The Language, Diversity, Resilience and National Identity

English language is regarded as a unifying element for balancing ethnic and racial diversity in the USA. The country continually receives immigrants from different parts of the world, most of whom do not speak English as their first language. However, the existence of such immigrants and their use of other languages in the country do not threaten the national identity of America in reference to English as a national language.

The substantial boundary crossing witnessed in the region has resulted in many immigrants learning and speaking English in addition to communicating in their native language at home. Portes & Rumbaut (2014) assert that “among all the 3,141 counties in the United States, the median percentage of the population who spoke a language other than English at home was a mere 4.6 percent” (p. 221). This means that most of the immigrants moving into the region have learned the English language and use it even in their informal conversations at home.

Resident development has, however, seen the emergence of the Spanish language in America. The informal public bilingualism mostly reported in regions occupied by Spanish immigrants was instigated by the boundary-blurring process (Zolberg & Woon, 1999). The process resulted in the tolerance of the immigrants moving into the region leading to the spread of the Spanish language in different parts of America. As reported by Portes & Rumbaut (2014) “the largest shares of people living in homes where a language other than English is spoken are found in the large border metropolises of McAllen and El Paso, Texas, where 85 percent and 75 percent of their populations, respectively, speak a non-English language at home (overwhelmingly Spanish)” (p. 223). The increase in the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants is attributed to the tolerance that resulted in the overlapping identities in the region.

While a possibility of boundary sharing in the USA exists due to the spread of the Spanish language in some parts of the country, it cannot lead to the extinction of the English language. The regions may be reconfigured into bilingual entities; however, such a development may only happen at the home level. English will still remain the official language and an element of national identity in the USA.