The Power of Language

The Power of Language

The unity of a nation is one of the most important factors that determine its prosperity. In this case, language has become one of the most influential driving forces in its ability to enhance communication with others. Wherever people from some country travel through another countries, they carried with them, a national identity, which is usually involved in languages. In the United States, most of people speak English rather than any other language. However, this nation does not have a law that regulates English as a national language. And so, there is a fear that other language will override English, causing language barrier to rise inside the country. In his essay, Charles Krauthammer argues that United States has to establish English as official language. He mentions the idea of English prevention from disappearing. Conversely, Robert D. King states in his essay that United States has not need to legislate English as the formal language. King shares an idea that America has a unique otherness beside all the racial divisions and economic unfairness. Furthermore, he says that this nation unity is far from threatened by language. In my opinion, America should legislate English to be the official language in order to keep the unity of nation.

The acquisition of English by the immigrant has a big impact for the Americans. In his essay Krauthammer says that, “One of the major reasons for America’s great success as the world’s first ‘universal nation,’ for its astonishing and unmatched capacity for assimilating immigrants, has been that an automatic part of acculturation was the acquisition of English” (539-541). There is no doubt that America consists of widely different people with different cultural back...

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...e America originally come from different places and they gather to create one nation. So, diversity is good thing to remind themselves about their ancestor. Yet nonetheless, national language has to be applied in order to strengthen the bond between people in this country.

In the end, even though people are captivated by the cultural diversity of America, we still need a national language that everybody knows how to use it. This national language will play as an identity for its citizen and have to be respected. As new generation comes to this world, they will share a bond that every citizen takes a pride for it. Even though some people say about language and nationality as two different things, actually it is connected and unbreakable. Last but not least, people in this nation also cannot forget that English has reunited this nation into one solid big country.