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santa_ana_-_2010_-_brown_tide_rising_-ch3.pdf
BROWN TIDE RISING Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse
Otto Santa Ana
Foreword by Joe R. Feagin
University of Texas Press, Austin
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Publication of this book has been assisted by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
Second paperback printing,
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box , Austin, TX -.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Santa Ana, Otto, – Brown tide rising : metaphors of Latinos in contemporary American public discourse / Otto Santa Ana.— st ed.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (alk. paper) — --- (pbk: alk. paper) . Hispanic Americans—Public opinion. . Hispanic Americans and mass media. . Discourse analysis—United States—Psychological aspects. . Discourse analysis—Political aspects—United States. . Hispanic Americans—Politics and government—Public opinion. . Immigrants—United States—Public opinion. . Public opinion—United States. . United States—Ethnic relations—Psychological aspects. . United States—Race relations—Psychological aspects. I. Title. . .—dc
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Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowl- edge. Whether it is the obscuring state language or the faux language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics; or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek—it must be rejected, altered, and exposed. . . . [A]ll are typical of the policing language of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
Toni Morrison From Morrison’s lecture upon receiving
the Nobel Prize for literature
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Contents
xi / Foreword by Joe R. Feagin xv / Preface xix / Acknowledgments
/ Chapter One: Why Study the Public Discourse Metaphors Depicting Latinos?
/ Part : Theory and Method / Chapter Two: How Metaphor Shapes Public Opinion
/ Part : Analyses / Chapter Three: Proposition : Misrepresenting Immigrants
and Immigration / Chapter Four: Proposition : Competing Metaphors for
and / Chapter Five: Student as Means, Not End: Contemporary
American Discourse on Education / Chapter Six: American Discourse on and :
The ‘‘English for the Children’’ Referendum
/ Part : Conclusions / Chapter Seven: or : Metaphors
Constructing the Place of Latinos in the United States / Chapter Eight: Insurgent Metaphors: Contesting the
Conventional Representations of Latinos
/ Appendix: Tallies of Political Metaphors / Notes / References / Permissions Acknowledgments / Index
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C H A P T E R T H R E E
Proposition
Misrepresenting Immigrants and Immigration
The textbooks say the United States is a nation of immigrants. However, while schoolchildren are steeped in the pageantry of American history, they seldom learn to appreciate the depth of its reprehensible acts and persistent inequities. A case in point is the history of Mexican Americans. For most, it is news that in , when President James Polk initiated the U.S.-Mexican War, between , and , Mexicans were already living in the South- west,1 including my father’s family.
The virulent racism with which nineteenth-century white Americans elevated themselves above all other people also infected relations with Mexicans, leading to the view that the Southwest was rightfully granted to white America, and that its Mexican residents were a contemptible mon- grel breed.2 Today’s Americans generally are not cognizant that the U.S.– Mexican War ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which guar- anteed language, property, and citizenship rights to the Spanish-speaking residents of this territory.3 Moreover, from its establishment in and on through the twentieth century, the new border between Mexico and the United States was an arbitrary and largely vain restraint on the historic and prehistoric free movement of people north and south.4 Thus it is particu- larly painful to have witnessed the continuing mistreatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the twentieth century.
In spite of its overwhelmingly immigrant origin and its self-satisfied adu- lation of the immigrants’ contribution to its strength and wealth, the United States maintains a Janus-faced attitude of self-interest toward immigrants. When the country is in the growth part of the economic cycle, cheap labor is at a premium. During these times, U.S. commerce promotes the virtues of America and its ‘‘American Dream’’ of unbounded opportunity for the hard- est worker, no matter who and from what circumstances. When native-born
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Americans scorn essential labor, workers from other countries are recruited for the lowest-paid and least desirable work. The immigrants come in great numbers, do the work, dream the Dream, and honor their end of the bar- gain. For example, from to , with a population much less than million, the United States accepted million immigrants.5
However, as the economic cycle wanes, Janus’s second face is manifest toward immigrants and their children. Then the immigrant is regaled as a menace. Evidence for this attitude abounds in American history. For ex- ample, between and Congress set up a restrictive immigration quota system which disfavored immigrants from Eastern and Southern Eu- rope as well as Asia and Latin America.6 These attitudes have also turned punitive. Between and authorities mobilized the U.S. military to force the repatriation of , Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children,7 including my mother.
A post–World War II economic upswing in California did not waver for forty-five years. During that time immigrants were recruited by business and industry to power an unparalleled period of economic growth. Middle- class families also employed immigrants to do the gardening, to clean their homes, and to tend their children. With immigrant labor, the middle class achieved a higher standard of living than they otherwise could afford. Today it is rare for middle-class women in Los Angeles to do their own nails, or for suburban homeowners to cut their own lawns on Saturday morning.
However, with the end of the Cold War in , the expansion period of California’s military-based economy also came to a close. Over , jobs were lost between and , primarily in the defense sector. A ripple effect from the defense industry layoffs and cut-downs was felt throughout the economy. The economic recession led as well to reductions in state and local governmental incomes and created budgetary shortfalls.8
The demographic profile of California has also changed in the last de- cades, becoming decidedly less ‘‘Teutonic’’ 9 and more multiethnic. While there was a general increase of the proportion of foreign-born residents in the United States from percent in to percent in , these figures (the highest since ) belie a skewed distribution of immigrant residence. Sikhs, Mexicans, and Armenians are not settling in Idaho. Seventy-five per- cent of foreign-born residents settle in seven states, with California at the top of the list. Nearly percent of all documented immigrants settled in California during the decade of the s. And overall, California’s foreign- born population was about percent of the population in the s; in
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Los Angeles County it was percent. Los Angeles Unified School District officially listed more than seventy-five mother tongues spoken in its kinder- gartens. While a plethora of cultures is represented, percent of docu- mented immigration during the s was from Asia and Latin America. Adding to an already large population of Mexican-origin citizens, the con- tinued browning of California is inevitable. Latinos now make up over percent of the population of the state. They are projected to become a ma- jority by .10 In Los Angeles the tendency is more pronounced, since Latinos are projected to be the majority by . For Californians brought up with the unspoken belief that American society means a preeminently Anglo-American culture, these demographic changes have been unnerving.
The first nativist reaction to this sense of a changing social order in the s was Proposition . This initiative was overwhelmingly passed by the California electorate even though its provisions had been denounced throughout the campaign as unconstitutional. Indeed, it was enjoined by the courts within hours of its enactment. While the laws of the land already dic- tated sanctions against employers utilizing the labor of undocumented im- migrant workers, and the federal government provided for a policing body, the Border Patrol, to apprehend and deport such immigrants, Proposition was designed to supersede and radicalize federal law. It would have de- nied to undocumented immigrants a range of public benefits, including edu- cation and nonemergency health care. It would also have made school ad- ministrators, health care workers, social service personnel, police, and other state employees responsible for determining the residence status of any ‘‘ap- parently illegal alien’’ (to use the controversial phrasing of the referendum) among their clients and for notifying the Immigration and Naturalization Service of suspected undocumented immigrants for deportation.
This chapter presents the findings of an empirical analysis of the public dis- course metaphors in California during the Proposition period, as de- scribed in the previous chapter. Over one hundred Los Angeles Times articles were published on Proposition , as indexed by the commercial distribu- tor of a - version of the newspaper. All of these were included in this study. Two issues stood out for the voters and general public: immigra- tion, namely, the demographic process; and immigrants themselves. Conse- quently, the public discourse on these semantic domains was examined in terms of metaphor use, and will be presented as follows.
Misrepresenting Immigrants and Immigration /
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In Section , the metaphors for are described. One domi- nant metaphor will be discussed more fully than, and separately from, other less prevalent metaphors. Its ontology will be specified, namely, the seman- tic notions that are imposed on the concept by means of the dominant semantic source domain. In Section , the context for these im- migration metaphors will be presented. This pattern of metaphors, when used, invokes a narrative of the relationship of immigration to the nation. A rendition of the narrative will be presented.
The metaphorization of in public discourse is presented in Section , beginning with a discussion of the dominant metaphor, its on- tology, and associated narrative, followed by Section , which lays out the patterning of other metaphors for immigrants in public discourse. In order to provide further support for the study, in Section a formidable test is carried out to probe whether or not these metaphors are as demeaning and unique as the findings suggest. Section provides a comparison of the present findings to other studies of the representations of Latinos during the Proposition campaign, while Section discusses the wider implications of these metaphors.
Section : One of the two key notions debated during the campaigns for and against Proposition was the demographic process of the movement of people, . As a concept at the heart of the political contest, this notion was constantly being referred to in the public discourse of the period, and was frequently metaphorized. This metaphorization reveals the worldview that is promulgated in public discourse. In this section the metaphors that construct and reinforce commonly held views of immigration will be dis- played. Although there is overlap of the discourse on immigration and on immigrants, discussion of the people themselves will be undertaken in Section .
As will be noted in Table ., there are dominant, secondary, and occa- sional metaphors. These are three informal groupings of semantic source do- mains found in the data, combining all instances of closely related semantic domains under a single heading. The dominant metaphor class is composed of scores of textual instances of metaphor with a similar semantic source do- main that occur relatively frequently and appear in a great variety of forms. In the Los Angeles Times data sampled, the dominant metaphor comprises the greatest proportion of all instances of metaphors characterizing immi-
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TABLE �.�
Metaphors Published during the Proposition Campaign
SOURCE DOMAIN TYPE TOTALS PERCENTAGES
, e.g., floods, tide dominant ��� ��.�
, e.g., invasion, takeover secondary �� ��.�
, e.g., curbing illegal immigration �� �.�
, e.g., disease, burden � �.�
various metaphors, e.g., , , , ,
, etc. occasional �� �.�
TOTAL � � �
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times articles published June –December . The list accounts for immigration metaphors, i.e., the demographic process. It excludes metaphors that target immigrants as people.
gration. The demographic process of immigration to the United States is conceptualized in terms of dangerous moving water. Before launching into a full examination of the dominant public discourse metaphor for immigra- tion, , secondary metaphors and those which occur on occasion in our Proposition database will be presented.
