Modern entertainment and social platforms incentivize learning English to access music, TikTok, sports, and news, making linguistic assimilation a market-driven process. This soft power channel can override ethnic-language enclave formation even amid high immigration.
— It reframes assimilation debates around media ecosystems and incentives rather than schooling or formal policy alone.
a reader
2025.08.22
40% relevant
This review highlights a Quechua-language play (Ollantay) as a potent identity technology that helped mobilize resistance and later provoked bans on indigenous language and symbols; it complements the existing idea by showing the flip side: media and language can consolidate either assimilation or counter-assimilation depending on incentives and control.
Aporia
2025.08.15
100% relevant
The piece argues 'You’re not going to make it far in American society if you can’t speak English well... [to] understand the latest hit songs, TikTok videos and sports news,' adding that 'Lack of fluency condemns someone...' to the margins.
Razib Khan
2025.07.09
80% relevant
Ofwegen notes bartenders in the Netherlands who don't speak Dutch and a general drift toward English, describing the country as a 'node in the pan‑American cultural sphere'—a concrete case of market‑driven linguistic and cultural assimilation.