Identity and Ideology:

Press One for American English

In the American imagination, the myth of the mainstream projects an ideal of English as the legal, official national language, a belief that conflates socio-historical attitudes about language with nationalistic ideology.  A music video on YouTube, entitled “Press One for English,” debuts at a time of increasingly vocal protests about nationwide English-only laws.  The video represents a piece of pop-propaganda dependent on both its lyrics and its visual icons to advance its ideological stance on language. Regarding English as an earned right identifies it as symbolic capital, a political symbol used to identify what it means to be American, as well as to control that identity.  The social order expressed in the song suggests a collective ideal of an America in which today’s immigrants are expected to assimilate by learning English, just as was “always done” by immigrants in the past.  The song uses entertainment as a vehicle for nationalism—and ultimately for a type of propagandist pedagogy to promote the American dream, a linguistic self-reliance that expresses national identity and becomes part of a civic story dependent on assimilation. 

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