Secondary Metaphors
For the moment, discussion of the dominant metaphor will be deferred. In- stances of secondary source domains appear much less frequently, and with less variety of expression, than the dominant metaphor used to character- ize immigration. One such metaphor for immigrants is . Still, these secondary metaphors appear with appreciable fre- quency. Over percent of metaphors have a martial source domain:
. Some believe that Wilson, by filing a lawsuit against the federal gov- ernment and arguing that illegal immigration is tantamount to a for- eign invasion, has made a whipping boy of migrants. (September , , A)
Misrepresenting Immigrants and Immigration /
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. ‘‘People are saying, ‘I don’t like this Third World takeover,’ ’’ said Guy Weddington McCreary, a North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce member favoring the initiative. ‘‘It is literally an invasion and very upset- ting.’’ (September , , B) . ‘‘invasion’’ of illegal immigrants is causing economic hardship and eroding lifestyles of U.S. citizens and authorized immigrants (October , , A) . Oft-voiced fears that California was under ‘‘invasion’’ spawned a loose network of community-based groups. (November , , A) . ‘‘I don’t want us to look like that country. If we continue this alien invasion, we will be like Mexico.’’ (October , , A) . ‘‘This is a state of siege in California,’’ says an observer from Wash- ington, immigration expert Demetrios Papademetriou of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (September , , A)
The features structuring the semantic domain of are a subset of the domain of . An invasion is an organized attack by armed forces with the objective of taking over a region or country. One paradigmatic in- vasion is the Japanese Empire’s invasion of China. This invasion in- cluded the infamous ‘‘Rape of Nanking,’’ the Chinese capital city, in which , civilians were raped, murdered, or butchered in one year. This was an offensive action to dominate a neighboring country. Another is the key counteroffensive of World War II, the D-Day invasion of France by the Allied forces under Eisenhower, which had as its objective the liberation of occupied France. These organized actions are rightly considered acts of war. The war metaphor used during the Proposition campaign stresses a vio- lent aggression against America. This metaphor patently ignores the nation’s entire immigration experience, which always has been the search for employ- ment and freedom by unarmed and peaceful individuals. The objective of immigrants is not conquest and spoils, but rather industry and enterprise, and the hope of a better life for their children. was the least obscure anti-immigrant metaphor in general use, because of its bold disregard of the evidence. Consequently, it was frequently printed in scare quotes and was explicitly rejected at least once in the Los Angeles Times database by the advocates for immigrants:
. ‘‘That is not an armed invasion coming across.’’ (September , , A)
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These metaphors demonstrate the level of anger focused on immigrants by a significant segment of the citizenry; however, much can be made of these blatant anti-immigrant metaphors. Without further discussion we will con- centrate on less overt, all the more insidious, metaphors.
Other secondary metaphors in general use indicate other metaphorically structured worldviews or commonplace understandings of immigration, in- cluding or :
. The report—which . . . linked illegal immigration to a host of society’s ills—has been branded by Latino and Asian leaders as insensitive and one- sided. (June , , B)11
. Not stopping or controlling the flow of illegal immigrants because it isn’t a magical solution to all of our societal ills is not a valid reason for allowing it to continue unchecked. (June , , B)
As is the case with all metaphors, some of the presuppositions of this meta- phor have been explicitly drawn out and others remain available for refer- ence.12 For example, the societal affliction, within the medical model, can be made well with societal remedies.
. Hernandez also suggested that Umberg’s motivation isn’t so much to cure illegal immigration as it is to make a name for himself. (August , , B)
This metaphor was also contested by the advocates for immigrants during the Proposition campaign:
. If illegal immigration was a disease, Prop. was the wrong medi- cine. (October , , A)
Occasional Metaphors
Occasional metaphors are expressed only once or a few times. They do not seem to be associated with other more commonly used semantic source do- mains. All the occasional metaphors in the Los Angeles Times database are single or rare instances of a source domain.
. The membership of the Sierra Club is in the midst of an emotional de- bate about whether to take a public stand on the hot button topic of the day. ‘‘It’s not as simple as clean air, or like pollution, where less is better,’’ said Executive Director Carl Pope. (September , , A)
Misrepresenting Immigrants and Immigration /
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. Another confirmation that immigration from Latin America powered the engine of change is that percent of North Hollywood households now speak Spanish, up from percent only years earlier. (June , , B) . And more than half the respondents said legal immigration, too, should be pared back. (September , , A) . Most who choose to ‘‘ride the snake,’’ however, are drawn by the same sirens of economic opportunity that attracted their Cantonese compa- triots to California’s ‘‘Gold Mountain’’ more than a century ago. (June , , Magazine p. ) . ‘‘[the task of the] Border Patrol is so great that the addition of even those officers puts them in the position of trying to fight a forest fire with a squirt gun,’’ [Governor Pete] Wilson said. (August , , A)
Some of these metaphors may be more difficult to grasp than others. In ex- cerpt the objective of Carl Pope is to move people’s views away from a simplistic view of immigration, whereas in excerpt immigration is the fuel for the engine of change.
Dominant Metaphor
While percent of all metaphors are individual characterizations which resist consolidation into a single semantic domain, the majority of textual instances of metaphors on immigration are based in only one semantic do- main. The major metaphor for the process of the movement of substantial numbers of human beings to the United States is characterized as - . Perhaps it should be restated that to char- acterize the movement of people as moving water might seem quite natural, but such a formulation of movement of people is not the only possible image that can be employed, as can be noted among the secondary and occasional metaphors. Moreover, strongly negative connotations associated with im- migration in particular had decidedly negative implications for the target population. A few instances are listed below:
. awash under a brown tide (October , , A) . Like waves on a beach, these human flows are literally remaking the face of America. (October , , A) . a sea of brown faces marching through Downtown would only an- tagonize many voters (October , , A) . In April, Gov. Pete Wilson sued the federal government to recover
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costs associated with illegal immigrants, claiming that they are sapping the state budget, taking jobs from legal residents and swamping hospital emergency rooms. (June , , A) . the human surge (July , , A) . the inexorable flow (September , , A)
The dangerous waters of immigration come in many forms, rough seas, treacherous tides, surges.13 The metaphors do not refer to any aspect of the humanity of the immigrants, except to allude to eth- nicity and race. In contrast to such nonhuman metaphors for immigrants, U.S. society is often referred to in human terms. This provides an ironic con- trast when these metaphors appear in tandem, as in excerpt , which likens the United States to a person who is defaced by an ocean of immigrants.
Within there are clear subcate- gories. The first is volume, which emphasizes the relative numbers of im- migrants. Individuals are lost in the mass sense of these volume terms. The negative connotation is highlighted in the excerpts that contain strong ad- jectives such as relentless and overwhelming.
. the foreigners who have flooded into the country (November , , World Report p. , col. ) . ‘‘I thought that it was a waste of time, frankly,’’ [California Governor] Wilson said of [U.S. Senator Robert] Byrd’s line of questioning. ‘‘What we ought to be doing is focusing on the fact that federal failure continues to provide this massive flow of illegal immigrants into my state and the other states.’’ (July , , A) . the relentless flow of immigrants (May , , A) . an overwhelming flood of asylum-seekers have put the country in an angry funk (October , , A)
Note that immigration waters are seen to be dangerous, as when coupling an exacerbating adjective to a neutral noun, as with inexorable flow. The sec- ond subcategory of is movement, which emphasizes the direction of waters, primarily northward as from Mexico to the United States. With regard to the destination of the migration, the nation is con- ceived as a basin or some kind of container and the migration taken to be an inward-flowing stream, in terms such as influx.
. Residents of the San Fernando Valley are increasingly outraged about illegal immigration—if not immigration generally—in the face of eco-
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nomic hard times, growing congestion, widespread crime and a dramatic influx of Latinos. (August , , A) . the tide and flow of illegal immigration (October , , A) . Glenn Spencer . . . says his interest in the subject was sparked about two years ago when he began noticing that an influx of minorities had flooded the city. He compiled research and launched a newsletter that he circulated among his neighbors. Ultimately, he formed Valley Citizens Together, but the group changed its name after residents from other parts of Los Angeles wanted to get involved. . . . When asked what motivates him, Spencer points to the photos of his two blond, blue-eyed grand- children on the mantel in his orderly living room. ‘‘What I’d like to achieve is a little better world for my grandchildren,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t want my grandchildren to live in chaos. Isn’t that enough?’’ (November , , A)14
. the flood of legal and illegal immigrants streaming into the coun- try (September , , A)
The terms used to characterize the immigration do not describe benefi- cial and enriching flows, but dramatic influxes and floods that endanger the country. The third subcategory is the control of dangerous waters. Here the intent to reduce the immigration of undocumented workers pursues a cor- respondence with the dangerous waters metaphor by describing means by which the waters can be held back, or stemmed, which means ‘‘to make head- way against an adverse tide.’’
. an attempt to stem illegal immigration (December , , B) . the opportunistic criminal element that exploits our porous borders (November , , A) . On the other hand, [Clinton] warned, if the government is unable to ‘‘show some more discipline’’ in its control of illegal immigration, ‘‘I’m afraid the genie out of the bottle will be passion to shut off legal immi- gration.’’ (August , , A) . [The] Executive Director of the Federation for American Immigra- tion Reform . . . said Clinton’s approach is akin to ‘‘trying to dam the Mississippi with toothpicks.’’ (September , , A)
Ontology of
The metaphor labeled is a tightly structured semantic relationship. It is a coupling and mapping of the seman-
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tic ontology of onto the domain of . It establishes semantic associations between the two meaning domains, taking the well-developed framework of everyday knowledge of floods and tides and imposing it on an entirely human activity. In schematic form, the map- ping, to wit the ontology of immigration to the United States as dangerous waters, is a four-point relationship as follows:
• Immigration corresponds to moving waters. • America is a landmass or other entity such as a house that is subject to
flooding. • Greater immigration corresponds to an increased threat to America. • America’s vulnerability to flooding corresponds to its susceptibility to
change.
