Language Diversity and Discrimination in the American Workplace; Legal, Ethical, and Practical Considerations for Management

The cultural, ethnic, and national origin diversity of the United States, and concomitantly the diversity of the U.S. workforce, including the language diversity of employees, has produced a reaction by employers to the use of languages other than English in the workplace. Consequently, employer language policies, particularly language restrictions in the form of English-only rules, have spawned a spate of legal complaints and moral condemnations against these purportedly discriminatory and unethical policies. Tension and conflict at today’s typically multicultural workplace have been engendered by the languages that the employees may speak, may wish to speak, and perhaps only can speak. Language polices at the workplace, therefore, have important legal, moral, social, and practical ramifications which are presented in this paper.