MALA: A Fleeting Moment of Balanced Immigration Coverage
Bodossian, Kristen & Ana, Otto Santa
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 mala
A Fleeting Moment of
Balanced Immigration
Coverage
By Kristen Bodossian and otto Santa Ana G eorge w. bush inadvertently created a public maelstrom in...
...Cataloging the metaphors used in 1994 by the Times to represent immigrants, he found that although the paper strongly opposed Prop...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS mala stunned many people across the political spectrum when he publicly declared immigrants to be “decent human beings,” “Americans by choice,” and people of “talent, character, and patriotism” who hold values like “faith in God, love of family, hard work, and self-reliance...
...In the absence of major marches, we believe, the short period of balanced U.S...
...news media do not mind their metaphors, the public’s judgment on one of the most pressing political issues of the early 21st century will be made once again on the basis of myopic, dehumanizing images...
...Sadly, the October 2006 coverage of the border fence law indicates a return to the status quo...
...In May 2006, U.S...
...print news, we rigorously analyzed two samples of 50 articles from more than 35 major newspapers...
...This retreat may be due to increased discussions of policy, rather than reporting on impressive marches that present the human face of immigrants...
...Thus there was balanced treatment of both sides of the root of the immigration debate, in contrast to the 1990s, when the public received only one point of view through metaphor, that powerful faculty of subconscious conceptualization, and hence of persuasion...
...In contrast, the positive human immigrant metaphors make a different claim: Immigrants are decent people who commit a minor civil infraction for the higher purpose of working for their daily bread...
...newspaper journalists presented near equal por burden, as mass, as object, and as alIen (adding up to 20...
...Thus, when Bush made his 2004 proposal, he Kristen Bodossian is an undergraduate at UCLA...
...If U.S...
...This negative metaphor was complemented by the ImmIgrant as human) and positive sentiment (as contrIbutor, reputable), or provides a technical description (as undocumented, worker...
...This creates a criminality narrative through which any potential change in immigration policy is to be judged, a narrative that characterizes unauthorized immigrants as lower forms of human beings that must be restricted, removed, and closely regulated...
...While negative metaphors outnumbered positive ones, the sizable presence of the latter represented a tremendous improvement in the ability of the press to present what we believe is the ontological kernel of the debate...
...We then compared the May data to a sample from the following October, when Bush signed a law authorizing the construction of up to 700 miles of high-tech fencing along the U.S.Mexico border...
...Thus at this fundamental level of language, at which readers make sense of political concepts, the Times did not promote a balanced debate of the issue...
...In the May 2006 sample we found 1,136 metaphors, 969 of which directly related to immigrants...
...Policy positions on immigration are numerous and nuanced...
...The most frequent metaphor overall was ImmIgrant as crImInal (33...
...news media do not mind their metaphors, the public’s judgment on one of the most pressing political issues of the early 21st century will be made once again on the basis of myopic, dehumanizing images...
...the only significant change in 2006 was that ImmIgrant as crImInal replaced ImmIgrant as anImal as the most frequent (hence guiding) metaphor...
...On the one hand, the anti-immigrant metaphors encapsulate the following If U.S...
...He particularly annoyed the right when he declared that the hard work of “undocumented” immigrants “made ours the world’s largest economy” and that the United States can only become a “stronger and better nation because of the hard work and the faith and entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants...
...Californians voted accordingly...
...Wondering what effect the president’s rhetoric might have in U.S...
...These metaphors, which depict immigrants as a source of national danger and disdain, had been noted in the 1994 study...
...news media to articulate—a decidedly anti-immigrant one...
...Of the 903 metaphors directly relating to immigrants, 67% were inhumane and only 33% were humane...
...In brief, what you say (or read) is what you get...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 mala A Fleeting Moment of Balanced Immigration Coverage By Kristen Bodossian and otto Santa Ana G eorge w. bush inadvertently created a public maelstrom in January 2004, when he proposed a new temporary worker program and a road to citizenship for millions of unauthorized immigrants...
...The last time this happened was in 1994, when California voters dum as fiscally unsound and passed Proposition 187, which mean-spirited), it inadvertently would have denied unauthor supported the referendum at ized immigrants many public the level of metaphor...
...national news sources used such politically biased language in the 1990s...
...law and exploit its social services deserve only punishment...
...It was complemented by ImmIgrant as human, as worker, and as contrIbutor (adding up to 20%), supporting an affirming viewpoint about immigrants, 2 and hence more humane immigration policy...
...As gauged by old-fashioned journalistic content analysis—which simply counts the number of words, headline size, and other plainly observable elements of newspaper copy—the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Prop...
...The Times was not alone...
...The most frequent of these humane metaphors was ImmIgrant as undocumented (11...
...We have both good and bad news to report...
...First, we looked at reports from May 2, 2006, the day after enormous pro-immigrant marches took place across the country...
...Apparently only one discourse was then acceptable for the U.S...
...187 using a research design and powerful metaphor the Times projected was ImmIgrant as anImal...
...But such analysis is limited...
...journalism on this issue has ended...
...By 2006, immigration had become the major issue on the nation’s political agenda...
...Otto Santa Ana, an empirical sociolinguist and critical discourse analyst, is Associate Professor in UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies...
...Instead, its readership was provided only a single discourse about immigrants, one that depicted them as subhuman...
...For this reason, the everyday metaphors for political notions like cItIzen, ImmIgrant, and natIon that are sprinkled through news copy are fundamental to understanding on what basis newspaper readers (hence voters) make political decisions...
...All the negative metaphors became more frequent, while affirming metaphors lost ground normative claim: Immigrants who deliberately violate U.S...
...We found the customary inhumane discourse in 57% of the metaphors portraying immigrants, but also determined that 43% characterized immigrants neutrally or positively...
...But the crux of the debate lies in how we judge the character of the unauthorized immigrant...
...The Times repeatedly depicted immigrants as animals in various ways, including as prey being drawn into a trap or chased down and eaten: “The truth is, employers hungering for really cheap labor hunt out the foreign workers” (italics added...
...Indeed, Media Accuracy benefits and required state Santa Ana’s findings were chillon Latin America that linked the insights of cognitive metaphor theory to a rigorous scientific protocol designed to avoid tainting the investigation with his own political bias...
...The paper also depicted them as invading soldiers, flooding tides, and weeds...
...all mainstream U.S...
...According to recent research in cognitive science, common metaphor appears to be the key element of language that people use to make sense of their social world...
...187 (its editorials repeatedly condemned the referen care workers and school teachers) to point authorities to “apparently illegal aliens...
...tions of each rival narrative to the reading public...
...187 was balanced...
...In Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (2002), Otto Santa Ana reported on the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Prop...
...Such metaphors create a narrative that reflects compassion (ImmIgrant as proportionally...
...To our happy surprise, we found two rival discourses competing for approval...
Vol. 40 • November 2007 • No. 6