Some of the pertinent everyday understandings of this source metaphor, moving water, will be explicitly elaborated in order to present the ele- ments of the source domain that are reinforced with each repetition of the metaphor. These semantic associations obscure or pass over some aspects of the target domain as they highlight others. In the absence of alterna- tive metaphoric imagery, such highlighted features of the source domain, , are taken as natural features of the target domain, .
Moving water is a fluid. Above all other characteristics, fluids are nor- mally understood and measured in terms of volume and mass, not units. They are most often named with mass nouns, such as water, milk, or beer.15 Greater amounts of a fluid are registered in terms of volume, not larger numbers of individuals. The everyday use of such noncount words reflects a motile energy. Water moves, and when placed under pressure cannot be compressed, but forces its way or is channeled in some direction. This dyna- mism implies kinetic and hydraulic power, and control of the movement of water also requires power. There are naturally occurring masses of water, geophysical bodies such as streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and oceans, as well as formations created by humans such as channels and reservoirs. With most naturally occurring and all human-made formations, human power and con- trol are involved. The control of water varies from total mastery, such as when people shut off a kitchen faucet, to partial control, as in a hydroelectric dam. Greater volume and movement of water imply greater need for safe- guards and controls, and more powerful human agency to control the water (which of course is not a human force). Insufficient human control of the
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kinetic energy pent up in volumes of water can lead to flooding and other ravages.
The main effect of invoking the semantic domain to characterize the domain is to transform aggregates of individuals into an undifferentiated mass quantity. Immigrants are not merely described in terms of a mass noun; they are transfigured. The demo- graphic process, immigration, is also vested with potential kinetic energy that is released in its movement, just as when water is commonly discussed. This misleading association is established by the metaphor. Further, salient features of the human immigration process are omitted with this metaphor. At its most simplistic yet still acceptable association, the potency of work- ers is in their labor, which is just one of a number of aspects of immigra- tion entirely passed over by the metaphor.
For investigators working within cognitive metaphor theory, metaphors have an ‘‘inherent logic.’’ 16 In the case of , three weighty presuppositions will be pointed out. These asso- ciations are inherited from , the semantic source domain, but are entirely inappropriate characterizations of the demographic process of im- migration. Since people conventionally talk about immigration using this metaphor, the presuppositions are often taken as given and overlooked. Since the power of metaphor increases with repetition of such implicit, but unnatural, associations, it is important to point them out. First, by way of the metaphor, aggregates of human beings are reduced to or remade into an undifferentiated quantity that is not human. Second, as this mass moves from one contained space to another, some sort of kinetic energy is released. The contained space re- ferred to is California, the United States, Los Angeles, or other polities. Re- call that political entities are not inherently a contained finite space. Third, such movements are inherently powerful, and if not controlled, they are dangerous.
In excerpts –, provided above, the vocabulary of dynamic bodies of water and their movement includes: tide, sea, flood, influx, flow, waves, drown- ing, dams, porous, stem, and shut off, to which we can add multiple instances of swell/ing, absorb, funnel, surge/ing, pour/ing, stream/ing, swamp, pool, and safety valve, among other water terms from the Los Angeles Times database.
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Implications of the Metaphor
The implications of this metaphor are extensive. Treating immigration as dangerous waters conceals the individuality of the immigrants’ lives and their humanity. In their place a frightening scenario of uncontrolled move- ments of water can be played out with devastating floods and inundating surges of brown faces.
The impending flood is taken to be washing away something basic to America. What the anti-immigration advocates initially claimed is that im- migrants were an economic threat to the United States and California. How- ever, no presuppositions or entailments built into the metaphor imply economics. Consequently the impact of the metaphor does not center on commonsense understandings of the U.S. economy. The threat constructed by is cultural.
To make this point it may be useful to compare the implied associations of the frequently invoked flood metaphor to other metaphors that have unmis- takable economic implications. Compare a metaphor that was often found in the database, immigration as a burden. Such metaphors clearly refer to the economic state as human body. If the threat felt by the public was principally a matter of economics, as is often taken to be the case by pundits, one would expect that the dominant metaphor in the public discourse on immigration would reinforce a fiscal message. Yet nearly percent of the metaphors in the public discourse on immigration were , while less than percent were metaphors. By this measure, although the – recession was the catalyst that initiated the xenophobic animus of the decade, the public discourse metaphors of the time did not have a fiscal focus.
Again, immigrants supply the cheap labor to maintain personal living standards that were higher than otherwise attainable for the average Cali- fornian, while at the same time sustaining labor-intensive industries, such as garment manufacturing and certain agribusiness concerns, in an increas- ingly postindustrial state economy. Moreover, there were counterindica- tions to Governor Wilson’s warnings. He repeatedly stated during his re- election campaign that California faced economic disaster, based primarily on billion in purported costs incurred yearly by the state due to immigra- tion. As mentioned in the opening chapter, Wilson’s claims proved grossly overstated. Five years later, Wilson supervised the largest budgetary surplus
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in California history, over . billion.17 Neither the deficit nor the surplus was due in large part to immigrant labor.
Instead of budgetary issues, the principal signal that expresses is cultural alarm. The fear is that the rising brown tide will wash away Anglo-American cultural dominance. The panic expressed in metaphors reflecting the perceived threat to Anglo- American hegemony is also articulated by the overtly anti-immigrant - metaphor. Together, and account for over percent of all metaphors expressed in pub- lic discourse on immigration. Hence the relative absence of anomaly in the ready references to the American ‘‘complexion,’’ as in excerpt , these human flows are remaking the face of America, and to the Californian economic body in excerpt , below:
. Councilwoman Joyce C. Nicholson said illegal immigration is a seri- ous problem and ‘‘the state of California is drowning in it.’’ (Septem- ber , , B)
In this excerpt, while the explicit complaint is economic, the metaphor invokes the state as a person drowning in a body of water representing immi- gration. During the anti-immigrant period, it was considered above-board to critique immigration on economic terms. However, the most frequent metaphors appearing in public discourse did not refer to fiscal arguments. As seen in this excerpt, there is more implied than a metaphorical refer- ence to state finances. Thus in this excerpt the Los Angeles councilwoman openly called for economic relief, while metaphorically warning her con- stituency about the cultural threat that immigration seemingly posed. It was common to talk explicitly about the economy, all the while invoking the ostensible danger to Anglo-American cultural hegemony by the use of the metaphor.18
Since only a trickle of water can be enough to signal an impending flood, warnings about rising brown tides are apt metaphors to inspire fear. All other considerations aside, the hardworking, family-oriented immigrant who be- lieves in the American Dream was concealed with the metaphor. This allowed California voters to remain comfortable in their daily interactions with the individual immigrant worker, part of an im- portant workforce in the economy, while feeling justified in supporting the referendum and voting to end the only-apparent menace to the social order.
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Narrative of
A narrative of the dominant metaphor can also be constructed in which its principal presuppositions and social context are made explicit.19 This meta- phor narrative of immigration to the United States is based on the preced- ing ontological mapping, which, in cognitive semantic terms, established associations between the semantic domains of and , as well as with the metaphor we will discuss presently.
A flood of immigrants is flowing into the land or house of America. In con- trolled quantities, America can either channel and absorb the influx un- changed. Because of the enormous volume of these floodwaters, America will be inundated with a sea of people unlike Anglo-Americans. Anglo-America will be engulfed and dispossessed.
The narrative of immigration to the United States is invoked, and its ideo- logical content reinforced, with each repetition of the metaphor. This con- stitutes the pattern of social inference on—that is to say, the prevalent way to think about—immigration.
Metaphors do not make sense in isolation. This is the case for poetic meta- phor.20 This is also the case with conventional metaphors that give structure to and reinforce the generally held worldview of U.S. society. These immi- gration metaphors are comprehensible, as are all metaphors, because they are woven layer upon layer in webs of semantic associations, starting with foundational metaphors that give structure to higher-level ones.21 This web of associations and presuppositions constitutes the basis for a semantically congruent understanding of the world.
Truly original metaphors, such as or , fail to make sense because few if any conventional se- mantic associations can be pressed into service to edify the target domain, . Moreover, since these novel metaphors are not woven into the total web of customary metaphoric associations, the link between the source and target semantic domains seems abnormal. The technical seman- tic term is anomalous. Its etymological meaning, ‘‘abnormal,’’ highlights the contingent (non-natural) and conventionalized (learned and reinforced to the point of being naturalized) character of everyday semantic mappings.
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Thus the , , and metaphors, in order to be comprehensible in public dis- course on immigration, must be associated with some compatible metaphor for the nation. We turn now to one of these metaphors, , one of the two most productive metaphors for the United States, in order to demonstrate its arbitrary and contingent, non-natural associations. is also used to refer to other political entities, such as the state of California. It is invoked in many of the preceding excerpts that have been provided. A few more of these include:
. With recent immigration reforms proposed by President Clinton, the governor and other political leaders, the issue has moved to the nation’s front burner and it looms as an explosive topic for debate in the elections. (August , , A) . The fantasy of Proposition supporters seems to be that once Cali- fornia is cleansed of its illegal menace, welfare recipients can be coerced into the fields. (October , , A) . ‘‘I understand the principles that our country was built on, but our house is pretty raggedy and we need to take care of our own first.’’ (Au- gust , , A)
A full characterization of the semantic topology of the metaphor will be provided in Chapter . In brief, the metaphor was used or invoked with regularity in the Proposition campaign with respect to the threats posed by - . Many linguistic expressions characterize immigrants in terms of chaos, destruction, and other perils to the .
