BOOK REVIEW By MELBA BUXBAUM

Linguistic isolationism — claims Simon

Paul Simon, The Tongue-Tied American,
Confronting the Foreign Language Crisis,
New York: Continuum, 1980, 214 pp. $12.95

THE TITLE of Congressman Paul Simon's book is deliberately provocative. Most Americans would probably acknowledge that we are a tongue-tied nation when it comes to mastery of foreign language skills, but few would admit this situation as constituting a crisis. Rather, quite the contrary is true. H. L. Mencken's humorous and ironic remark, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me," characterizes an attitude with deep roots in the American tradition. For much of our history our endeavor has been to assimilate immigrant masses and in the process, as the commissioner of the common schools of New York testified in 1898, to obliterate "foreign characteristics and traits ... as obstructive, warring, and irritating elements." As Simon points out, "If someone asks the son of Italian immigrants if he speaks Italian, he will often deny it. To speak another language has been a matter of shame, not of pride.'' In other countries, persons of the educated elite often speak one or two foreign languages, but in our society such mastery is not expected. Our success as a nation has seemed to make legitimate such antipathy or indifference. Simon provides a telling quote from an editorial in the Progress Bulletin of Pomona Valley, Calif.: "America has come further in 200 years than other nations have in 2000 .... And we did it all without the aid of an expensive foreign language education." Simon aims to convince us that such attitudes are obsolete. "The times they are a changing." As far as the United States is concerned, they have already changed. After World War II, we possessed the only nuclear weapons in the world and were the world's undisputed economic super power. Now, as we are painfully aware, that position of dominance is no longer undisputed either militarily or economically. Up to 1971 the U.S. had exported more than it imported, but by 1978 the trade deficit was up to $28 billion per year. With regard to the arms race, the whole idea of maintaining military superiority has become grotesquely ludicrous. The Soviet Union and the U. S. together possess enough nuclear war heads to destroy humanity at least 22 times over.

Simon very eloquently and convincingly makes the case that many of our problems are due at least in part to our cultural isolationism. Sensitivity to and understanding of other cultures are indispensable conditions for beneficial trade relations and peace among nations. But understanding requires communication, and successful communication requires language. There's the rub.

In example after example, Simon illustrates the handicaps we suffer in the market-place and in the world of diplomacy due to our monolingualism or poorly developed language skills. Some of the examples produce chuckles, such as General Motor's failure to sell its model called Nova in Latin America because in Spanish "no va" means "it doesn't go." Most, however, are tragically serious in their potential or real consequences. Khrushchev's alleged statement, "We will bury you," is actually a mistranslation of a nonthreatening remark, "We will survive you."

It is true that English has become an international diplomatic language, but Simon argues that speaking to the natives through interpreters or to the educated elite in English can never replace the cultural insight that comes about through the thorough grasp of another language. As Simon says, "Language is the key to opening minds, and attitudes. To speak, read, write, and understand another language is the beginning of understanding other people."According to Simon, the failure to achieve such understanding has involved the U.S. in disastrous conflict:

We can learn some lessons from that tragic conflict [Vietnam], the need for specialists who understand what is happening in every corner of the globe; the need for citizens who can read, speak, and understand all major languages. The loss in Vietnam came about not because of deficiency in military equipment or in the fighting force, but because of deficiency in understanding.

In the final chapters, Simon calls for reinstatement of language requirements and a commitment of resources at all levels - national, state and local — to the establishment of vigorous language and international studies programs.

The Tongue-Tied American is amazing in many ways. As a language teacher who did not need to be convinced of the value of language study, I can say that this book has given me a sense of renewed dedication to the strengthening of our nation's debilitated language curricula. The reason for Simon's effectiveness as an advocate of language study may be that his perspective is different from the usual academic one. We most often do not focus on the strictly practical value of language learning. We do not train our students directly to negotiate peace treaties or to compete successfully for world markets. However, we do teach them to appreciate the best, most creative and expressive use that has been made of the foreign language they are learning. After the requisite conversation and composition courses, the study of literature is the vehicle for the achievement of aesthetic sensitivity, deep cultural insight and, hopefully, mastery of the nuances and expressive resources of the foreign language. Simon's book demonstrates that the kinds of understanding and skills cultivated in the foreign language and literature classroom are desperately needed in the world today.

Paul Simon, Democratic congressman from southern Illinois, has already been recognized by those of my profession as its principal advocate on Capitol Hill. Now we have this book, clearly written and amply documented, which I hope will be read by millions. It cannot fail to convince them that our tongue-tied condition indeed constitutes a crisis. □

Melba Buxbaum is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Blackburn College in Carlinville. She has done research in Spain and at the University of Chicago on the modem Spanish novel.

18/February 1982/lllinois Issues