Exploring American Language Policy towards Immigrants in the 1980s and 90s from the Perspective of Cultural Hegemony Theory
Xiaoxi Zhang

Abstract
This essay, based on Antonio Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony theory, elaborates that the change of language policy towards Hispanic and Asian immigrants in the late twentieth century is far from an issue merely concerning language and education. Considering the domestic and overseas crises encountered by the United States in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, it is not difficult to see that the dominant group was eager to maintain their socioeconomic status and restore traditional values and law and order. Such essential concepts in cultural hegemony as civil society, intellectuals, and consent will be used to show how the dominant group, employing language as a manipulative tool to achieve hegemonic control and to maintain their dominant power.

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