. ‘‘That’s like saying, ‘I’ve got this great house, but it’s on fire, it’s built on a fault and the bank is moving in to repossess it.’ ’’ (June , , A) . a growing body of evidence that Canada, long a haven for the world’s oppressed, is banking its lamp unto the nations. (June , , A) . When U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno toured Nogales this month to an- nounce a percent increase of Border Patrol forces in Arizona—she de- scribed the state as the ‘‘side door’’ to California. (January , , A) . ‘‘[Wilson] cut a hole in the fence to allow millions of illegal immi-
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grants in, and now he wants to patch that hole because that’s what the polls tell him to do.’’ (September , , A) . ‘‘What are you going to do to close our borders tight to illegal aliens and drug-runners?’’ (June , , J) . ‘‘Put up a Berlin Wall!’’ cried Vines, an African-American who denies that racism has anything to do with his get-tough stand. He says that any fool can see it: Immigration is bringing this country down. (August , , A) . ‘‘Lots of folks say we have to shut the door now. Others disagree pretty strongly. . . . And so maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to shut the door.’’ (October , , E)
The frequency and diversity of (metaphoric) threats to the , as indicated in Table ., demonstrate that this immigration meta- phor was customarily used to impugn the motivation and character of im- migrants to the United States.
As will be fully discussed in Chapter , the metaphor came into prominent use in the late fifteenth century and was apt to char- acterize the emerging European nationhood at a time when the majority of the population did not travel and long-distance communication was depen- dent on animal transportation. The use of a fixed dwelling place as a meta- phoric source for the American political entity is increasingly challenged by the early-twenty-first-century system of rapid global transportation, instant worldwide televisual communication, broadening cross-national regional integration, and an increasingly globalized economy.
However, the inadequacy of as a metaphor for the United States did not distract from or diminish the impact of the rampant use of the metaphor during the Proposition period. divests immigrant workers and their families of their humanity, to become at best a natural resource to be controlled and exploited, and at worst to be feared for the potential dam- age that floods and rising seas of brown faces can visit on the nation. Geologi- cal metaphors invoke certain unwarranted associations about movements of human beings. In the context of a political campaign, the dehumanizing pre- supposition of the metaphor was fully exploited, transfiguring people into fear-inspiring floods and dangerous tides.
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Section : We turn now from metaphors about demographics to the metaphors about the immigrants themselves. An empirical study of metaphor use in the pub- lic discourse on immigrants will furnish a principled analysis of how immi- grants, as a group, were conceptualized in the United States of the s. In the public discourse presented in the Los Angeles Times, immigrants were characterized with decided aversion. This antipathy was articulated meta- phorically in several different ways, as illustrated below:
. For some, the reaction of Valley residents is a natural outgrowth of onerous burdens—including budget-busting social service, educa- tion and criminal-justice costs—thrust upon Southern California by the nation’s porous immigration laws. (August , , A) . An Orange County Grand Jury called for a nationwide, three-year moratorium on all immigration to the United States in an attempt to ease the drain on government programs. (June , , B) . The problem [of immigrant clients] is significant, because it has placed added strain on the state’s public hospitals and has cost programs such as Medi-Cal many millions of dollars. (September , , A) . ‘‘We now have a runaway situation of undocumented aliens coming into this country. We have to stop it. . . .’’ (June , , J)
As mentioned above, one often-commented-upon aspect of the political debate centered on the fiscal costs associated with an apparent increase of immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, in Southern Califor- nia. The cause of anger and outrage, Proposition supporters repeatedly claimed, was the economic expense incurred by American society due to un- documented immigrants. Excessive fiscal costs with minimal returns were cited by California’s governor as an abuse borne by the California taxpayer. When the governor’s claims were countered with alternative economic ana- lyses, however, the public debate did not focus on the comparative validity of the contending reports.22 Had the public discussion emphasized economic analysis, then one could argue that economics was the basis for the out- rage. In terms of metaphors, there was some focusing of the political de- bate over immigration costs, as expressed in excerpts –. But as discussed above, in terms of the metaphoric record, California’s economic condition was a lesser consideration. The principal characterization of immigrants in public discourse, as a group of people or as individuals, does not primarily
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TABLE �.�
Metaphors Published during the Proposition Campaign
SOURCE DOMAIN TYPE TOTALS PERCENTAGES
, e.g., hunted dominant � ��.�
, e.g., invader, soldier secondary �� � .�
, e.g., wave, tsunami �� ��.�
, e.g., marauder, felon �� �.�
, e.g., burden, parasite �� �.�
, e.g., resource, traffic � �.�
, e.g., illegal alien �.�
, e.g., tonk, menace � �.�
� �.�
, e.g., angel � �.�
e.g., instrument, runner occasional � �.� TOTAL �� �
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times articles published June –December . The table accounts for the metaphors for immigrants, as people, and excludes tropes metaphorizing immigration, the demographic process. NB: Tonk ‘‘immigrant,’’ an slang term, mimics the sound of an aluminum baton striking.
focus on their net contribution or cost to California and the country (see Table .).
Dominant Metaphor
The dominant immigrant metaphor used in the Los Angeles Times was - . Immigrants were seen to be animals to be lured, pitted, or baited, whether the instance was intended to promote a pro-immigrant or an anti-immigrant point of view:
. [Governor] Wilson said he believed public benefits are a lure to im- migrants and his intent was to discourage illegal immigration by denying them access to health care, education and welfare programs. (August , , A) . ‘‘We’re not going to play into those games of pitting workers against each other.’’ (November , , D) . Once the electorate’s appetite has been whet with the red meat of
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deportation as a viable policy option, the slope toward more aggres- sive ways of implementing that policy is likely to get slippery. (June , , M)
Immigrants were seen as animals that can be attacked, and hunted:
. Beaten-down agents, given only enough resources to catch a third of their quarry, sense the objective in this campaign is something less than total victory. (July , , A) . the I- [freeway], where the agents now must quit the chase (July , , A)
Immigrants were seen as animals to be eaten, by U.S. industry, by the Im- migration and Naturalization Service or its Border Patrol agents, and by the anti-immigrant Proposition supporters:
. The truth is, employers hungering for really cheap labor hunt out the foreign workers. (June , , D) . ‘‘ backers devour the weak and helpless’’ (September , , B)
This can also be noted in excerpt . At times immigrants were considered, as in the following case, rabbits:
. The rapid increase comes at a time when many state and federal offi- cials are calling for beefed-up border patrols to ferret out illegal immi- grants. (November , , A)
As it happens, ferrets prey on rabbits and other small animals. More often, immigrants were characterized as pack animals:
. the specter . . . has spurred an exodus (August , , A) . Those who want to sharply curb illegal immigration include conser- vatives, liberals and most unions. [curb ‘a mouthpiece used to control animals’] (June , , D)
The connotations of should be abundantly clear. In Western European culture a purported natural hierarchy has been articu- lated since the time of Thomas Aquinas to justify social inequity. In its full extension, it subordinates other living creatures to human beings, and ranks the inherent quality of humans from base to noble. In its elaborated form, it has been called the ‘‘Great Chain of Being.’’ 23 Lakoff and Turner provided an
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extended discussion of the pervasiveness of the Great Chain of Being meta- phor in Western European thinking.24 This ‘‘moral ordering’’ 25 has justified the social inequality in Europe for two millennia and deprecated people of color in the United States for centuries. Stephen Jay Gould quotes Gunnar Myrdal on Americans’ complacent use of biological determinism to main- tain social advantage over people of color:
‘‘Under their long hegemony, there has been a tendency to assume bio- logical causation without question, and to accept social explanations only under the duress of a siege of irresistible evidence.’’ . . . Or as Con- dorcet said more succinctly a long time ago: they ‘‘make nature herself an accomplice in the crime of political inequity.’’ 26
More recently Gould has stated that the notion of ‘‘progress’’ in evolution, human or otherwise, is incongruous. Gould does not equivocate:
There is no progress in evolution. The fact of evolutionary change through time doesn’t represent progress as we know it. Progress is not inevitable. Much of evolution is downward in terms of morpho- logical complexity, rather than upward. We’re not marching toward some greater thing. The actual history of life is awfully damn curious in the light of our usual expectation that there’s some predictable drive toward a generally increasing complexity in time. If that’s so, life cer- tainly took its time about it: five-sixths of the history of life is the story of single-celled creatures only. I would like to propose that the modal complexity of life has never changed and it never will, that right from the beginning of life’s history it has been what it is; and that our view of complexity is shaped by our warped decision to focus on only one small aspect of life’s history.27
Progress has bankrupted its scientific credentials, according to Gould. In good faith, it cannot be used to hierarchize living things, much less to de- mean people via social determinism. Gould’s repudiation will undoubtedly surprise many readers. As an evolutionary biologist, he represents a strong current of contemporary thinking about evolution. Still, this view flies in the face of the commonplace understanding of human evolution, in spite of the increasing number of popular accounts that dispute it.28
Ontology of
Again, a metaphor is a tightly structured conceptual correspondence map- ping the structure of the semantic source domain, , onto a very dif-
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ferent target domain, . The formal ontological mapping of the metaphor labeled follows:
• Immigrants correspond to citizens as animals correspond to humans.
The correspondence allows speakers to use the same frame of reference to reason about immigrants that is commonly employed to reason about ani- mals. In this manner speakers and listeners inadvertently apply to immi- grants their knowledge base of what animals are. The power of such meta- phoric mappings is robust and productive, since the mapping is conceptual and is not limited to a finite set of linguistic phrases. Many metaphoric map- pings are more or less conventional and unchanging.29 As a political meta- phor which is debated and negotiated, this mapping is a less fixed part of our conceptual system.30 However, as frequently and as exclusively as the mapping is used in daily discourse, the dominant metaphor per- sists as the major productive way to conceptualize immigrants. Its effects are profound.
