Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 14:4 (2015) ► pp.577–598

Metaphorical Conceptualization of Migration Control Laws

Narratives of Oppression

| Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria |
| University of California, San Diego |

This article analyzes the way in which migration control laws are metaphorically conceptualized in the voices of individuals who demonstrate emotional solidarity with irregular immigrants. The metaphors studied are shown to constitute a coherent conceptual corpus that reveals their users’ ideology. These metaphors present a cultural narrative that affects the moral consideration of the characters involved in the story. They also reflect the perception of those who feel oppressed by the dominant social group and therefore, they are narratives of oppression, in juxtaposition to the narratives of hegemony that can be identified in the metaphors used in hostile political speeches against this social group.

Keywords: metaphor, ideology, immigration, Hispanics, narratives of oppression
Article outline
  • 1.Theoretical Framework
  • 2.Objectives
  • 3.Description of the Corpus
  • 4.Data Analysis: Metaphorical Conceptualization of Migration Control Laws, Programs, and Measures
    • 4.1Source Domain: war
    • 4.2Source Domain: flammable material
    • 4.3Source Domain: illness
    • 4.4Source Domain: force image schema
    • 4.5Source Domain: embittering substance
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.14.4.05pin
References
Cameron, Lynne, and Alice Deignan
2006 “The Emergence of Metaphor in Discourse.” Applied Linguistics 27 (4): 671-690. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul
2004 Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice. London / New York: Routledge.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cisneros, J. David
2008 “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of “Inmigrant as Pollutant” in Media Representations of immigration.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11 (4): 569-601. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse
2004 Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dirven, René
1990 “Metaphor and Ideology.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 68 (3): 565-675. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dirven, René, Hans-Georg Wolf, and Frank Polzenhagen
2007 “Cognitive Linguistics and Cultural Studies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens, 1203-1221. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles
1985 Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
1997 Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2003 Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles
1982 “Frame Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, ed. by The Linguistic Society of Korea, 111-137. Seoul: Hanshin.Google Scholar
1985 “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding.” Quaderni di semantic 61: 222-254.Google Scholar
Fisher, Walter R
1984 “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs 511: 1-22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grady, Joseph
1997 Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2011 “Force-interactive Patterns in Immigration Discourse: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to CDA.” Discourse & Society 22 (3): 269-286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haynes, John
1989 Introducing Stylistics. London: Hyman.Google Scholar
Heilman, Robert Bechtold
1968 Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark
1987 The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán
2005 Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George
1987 Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 The Political Mind. Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner
1989 More than Cool Reason. Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James Robert, and Peter R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moreno Lara, María Ángeles
2005 La metáfora conceptual y el lenguaje político periodístico: configuración, interacciones y niveles de descripción. La Rioja: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2004 Metaphor and Political Discourse. Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Migration, media and deliberate metaphors. Metaphorik.de, 211, 7-19.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Gerald V
2003 “Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States.” Metaphor and Symbol 18 (1): 33-47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osborn, Michael
2009 The Trajectory of My Work with Metaphor. Southern Communication Journal 74 (1): 79-87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osborn, Michael, and John Bakke
1998 “The Melodramas of Memphis: Contending Narratives during the Sanitation Strike of 1968.” Southern Communication Journal 63 (3): 220-234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Gary B
2007 “Cognitive Linguistics and Anthropological Linguistics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens, 1045-1073. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peña Cervel, M. Sandra
2003 Topology and Cognition. What Image-schemas Reveal about the Metaphorical Language of Emotions. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
2008 “Dependency Systems for Image-schematic Patterns in a Usage-based Approach to Language.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (6): 1041-1066. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Los esquemas de imagen.” In Lingüística Cognitiva, ed. by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano and Javier Valenzuela (dirs.), 69-96. Barcelona: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Pinero-Pinero, Gracia, Marina Díaz-Peralta, and María J. García-Domínguez
2014 “Metaphors of Irregular Immigration in the Spanish Language Press in the United States.” Studia Neophilologica 86 (1): 51-65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piñero Piñero, Gracia, and John Moore
2014 “Metáforas legitimadoras del inmigrante irregular en la prensa norteamericana en lengua española.” Onomázein 301: 190-207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José, and José Luis Otal Campo
2002 Metonymy, grammar and communication. Granada: Comares.Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José, and Lorena Pérez Hernández
2011 “The Comtemporary Theory of Metaphor: Myths, Developments and Challenges.” Metaphor and Symbol 26 (3): 161-185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto
2002 Brown Tide Rising. Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
2003 “Three Mandates for Anti-minority Policy Expressed in U.S. Public Discourse Metaphors.” In Cognitive Models in Language and Thought. Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings, ed. by René Dirven, Roslyn Frank, and Martin Pütz, 199-227. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schank, Roger, and Robert P. Abelson
1977 Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Semino, Elena
2008 Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sharifian, Farzad, and Gary B. Palmer
(eds.) 2007 Applied Cultural Linguistics. Implications for Second Language Learning and Intercultural Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ungerer, Friedrich, and Hans-Jörg Schmidt
2006 An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A
2005 “War Rhetoric of a Little Ally. Political Implicatures and Aznar’s Legitimatization of the War in Iraq.” Journal of Language and Politics 4 (1): 65-91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Blake, James N
2019. Simulating Experiences of Displacement and Migration. International Journal of E-Politics 10:1 ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo
Peterssen, Silvia & Augusto Soares da Silva
2023. Polarising metaphors in the Venezuelan Presidential Crisis. Journal of Language and Politics DOI logo
Pinero-Pinero, Gracia
2017. A matrix of cognitive domains at the service of the metaphoric delegitimisation of politicians. Discourse, Context & Media 18 ► pp. 20 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.