Amid the flurry of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump since he took office in January — more than 157 so far —the few that specifically focus on languages could easily be misinterpreted as simply random pieces within a broader array of MAGA priorities.
In reality, there is an alarming underlying logic that unites languages with the other executive orders: a worldview that denies complexity and confuses dominance with unity.
For example, the executive order declaring English the official language of the U.S. contends that a single, national language is “the core of a unified and cohesive society … strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language.” Evidence shows we are a deeply polarized country, however, and dissenting ideas, even in English, are being squashed by the current administration.
The larger problem, however, is that in the U.S., even people who oppose Trump and his policies often share the same deep-rooted oversimplifications of languages. This is evident in a surprising and seemingly unrelated area of debate in popular culture: Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish.
Love her or hate her, Baldwin and critiques of her Spanish-ness reflect the prevalent monolingual and monocultural attitudes in the U.S. — and in Trumpism.
Baldwin’s new memoir, “Manual Not Included,” has reignited these critiques. It also serves as an opportunity to grapple with our complicated relationship to multilingualism in this country — especially under the current political climate.
Since 2020 Baldwin, online influencer and wife of the actor Alec Baldwin, has been dogged by accusations that she, a native American originally from Boston, pretends to be Spanish by dropping her original Anglo name, Hillary, and affecting a Latin accent when she speaks English — but only sometimes. Social media users also ridicule her for the times she momentarily searched for the English words cucumber and onion while cooking live on camera.
The monolingual mindset dominates in the U.S., given that an overwhelming majority of people (78.3%) in this country speak English only. But multilingualism and all its complexities are the global norm, with estimates that only 40% of people are monolingual.
“Bilingualism is present on all continents, in all classes of society, in all age groups,” writes linguist François Grosjean in his book “Life as a Bilingual.”
Online critiques of Baldwin’s linguistic flubs, though, portray bilingualism as if it were two separate monolinguals living in the same brain. In other words, Baldwin, a native English speaker must be faking confusion about a common word like “cucumber” and its Spanish equivalent, “pepino.”
In reality, all languages within a multilingual’s brain are intertwined in complex neural webs, according to a review of the research in the recent book, “The Study of Bilingual Language Processing,” and as Baldwin herself explains in her defense in her memoir. Indeed, all languages are simultaneously activated, not one at a time, according to Viorica Marian, Ralph and Jean Sundin Endowed Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University.
Marian also explains the performative nature of Baldwin’s Spanish identity that her critics call out. In her book “The Power of Language,” Marian explains that, “language makes people different, bringing to the forefront different aspects of themselves, ‘turning on’ different identities. … A different language can release a new aspect of your identity that lies dormant in your native language.”
Translanguaging, a concept popularized in the U.S. by Ofelia García, Professor Emerita of Urban Education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at the City University of New York, more aptly reflects the ways that multilingual communicate. Languages are not demarcated as discrete systems but rather as a fluid whole that multilinguals pull from, often switching among languages to best communicate their meaning.
The term ¨trans,¨ however, has been politicized and rejected by the MAGA movement which insists on singular, separate identities. They do this explicitly with regards to gender and implicitly with other issues, like languages, that are actually nuanced.
Transnational living — another “trans” word — vexes MAGA supporters as much as Baldwin detractors. As they frame it, Baldwin is American so she cannot also be Spanish.
Framing the issue this way is not surprising since almost half of Americans hold no passport. Yet any American can have dual nationality. And whether they have U.S. citizenship or not, millions of people living in this country lead transnational lives, maintaining strong ties with their family and cultures abroad.
Our society needs a more nuanced way to understand people who live between or among separate countries. With its vehement anti-immigrant stance, Trumpism stamps out all the complexities of what “belonging” in multiple countries means, oversimplifying the issue to either holding full citizenship or being deportable. Unfortunately, Baldwin’s critics’ reasoning is not dissimilar.
After President Trump signed an order declaring English the official language, professional organizations with expertise in multilingualism quickly mounted critiques, such as linguists, teachers of English as a second language and teachers of foreign languages. Because cultures are inextricably linked to languages, organizations that represent ethnic groups in the U.S. and in higher education also pushed back.
Whatever one thinks of Baldwin herself, we all benefit when we work to understand each other’s full, cultural complexity. Which, in turn, can help us adopt a more expansive way of understanding ourselves as a country, too.