Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>From the earliest days of the republic, non-English speakers have been as important as Anglophones in advancing a sense of what the United States is and represents. Moments of language contact, like monoglot moments in English-language schoolrooms and civic activity, have presented opportunities for individual speakers as well as institutions to develop a specifically Anglophone perception of language. In fact, multilingualism has been crucial to the cultivation of the narrative that the United States is and always has been foremost an Anglophone country. Engaging both communicative and grammatical competence, language contact has provided opportunities that motivate the embedding of patriotism, ethnicity, and virtue in English alone. In this way, the legend of multilingualism has been used to mark other languages and their speakers as inherently untrustworthy and un-American.</jats:p>