It is not hard to document contemporary examples of white racism di- rected at Latinos premised on the tenets of biological evolutionary progress, particularly by people in positions of power. The remarks of a California senator will illustrate. While presiding over a meeting of the Special Committee on U.S./Mexico Border Issues, W. A. Craven disputed the right to public education of children of undocumented immigrants, even after these children provide proof of residency. On the official record he stated: ‘‘It seems rather strange that we go out of our way to take care of the rights of these individuals who are perhaps on the lower scale of our humanity.’’ Of- fended, Latino professors and staff at California State University San Marcos wrote letters insisting on a retraction, or at least a clarification, of the sena- tor’s comments. None was forthcoming. Instead, the local media excoriated the Latino faculty, while ranking administrators assumed their bene- factor’s patronymic by publicly defending the senator. That same year the administration building at was fittingly named Craven Hall.31
The ontology of evolutionary progress presupposes an inherent preemi- nence of one species over another and a superiority of one group over others. The Darwinian imperative of survival of the fittest within the human species has long been viewed as self-evident. This stance recapitulated the social re- lations of the Great Chain of Being. In the nineteenth century a biological decree replaced the divine apology for injustice. Not surprisingly, many of the same prerogatives of the superior were maintained, such as institutional
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advantages in juridical, educational, financial, and political spheres. And the same vanities persisted, namely, the presumptions of greater strength, beauty, intelligence, sophistication, and benevolence.With the decline in the twentieth century of racism’s biological justification, the immigrant’s pur- ported cultural deficits and an associated ideology of Anglo-American cul- tural superiority became the basis for continuing racism.32 As a premise for bias, Anglo-American cultural nationalism permits prejudice against indi- viduals who, by all human standards, have merit equal to the citizen. Only by the arbitrary ascription of birthplace, the immigrant is deemed less than the citizen.
When characterized as animals, immigrants are portrayed as less than human, which sets up unmistakable divisions of expectations. Actions that are natural for both humans and animals are lexically distinguished:
. This woman said she was upset about something else: why the off- spring of women who ‘‘come across the border and drop their babies’’ are granted American citizenship. (June , , J)
Thus in excerpt the different verbs give birth and drop distinguish identi- cal human and nonhuman actions. Note the terms found in the Los Angeles Times texts used to characterize the immigrant, such as hungered over, preyed upon, hunted out, targeted, herded, devoured; a menace, animal, dog, rat, rabbit, coyote, and, of course, scapegoat.
Further, other irrevocable divisions ensue. Civil rights and human rights only pertain to humans. The value of life is highest for humans. Slavery has been outlawed for humans but still is permitted for animals, although it is not called slavery. Note that animals are owned, and the same terminology is used for animals as was used for slaves. Animals are said to be wild by nature. At times animals can be domesticated, but due to the biological hier- archy based on progress, they can never be human. When animals are wild, which is to say, uncontrolled by humans, they may be appropriately feared by humans, and are justifiable targets for human hunters. Certain animals become valuable to humans only when domesticated, either as beasts of bur- den or as sources of food for humans.
The inherent logic of the metaphor thus in- cludes a biological, or at least birthplace-based, hierarchy, on which pur- ported inborn inferiority is based. On the biological hierarchy, an unequal value set is based, with higher forms being more valued and granted by fiat greater rights and privileges than lower orders of life. Superiors, again natu-
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rally, rule over their inferiors, as in the biblical edict in Genesis that human- kind has dominion over the animals and the rest of the Earth, and will rule over them. One critical presupposition of the dichotomy assigns moral, ethi- cal, and judicial considerations to and for humans; these considerations are not invoked to constrain human actions over the less-than-human.
The discourse principle that governs commonly used patterns of infer- ence is metaphor, as a part of the conceptual system shared in large part by speakers of the English language and encoded in part in the ways Ameri- cans use the English language. Metaphor permits a shared understanding of the semantic domain of immigrants in terms of the semantic domain of ani- mals. Following Lakoff ’s formula, these patterns of inferences are presented in terms of the following narrative of the immigrant versus the citizen:33
On the hierarchy of living things, immigrants are animals. Citizens, in con- trast, are humans. This hierarchy of life subordinates immigrants to citi- zens. Human beings are vested with birthright privileges, such as ‘‘human rights’’ and ‘‘dignity.’’ Animals have no such privileges and are not equal to humans in the estimation of social institutions. Animals can never be- come humans by legislation or fiat. Their inferiority is inherent. Humans have full control over animals, from ownership to use as a food source. Ani- mals are either domesticated, that is to say, owned by humans, or are wild and consequently are outside of the dominion of human society, and can be hunted.
The Los Angeles Times documents many statements that demonstrate that immigrants were aware of the widespread racist attitude and behavior that they encounter in the United States. Two will be repeated. In the first ex- cerpt, a Guatemalan mother of three expressed shock that state and federal legislators, one of whom will be quoted below, denied assistance to undocu- mented immigrants following a major California earthquake:
. Illegal and legal immigrants ‘‘are both human beings . . . regardless of what papers they carry. . . . We all felt the earthquake the same,’’ added Dora Ramirez, a tent city resident who said she is undocumented. (Feb- ruary , , A)
The second is the description of treatment that a Los Angeles soccer fan said police officers meted out at a Rose Bowl game, including beating him, dragging him down stairs, uttering racist slurs, and knocking him out:
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. ‘‘Like an animal was the way I was treated,’’ Aguilar said. ‘‘It was racist.’’ (May , , B)
The public discourse about immigrants, then, is not an incidental correla- tion of words, but a lived reality for immigrants and Latinos in this society. Still, for many the metaphor may be a sobering finding. Its implications will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. In the following section the other metaphoric mappings will be described, although not in the detail of the metaphor. This will be followed by a section in which a counter- argument to the force of this major finding is tested. A set of alternative framings of the public discourse on Proposition will be considered in the penultimate section of the chapter. After these considerations, commentary on the implications can be made.
Section : Secondary Metaphors The metaphor labeled is not the only mapping used in the Los Angeles Times. Below are a few nonanimal metaphors for immigrants. A widely varied mapping, which is tentatively labeled - , includes all classes of people who do not merit respect:
. ‘‘I recently had some tourists say that the problem with today’s im- migrants is that they’re so bizarre and unpredictable,’’ says O’Donnell. (October , , E) . A middle-aged woman tells of the ‘‘marauders’’ who take over the streets at night. (September , , A)
Another metaphor that is used is :
. take children [of immigrants] and their dream hostage in a crude scheme to uproot their parents (September , , B) . And while percent said they believed the new crop of immi- grants have inferior job skills and education than did their predecessors (September , , A) . spring up among us a generation of ignorant and troubled children who, lacking our common language and political and social ideals, will evolve into a huge, parallel underclass (August , , A) . ‘‘We see it as our responsibility to weed out illegal aliens.’’ (May , , A)
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In excerpt the term crop associates immigrants not with productivity and wealth but with inferior attributes. These and other secondary mappings de- grade the immigrant.
Section : Testing It could be argued that animal metaphors are used to discuss all kinds of people in many situations in daily discourse: ‘‘You dog!,’’ ‘‘I smell a rat,’’ ‘‘Don’t be so catty,’’ and so forth. Accordingly, the argument of the skeptic would be that animal metaphors are not used to any greater degree to char- acterize immigrants than, for example, businesspeople or sports figures. Cer- tainly, following the skeptic’s line of thinking, businesspeople are often char- acterized in negative and unflattering terms. ‘‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world’’ is a hackneyed portrayal of the business milieu. Likewise, sports figures are no longer revered as they might have been in a nostalgic past. They are now por- trayed as selfish and at times brutish athletes. If the use of animal metaphors to characterize businesspeople and sports figures is similar to the patterns used to characterize immigrants, so the skeptic’s argument goes, then the abnegation of immigrants with animal metaphors is not special and should not be overemphasized.34
In order to test the skeptic’s hypothesis, all the metaphors that charac- terized sports figures in a month of the Los Angeles Times sports section were catalogued.35 An equivalent amount of text was catalogued, in terms of word count, in the business section of the Los Angeles Times from the same period. The discourse about these kinds of people was selected since U.S. newspapers commonly have separate sections devoted to sports and busi- ness, which permits straightforward comparison. The skeptic would predict that the animal metaphor is commonly used for sports figures and busi- nesspeople. Consequently the skeptic would state that the mapping is only part of a broader target domain, and does not single out immigrants.
The writing in sports is much more playful, with more creative use of description than the writing on immigration. Remarkably, no metaphors about sports figures in this sample have animal source domains:
. ‘‘Heather is our defensive catalyst and Katie is our offensive catalyst.’’ (November , , C) . Tyson gets his tune-up (November , , C)
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. Holmes has been a godsend (November , , C) . Franson is a blue-collar big man (November , , C)
As for the business section, there is a great deal more written on a typical day on business topics than on sports in the Los Angeles Times.36 In contrast to metaphor use on immigration and immigrant topics, a relatively limited use of metaphor in the business section was noted. Newspaper descriptions of businesspeople tend to follow a formula. They usually are limited to a title, or a title with a limiting clause:
. Blue Cross Chairman Leonard Schaeffer (November , , D) . Analyst Harold Vogel with Cowen & Co. (November , , D) . Barry Diller, the Home Shopping Network chairman who is trying to build a TV network from scratch (November , , D)
Most of the metaphors about businesspeople did not have an animal source domain:
. cost-cutter Sanford I. Weill (November , , D)
However, in the data sample, two metaphors about businesspeople appeared that had animal source domains:
. ‘‘The market is going crazy, the foreigners are the ones that appear most bullish,’’ a trader said. (November , , D) . ‘‘I’m looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug,’’ Turner said. (November , , D)
In the latter excerpts, there are special circumstances to note. Both instances are direct quotes taken from individuals, rather than the business writer’s text. In the lead sentence of the article, as written by the newswriter, a sec- ond instance of the bug metaphor is rephrased to direct the metaphor away from the businessperson, and toward the business enterprise.
. Ted Turner said Wednesday he will squash ‘‘like a bug’’ an all-news TV network media magnate Rupert Murdoch hopes to launch to compete with Turner’s -hour Cable News Network. (November , , D)
Thus the quote in excerpt which attributes the animal metaphor to a busi- nessperson was clearly reapportioned in excerpt , the lead sentence of the Times article, namely, the part of the story that would most likely be read.
