In various law journals, treatises, etc. in Louisiana, used as a placeholder name for the purpose of discussing rights concerning immovables. [i.e. Cajun for “Blackacre”]
My Linguist Stance of Official Language Legislation
Excerpt from my triple book review:
So pervasive is English worldwide, Crystal argues, that the only place where an English backlash could have significant effects on global English is the United States, and with 95% of the population speaking English, one would think that the U.S. wouldn’t have to worry about the viability of English. But amazingly, Crystal notes, that there has been considerable political interest in making English the official language of the U.S. namely through two bills, each of which ostensibly aim to promote immigrant acclimation by conducting government business in English. Again, we see the tension between the language of one’s home and identity and the language of the state, as immigrant groups claim that any English-only bill surpresses the groups’ cultural identity. Now, as linguists, we immediately recognize the myriad reasons why English-only bills are problematic: there is no assimilation problem; this bill is unnecessary, introduces unneeded legal complexities, attempts to regulate self-expression, will not make the nation any more stable (a point in Crystal’s book Language Death is that all the main monolingual nations have had civil wars), and so on.
