English Officialization and Construction of Language Hegemony-National Identity: A Historical Structuralist Critique of U.S. Language Policy

Abstract

The designation of English as the official language of the United States by the Trump administration in 2025 has reignited the long-standing controversy over this issue, which has persisted since the nation’s founding. To investigate the nature of contemporary U.S. language policies and their intrinsic connections with colonial legacy, economic inequality, and institutional violence, this study employs Tollefson’s framework of historical structuralism. The analysis unfolds along three dimensions: mechanisms of power reproduction, structural inequality, and historical continuity, integrating literature review with historical analysis. The findings reveal that U.S. language policy systematically reproduces power through “cultural filtering” in the 
educational sphere, barriers to career advancement in the employment sector, and the ideological binding of language to citizenship. The study concludes that this policy is not an accidental product of contemporary politics but a modern continuation of the historical structure of “linguistic hegemony, racial hierarchy, and class solidification.” The essence of the controversy is a power struggle over “who has the right to define America,” exposing the tenacity of structural inequality within a liberal democratic system.