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From this limited sample it might be concluded that businesspeople use ani- mal metaphors in reference to colleagues and competitors. At the same time it would indicate that Los Angeles Times business writers may deemphasize ruder business discourse, presumably to uphold the dignity of commerce.
Business-news writers tend not to use metaphor to characterize business- people, but contrastingly, they often cast nonhuman elements of the busi- ness world in anthropomorphic metaphors:
. ‘‘This market is like an old soldier that just doesn’t give up.’’ (Novem- ber , , D) . Stocks sprinted higher Wednesday. . . . Broad market indexes broke records as well. (November , , D) . Bank mergers are vulnerable to protests filed under the . . . Act. (November , , D)
Note crazy in excerpt as well. Since only two expressions of animal metaphor appeared in a substantial sample of articles on businesspeople, the skeptic’s hypothesis was not confirmed. However, the idea was further explored.
A second sampling of articles was gathered on two individuals of particu- lar notoriety in sports and business. The distribution of animal metaphors in these newspaper sections was tallied. Again the skeptic would predict that animal metaphors are used to characterize businesspeople and sports figures no more or less than they are used to characterize immigrants. Note, how- ever, that the skeptic’s original claim had to be significantly weakened. The skeptic’s second hypothesis is much less sweeping. Now notoriety, rather than normalcy, marks the individuals whose metaphors will be studied. In the second test, Mike Tyson was selected as a boxer who has been as praised for ferocity in the ring as he has been rebuked for his criminality outside of the ring. A financier, Charles Keating, was chosen to represent unscru- pulous businesspeople. Keating was convicted in of bilking small in- vestors out of millions of dollars through his institution, Lincoln Savings and Loan. As an infamous white-collar criminal, Keating is much more likely to be characterized with animal metaphors than the average busi- nessperson. A number of articles on each person were drawn from the Los Angeles Times archives using the computerized topic selection function to select a set of articles that would provide approximately similar numbers of words.37
Animal metaphors were indeed used for Tyson. However, the boxer is
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portrayed as a particular kind of animal. In this sample he was characterized as a predatory carnivore, as illustrated by:
. ‘‘. . . into the lion’s den and take the meat out of the lion’s mouth’’ (July , , C) . a man who keeps the tiger at bay with a long, strong left jab (July , , C)
This sports figure is metaphorically characterized as an animal at the top of the proverbial food chain. These ‘‘noble’’ animals are used as emblems for nations. The lion and tiger, for example, respectively symbolize Great Brit- ain and India. The sports writers sampled in always wrote respectfully about Tyson. His sports prowess was never deprecated, and for these skills he was respected. It was expected that Tyson would be denigrated with ani- mal metaphors, because of his profession, criminality, antipathies, and race. This expectation was not met. Nevertheless, it should not be concluded that the animal metaphors used to describe Tyson are similar to those used to describe the immigrants, since the animals linked to immigrants are not sym- bolically noble creatures, but beasts of burden or ‘‘lower’’ creatures.
The foregoing metaphor analysis was made using news reports published prior to Tyson’s fight with Evander Holyfield. In that fight Tyson was disqualified for repeatedly biting Holyfield’s ear, which was followed by a spate of sports commentaries which capitalized on T metaphors.
As for the other ill-famed news figure, the case of the felonious business- man is unequivocal. In the sample of news reports catalogued, Keating was never characterized as an animal:
. Midas-touch businessman (April , , D) . the villain, the man in the black hat (April , , D)
No animal metaphors were used in reference to Keating. The metaphors used by the newswriters tend to focus on his successes, rather than his fail- ings. His political and legal enemies, not the Times business writers, call him a crook and a scam artist. Contrary to the representation of immigrants in the same newspaper, there is no denigration of the man as a human being in the texts sampled.
It should be noted that these Times texts were published before , when a judge overthrew Keating’s conviction. ‘‘That means Keating is no longer a criminal in the eyes of the law—but he is a deadbeat. He still faces
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roughly . billion in civil judgments against him stemming from Lincoln’s collapse. All his identifiable property, including his home, was long ago auc- tioned off by the government.’’ 38
Although the samples of articles on Tyson and Keating are limited, these infamous individuals are not characterized in metaphors as inferiors. In the larger samples of articles on sports figures no animal metaphors were located. For businesspeople, two animal metaphors were found. Both of these excerpts were direct quotes attributable to businesspeople, rather than text written by the Times writers. These results provide evidence that ani- mal metaphors are not commonly used in newsprint to describe these types of citizens, as the skeptic predicted, although there was some reason to ex- pect such characterizations. Consequently there is stronger support for the original finding, lamentably, that the domain is uniquely associated with immigrants. Animal metaphors are not generally used in the Los Angeles Times to characterize other types of people, even infamous individuals.
Section : Other Analyses of Immigrant Representations during the Proposition Campaign
Analysts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds have proposed alternative accounts of what amounts to the metaphoric framing of the political events surrounding Proposition . From the present theoretical position, which emphasizes the metaphoric understanding of social events, a comparison of their views is warranted. Hugh Mehan argues that the proponents of Propo- sition utilized an discourse strategy.39 By dis- course strategy,40 Mehan refers to generally unconscious linguistic means to frame a particular view of the world. The discourse strategy framework is generally consistent with the framework used in this book. Mehan uses the metaphor as the cover term for the anti-immigrant discourse strategy which includes the use of deixis to split American society into the in-group, us, and the Other.41 The term deixis refers to the use of words such as that, this, them, those, here, and there, among others, for purposes of ‘‘pointing out’’ things in the world. As illustrated below, deixis reinforces the differences that are entailed in the dominant metaphor , i.e., the immigrant is an animal and hence not like us:42
. ‘‘They create problems for jobs. . . . If they can go to school and get health care we’re allowing them to be here. . . . We can’t even take care
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of our own and we’re letting more in. They should be taking care of themselves and not draining our pocketbooks.’’ (August , , A) . ‘‘There are so many more of them, so many more of them in our schools. Their parents won’t speak our language, and they don’t seem to try to improve their lifestyles. There are exceptions, but most of them don’t.’’ (June , , B)
A second part of the discourse strategy first discerned by Mehan is the dif- ference in the rhetorical style of the proponents of Proposition , who use compelling anecdotes rather than scientific discourse to articulate their economic arguments to the electorate. Reliance on anecdotes is associated with what Mehan considers a third part of the discourse strategy, the studied disregard of traditional authorities who were opposed to Proposition , including several prominent right-wing politicians, a conservative former U.S. cabinet member, the president of the country, an ecumenical set of clergy, and divers public health, law enforcement, and educational officials. According to Mehan, the fourth element of their discourse strategy was a penurious appeal to self-interest, rather than to the greater public good and human rights. The listed discourse strategy features were all noted in abun- dance in this independent study of the public discourse of the time period. Mehan’s cover term is, of course, copiously instantiated in the metaphor. In the present work, a good deal of confirmation of Mehan’s analysis was located, as noted in Table ..
Mehan notes three other studies of Proposition that are complemen- tary to his own. Carola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco state that Proposition is a ‘‘catharsis . . . that does not necessarily cure the underlying pathol- ogy.’’ The pathogen in their analysis is not the immigrant, but the California public’s anxiety that has arisen with a seemingly unending series of natural disasters, rage at the videotaped police brutality committed against African American Rodney King, as well as the so-called Los Angeles riots that fol- lowed the verdict acquitting the police of wrongdoing. This public uneasi- ness has been channeled into the re-creation of the Other, the immigrant, to ‘‘contain overwhelming anxieties and focus their rage,’’ in particular in the void left by the collapsed ‘‘Evil Empire’’ of the communist Soviet Union.43
Mehan does not accept the psychocultural analysis of Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, which for him ignores ‘‘the elite’s use, indeed cynical ma- nipulation, of the immigrant-as-enemy construct in public discourse.’’ 44 In spite of Mehan’s critique, one can also readily locate reflections of the Suárez-
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Orozco analysis in the public discourse sampled in the Los Angeles Times. Indeed the and are quite salient metaphors, as noted in Table ..
The third commentator, Kitty Calavita, asks why the present period is ‘‘focused almost single-mindedly on , a focus that is unusual, if not unique, in the history of U.S. nativism.’’ 45 Cala- vita’s answer focuses on economics, and her analysis is framed in terms of ideology:
With the [federal] deficit seemingly out of control, increased economic uncertainty for all but the most affluent, and the safety net shrinking, frustrated and anxious voters are predisposed to place the blame on ex- cessive government spending and the poor, who are seen as the major cause of such spending. Immigrants are one among several targets con- sistent with this balanced-budget ideology and the scapegoating of the marginalized ‘‘other’’ that it spawns. . . . Those who are not even citi- zens—indeed, are not legal residents—are the ideal target of blame, more undeserving even than the traditional ‘‘undeserving poor.’’ 46
She cites ‘‘balanced-budget conservatism’’ as the framework of political values underlying California’s Proposition . This is Plotkin and Scheure- man’s term for the general ideological response displayed in U.S. politics to the ongoing crisis of Fordism (reduced industrial profitability of U.S. capi- talism since the Seventies). At a time when wages have been cut so much that million full-time workers earn less than the official poverty level, when nonpermanent workers now comprise percent of the entire U.S. work- force, and when the social safety net is being cut, Calavita notes that there has been an ideological assault on the public sector, not the economic sector. The public’s attention was not drawn to the massive industrial and capital restructuring ‘‘designed to make the workers pay,’’ 47 rather, its outrage was redirected toward the federal deficit and rising taxes. Antigovernment rhe- torical attacks and contempt and hostility expressed toward the poor were hallmarks of the budget-balancing conservative ideology of the s. In contrast to Mehan’s metaphor, Calavita focuses on the . Again there is a great deal of support for Calavita’s analysis in the present Los Angeles Times public discourse sampling. Her metaphor of choice is linked to the metaphor rather than the metaphor.
