Journal of Educational Media and Library Sciences


Vol. 40 No. 1 , Pages 51 - 75 , 2002

Foreign Language Use in Federal Government Documents

Timothy DODGE

Abstract

This article examines the hypothesis that the federal government is making efforts to contact the non-English speaking population of the United States via the publication of documents in languages other than English and that the purpose of such contact mostly is to inform this population of the existence of social services. The author examined 8446 Federal Depository Library Program shipping lists for Fiscal Years 1995–2000 and analyzed 213,183 document titles. The findings confirm the hypothesis. However, the percentage of foreign-language documents is much smaller than the percentage of the American population that speaks English as a native language.

Keywords: government documents; foreign languages; Federal Depository Library Program; Hispanics; social services

[Index | Journal of Educational Media and Library Sciences | Other Journals | Subscription form | Enquiry ]


Mail any comments and suggestions to hkier-journal@cuhk.edu.hk .