language education,” and so did my high school, until my sophomore year. The school board changed all “foreign language” speak to “world languages,” in order to eliminate the negative connotations of the word “foreign,” which increases the attitude that people who are different are “others” and that they are not like you.

Besides messing up my transcript, I think this change is an interesting way to think about the treatment of languages other than English in the United States.