George Lakoff, whose theoretical research over the last fifteen years brought metaphor to scholarly prominence, also used metaphor analysis to
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study the nature of politics in American society.48 Based on personal obser- vations of American political life and backed by text examples he generated or sampled on occasion from public discourse sources as he conducted cog- nitive linguistics research on metaphor, Lakoff claims that the major division in U.S. politics between liberals and conservatives is systematically based on dichotomous models of what ideal families should be. He claims both conservatives and liberals base their different political judgments on dis- tinct forms of a metaphor. Within this analysis he ad- dresses the U.S. politics of immigration. Consequently, evidence of this divi- sion should be found in public discourse expressed with differential use of metaphors.
On the one hand, the conservative view of politics is based on what Lakoff calls the Strict Father model of the family. For the conservatives, immigrants are first and foremost lawbreakers who should be punished. That is why they are called ‘‘illegal.’’ Lakoff, speaking from the point of view of conservatives, avows:
They are not citizens, hence they are not children in our family. To be expected to provide food, housing, and health care for illegal immi- grants is like being expected to feed, house, and care for other children in the neighborhood who are coming into our house without permis- sion. They weren’t invited, they have no business being here, and we have no responsibility to take care of them.49
Numerous statements can be cited in the Los Angeles Times that corroborate the conservative point of view when referring to actual children, including the following statement by California’s governor:
. ‘‘We cannot educate every child from here to Tierra del Fuego.’’ (Sep- tember , , A)
On the other hand, the liberal view of politics is based on the Nurturing Family model in Lakoff ’s analysis. The metaphor that maps the politics of liberals characterizes immigrants as powerless people with no immoral intent. Consequently within the metaphor they are seen as:
innocent children needing nurturance. . . . Through the metaphor, they are seen as children who have been . . . brought into the national household and who contribute in a vital way to that national household. You don’t throw such children out onto the street. It would be immoral.50
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Again there are quite clear statements in the Los Angeles Times that corrobo- rate the liberal point of view, particularly when addressing the actual chil- dren of immigrants:
. How dare we deny education to the children of women who clean our home and raise our children? How dare we deny medical care to those who harvest our crops, clip our lawns and golf courses, bus our dishes, wash our cars and every night leave spotless the very office towers whose top executives support the governor behind this mean proposal? (Sep- tember , , B)
For Lakoff, metaphoric references to children are an entailment, - , that emerges from within the mapping of family value to political value in . In the public discourse on immigrants generated during the Proposition period, one would expect to find an empirical reflection of the and . However, only two instances of metaphors in the Los Angeles Times sample make reference to immigrants as children. Both were reported at a press con- ference called by a California legislator to announce the passage of his bill which denied emergency earthquake relief to undocumented immigrants:
. For Rohrabacher, of Huntington Beach, the legislative victory gave flight to his more visceral kind of rhetoric. ‘‘This will have a real impact on federal agencies’ ability to put out a flyer, saying (to illegal immigrants), ‘Come on in and get the money.’ We’re all part of the same family, of all racial backgrounds. When you’re in an emergency situation, what kind of person takes limited emergency resources from his own family and gives it to a stranger? We cannot afford to supply benefits for illegals without hurting our citizens and legal residents.’’ (February , , A)
This inhumane legislative action was commented on by an immigrant quoted in excerpt above. Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s explicit ref- erence to the nation as family, however, may well be interpreted as sarcas- tic. (Note his reflexive reference to race.) Few other metaphors appeared in the Los Angeles Times dataset.
It is understandable why Lakoff would expect Americans to speak about immigrants as children.51 Such a metaphor is a more benevolent represen- tation of the immigrant.52 Unfortunately, the dominant metaphor evidenced in the Los Angeles Times of the s did not grant human status to immigrants; it debased them. In the hierarchy of living things held by
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Americans, as expressed in metaphor, immigrants are not the children of citizens. They metamorphosed into lower-life forms.
The lack of empirical confirmation in the Times of family or child meta- phors does not repudiate Lakoff ’s major assertion that morality is embodied in the commonly used metaphors of political discourse. This is a key empiri- cal finding of the present book.
These four analyses of the anti-immigrant sentiment and its political ex- pression in Proposition were each confirmed in the present sample of the metaphors of public discourse. However, each is only a partial analysis of the public discourse sampled in this chapter. Beginning with the cognitive theorist, Lakoff aims to capture the big picture. As the researcher attending most closely to the material discourse, Mehan focuses on the , while Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco draw a psychoanalytic portrait centering on the and . Cala- vita brings economics to the forefront with the metaphor.
Their respective interpretations follow from the proclivities of their re- spective disciplines. Their findings are consequently particularly germane to the disciplines from which the analysts operate, and yet, with the excep- tion of Mehan, each is conspicuously bounded. The range of each of their separate analyses is encompassed in Table ., which catalogues the range of structuring metaphors about immigrants. Still and all, one omission is common to the four analyses. The most frequent and virulent metaphor was not noted by these investigators. Turning now to the implications of the metaphor, one must ask what it is that makes this metaphor invisible to the scrutiny of social scientists.
Section : Interpretation of the Dominant Metaphor The conceptual correspondence is racist. It dep- recates immigrants as it separates noncitizens and citizens, since it assigns the former nonhuman standing. This finding confirms previous research that also investigated racism and metaphor. Toine van Teeffelen, in a study of political metaphor in popular literature, states:
in its metaphoric meaning racism compares and contrasts the domains of the self and the other. . . . When applied skillfully, metaphors can have a strong impact due to their ‘‘literary’’ quality and visual concrete- ness. This rhetorical thrust allows them to emphasize particular ele-
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ments and linkages, and simultaneously to de-emphasize others. Since they organize the understanding of cause and effect, symptom and essence, and especially praise and blame, metaphors can be employed to serve political aims or interests. When thus used as ideological de- vices, they privilege, and when turning into common sense, naturalize particular accounts of reality.53
The charge of racism can be made on the basis of standard definitions. From a political economics perspective, for example, Robert Miles defines racism as actions that postulate natural divisions among people which are in fact not natural. This false assignment of individuals to groups, on the basis of such so-called natural traits, categorizes people into a false hierarchy. In this way of thinking, racism attributes meaning to
human beings in such a way to create a system of categorization, and [attributes] additional (negatively evaluated) characteristics to the people sorted into those categories. This process of signification is therefore the basis for the creation of a hierarchy of groups, and for establishing criteria by which to include and exclude groups of people in the process of allocating resources and services.54
Certain essentialist criticisms can be made about this kind of definition. Nevertheless the reach of the definition should be clear. Note that this defini- tion presumes that the criteria used by racists characterize the Other merely as an inferior human being, and not the equivalent of horses, rabbits, ferrets, and dogs.
Moreover, the metaphoric mapping is an ele- ment of racist discourse. The present finding thus reaffirms the research of van Dijk in which he demonstrated that racist discourse is replete with ani- mal themes.55 A definition of racist discourse which does not invoke intrinsic properties follows:
Racist discourse, in our view, should be seen as discourse (of whatever content) which has the effect of establishing, sustaining and reinforc- ing oppressive power relations. . . . Racist discourse . . . justifies, sus- tains and legitimates those practices which maintain . . . power and dominance.56
Sustaining a discourse practice is the root power of metaphor. As devel- oped in Chapter , following Foucault, such discourse practices uphold social practice, as they embody unreflected and naturalized ideological as-
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sumptions about their subject space. The entirely contingent background understandings about social spaces, beliefs, relationships, and identities of our lives are established in daily interactions which we only rarely question. The discourse practices are so frequently and casually used that they become automatic and invisible to our everyday view.
Correspondingly, metaphor, arguably the crucial unit of discursive prac- tice, most effectively influences people when it does not draw attention to itself; when, without the slightest mindfulness on the part of the inter- locutors, it invokes and rearticulates the cognitive structure of a source se- mantic domain to its target semantic domain. Notice that when a truly original metaphor is used, the reader/listener of the fresh turn of phrase is prompted by its novelty to evaluate the metaphor for its appropriateness, creativity, and utility. The mindful reader/listener can choose to reject the linkage. However, if the metaphor does not draw attention to itself, then the reader/listener is most likely to remain unaware that a conventional and con- tingent semantic link has been reinforced. Moreover, the semantic and cul- tural presuppositions of the conceptual correspondence are also automati- cally strengthened. is a metaphoric mapping that reproduces a view, with semantic associations, and most importantly politi- cal and social consequences, to denigrate human beings. Its dominant use sustains a covertly racist worldview.
As for explicitly legitimating a racist discourse, ‘‘there can be little doubt that of all forms of printed text, those of the mass media are most perva- sive, if not most influential, when judged by the power criteria of recipi- ent scope.’’ 57 While the Los Angeles Times newswriters are not overtly racist, their continued use of the metaphor, like that of any other American En- glish speaker, contributes to demeaning and dehumanizing the immigrant worker. Given the Los Angeles Times’s privileged role as a major vehicle for political discourse in California, and are continually reinforced when these domi- nant metaphors are part of the Times’s entrenched discourse practice.
On the other hand, in defense of the newspaper, contemporary cogni- tive theory claims that prosaic metaphor constructs the fundamental world- view of everyday life. Rather than explicitly legitimating racist practices and power relationships, in these political contexts the newspaper merely reflects the basic, embodied values of the dominant social order. This discursive practice transfigures people—into threatening floods or domestic beasts— as it subjugates their humanity. Since ‘‘media practices usually remain within
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the boundaries of a flexible, but dominant consensus, even when there is room for occasional dissent and criticism . . . fundamental norms, values, and power arrangements are seldom explicitly challenged in the dominant news media.’’ 58 Thus the foundational racism of U.S. society is mirrored in the discursive practice of the Los Angeles Times.
First, by way of the use of , the individuality and humanity of the immigrants are replaced with a frightening scenario of inundating surges of brown faces. While the ostensible point of Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant campaign was to recoup government costs asso- ciated with essential services for undocumented workers and their children, the force of the metaphor was not directed toward fiscal deficits. Rather, Wilson capitalized on the sense of increasing loss of sociocultural preeminence among his core constituency, as the rising brown tides ostensibly reshaped the Anglo-American hegemonic order.
Second, the metaphor is unquestionably racist. This racism is constructed in public discourse via the use of the metaphor. This is different from the racist language with which the public is familiar. Racist language is commonly understood to be the blatant invectives and slurs that were common in the United States over most of its history, when it was an openly racist society. These expletives are no longer tolerated in most polite settings. They are no longer common currency in political dis- course. Hence, as Frank Reeves noted, such discourse has been ‘‘sanitized.’’ However, as will be developed in the next chapter, epistemological racism continues to be expressed via the dominant metaphors most commonly used in the public discourse on immigrants and immigration.
Lastly, the public discourse which distinguishes citizen from immigrant repudiates one celebrated principle of American society. The nation’s most distinguished claim is the Great Experiment, which was given expression in the Constitution. Sadly, the experiment has always been compromised in- sofar as all the people in the country are not included. As Frederick Doug- lass hammered home with ringing eloquence, their exclusion debases the nation’s noble design:
Its language is ‘‘We the people’’; not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people; not we the horses, sheep and swine, and wheel- barrows, but we the people, we the human inhabitants; and if Negroes are people, they are included in the benefits for which the Constitution of America was ordained and established.59
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When Douglass wrote, African Americans were not citizens but had the legal status of domesticated animals. Today’s immigrants are spoken about as if they were animals, and via these words actions are taken that disregard their humanity. The principles of the country are debased as long as this cur- rent dominant metaphor of public discourse is sustained.
The discursive construction of racism may currently be unobtrusive, but once noted, it is far from subtle. Immigrants are not referred to, in a patron- izing but humane manner, as children. While there were other metaphoric mappings evident in the database, such as , all but one of these were pejorative. The absence of productive dominant metaphors for immigrants and immigration supports the thesis that the U.S. public dis- course on immigrants is racist. The metaphoric element of discursive racism is particularly insidious, since the metaphors remain invisible. These meta- phors are manifestations of deeply held concepts of what (not who) immi- grants are. Such a worldview precludes the view that they are vested by birth with the same human rights as citizens, and that they should be shown due respect for the difficult and ill-paid work they provide for U.S. society.
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Chapter Three
. Gutiérrez , p. . . Gutiérrez quotes such nineteenth-century viewpoints as that of South Caro-
lina’s well-known Senator John C. Calhoun, who objected to embracing in the United States a large number of Mexicans. For Calhoun, Mexicans consist of ‘‘impure races, not as good as the Cherokees or Choctaws’’ (, p. ).
. Griswold del Castillo . . Vélez-Ibáñez , in Chapter , ‘‘Without Borders, the Original Vision.’’ . Brownstein and Simon . . Higham . . Hoffman , p. . . Davis . . ‘‘Teutonic’’ was the nineteenth-century term for the preferred ‘‘race’’ of Euro-
pean immigrant, with ‘‘Alpine’’ and ‘‘Mediterranean’’ successively lower on the scale of purity (Higham , p. ).
. Brownstein and Simon . . Two kinds of ellipsis are used in the excerpts throughout the book: a wide-
spaced version signals the abridgement originally found in the Times texts; narrow-spaced ellipses mark my own truncation.
. Presuppositions are semantic associations accompanying a proposition, or se- mantic domain. The sentence ‘‘Michael’s wife is named Martha’’ logically pre- supposes that ‘‘Michael is married.’’ Likewise, they are consequences of a se- mantic association, such as between the source and target semantic domains of a metaphor. In semantics, logical presupposition is narrowly defined. In every- day discourse, a wider range of semantic associations is commonly inferred.
. Each italicized metaphor appearing in the body of this book, like the sequen- tially numbered excerpts, is drawn from the Los Angeles Times database. Any exceptions are expressly described as fabrications.
. In the excerpts throughout the book, additional metaphors can be noted which will not be discussed in the body of the book, such as in excerpts , whip- ping boy, , erode, , spawn, , sap, and , chaos. Mixing metaphors in nonliter- ary genres and everyday talk is rarely noticed. There is little sense of confusion of thought, or of anomalous passages. In the excerpts from the Times, there is ready mixing of metaphors that are associated with the distinctive and metaphors.
. The exception to noncount measures occurs with the use of quantifiers fol- lowed by of, such as two teaspoons of vinegar, in which case the intrinsic liquid nature of fluids becomes secondary to the extrinsic calibration.
. Lakoff , pp. –; Johnson , pp. –. . Los Angeles Times, July , , B.
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. On another note, the use of the term literal, in excerpts and , demonstrates tacit recognition on the part of the writer of the force of metaphor. Since face of the nation in excerpt is a metaphor, there is nothing literal to be understood by the term literally. In such cases the adverb can only function as an intensifier, meaning ‘‘very,’’ or ‘‘intensely.’’ Its use is intended to heighten the expressed severity of the effect of cultural change caused by non-European immigration.
. Lakoff . . Lakoff and Turner . . As discussed by Gibbs and reviewed in (and schematized in Figure of )
Chapter . . At the time of the political debate, the studies that contended that immigrants
were a net loss to the economy included the Parker and Rea studies, a San Diego County survey, and the Huddle studies. Those which indicated that the immigrants were a net gain to the economy included the Los Angeles County study, a Urban Institute study, and a Federal Re- serve Bank study. See G. Miller ; Simon ; A. Miller a, b; Lee . Also see Vérnez and McCarthy for a meta-analysis of these contend- ing reports and Hinojosa and Schey for a nontechnical critique of those same studies.
. Lovejoy . . Lakoff and Turner , pp. –. . Lakoff , p. . . Gould , p. . . Gould , p. . . For a recent example, see McKie’s Dawn of Man. The Story of Human Evolution,
a book written to accompany a television series (, p. ). . Lakoff , pp. –; Lakoff and Turner , p. . . Chilton and Ilyin . . González, Ríos, Maldonado, and Clark . . Wetherell and Potter ; Valencia . . Lakoff . . I want to thank my colleague Guillermo Hernández for his commentary which
led to this section. . In the November sample, eighteen sports articles, totaling , words,
were reviewed. . One day (November , ) yielded thirty-one business articles, totaling
, words. . Seven articles on Tyson were sampled (July–November , totaling ,
words). Five articles on Keating were sampled (April–May , n = , words).
. Zagorin .
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. Mehan . . Gumperz . . Said . . D. Johnson . . Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco , p. . . Mehan , p. . . Calavita , p. . I emphasize the metaphor with . . Ibid., p. . . Piven and Cloward , quoted in Calavita , p. . . Lakoff . . Ibid., pp. –, Lakoff ’s emphasis. . Ibid., pp. –. . However, may not be a serviceable metaphor for the twenty-first-
century nation. This metaphor suggests blood links among compatriots which are stronger bonds than those suggested by the , or even the . Although rarely used these days, the metaphor was used in reference to the United States in earlier centuries. One example will illus- trate its problematic implications. In his second State of the Union address, Abraham Lincoln invoked a biblical allusion to the permanence of land:
A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. ‘‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for- ever.’’ It is of first importance to duly consider and estimate this everlast- ing part. That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not adapted for two or more. . . . Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit; not from our national homestead. . . . Our strife pertains to ourselves. . . . In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States. (Basler , pp. –, emphasis added)
Although the nation was in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln was not re- ferring to Yankee and Rebel. Zarefsky (), among others, argues that the families contending for the nation were slaves and Whites. ‘‘Slavery . . . en- dangered the nation; no one doubted that. Lincoln [in this speech] presented his vision for disentangling the nation from its corrosive foe’’ (Paludan , p. ). To preserve the Union, Lincoln suggested in this speech a system of ‘‘compensated emancipation,’’ coupled with colonization, to preserve the re- public for Whites alone. The government would requisition the slaves from their owners, then these African Americans would be cast out of their home- land to foreign colonies.
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The shared ancestry notion that is invoked by the meta- phor places greater weight on lineage than can be sustained in a nation of im- migrants, unless one line of descent is privileged over all others.
My colleague Richard Anderson (personal communication) contested this account of Lincoln’s address and articulated another view about the metaphor. Anderson’s view is acknowledged by Paludan, who states that ‘‘recent historians have downplayed Lincoln’s proposal,’’ citing James McPherson, who describes compensatory emancipation as ‘‘a peace mea- sure to abolish the institution everywhere by constitutional means’’ (Ibid., p. ).
On the second count, Anderson’s heartening view on the value of the family metaphor deserves mention: ‘‘If we can use a term like ‘brethren’ to describe persons of another race than our own, then family metaphors need not be racially exclusionary metaphors. Because we perceive the United States as di- vided by race, there is a tendency among all racial groups to describe them- selves as families to the exclusion of other races, but if we were to describe the American family, we might well preempt the use of family metaphors by par- ticular racial groups. This might even contribute to changing the way Ameri- cans perceive each other.’’
. There are other semantic associations of the metaphor to consider. Anderson , in a comparative study of Soviet Russia and elec- toral Russia political discourses, demonstrates that Communist Party leaders employed family metaphors to place themselves ‘‘above’’ an infantilized citi- zenry, while post-empire Russian political leaders employ fewer vertical and hierarchical metaphors to describe their relationship to the electorate.
. van Teeffelen , pp. –. . Miles quoted in Wetherell and Potter , pp. –. . van Dijk , . . Wetherell and Potter , p. . . van Dijk , p. . . Ibid., p. . . From ‘‘The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-
Slavery?’’ in Foner , p. .
Chapter Four
. The March issue of Commentary dedicated forty pages to captious and trenchant essays on affirmative action. Its contributors included William Ben- nett, Linda Chavez, Carl Cohen, Midge Decter, Terry Eastland, Joseph Ep- stein, Nathan Glazer, Lino Graglia, Tamar Jacoby, Randall Kennedy, Leslie Lenkowsky, Glenn Loury, John O’Sullivan, Orlando Patterson, Norman Pod- horetz, Arch Puddington, Jim Sleeper, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom,
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