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Awash under a Brown Tide:Immigration Metaphors inCalifornia Public and Print Media

DiscourseOtto Santa Anawith Juan Mw an an d Cynthia Sunchez

The passage of Proposition 187, the first anti-Latino referen-dum offered to California voters in the mid-l990s, sparkedmany policy, economic, sociological, and political analyses. Wewould like to offer a discourse analysis into how language par-ticipates in the political debate on immigration and partly es-tablishes the basis for electoral decision-making. To do so, weanalyze the prose metaphors about immigration that werepublished in a key California newspaper, the Los AngeZesTimes.We additionally study the argumentation structure ofthe Los Angetes Timeseditorials on Proposition 187. Our goalis to support the often vague claim tha t language is central topolitical and social life by providing explicit analyses of thematerial detail (Chilton 1996) of the actual words, phrases,and texts used in public and political communication.Several assumptions underlie Critical Discourse Analysis(Fairclough 1989; Hodge and Kress 1993; van Dijk 1993),whichwill guide our interpretation of the political discourse surround-ing the Proposition 187 campaign. While talking is often dis-missed as a fleeting activity separate from the construction ofsocial reality, spoken (and written) words are key componentsof the structures of the social world. In short, categories, con-cepts, and relations are encoded in and expressed through lan-guage. Thus, to pass over the actual language that documents

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communication is to ignore important signs pointing to the re-ality we constitute in interaction. What is being said about anevent or entity is a s important as other aspects of the event orentity. In the most explicit situation, language establishesthings, as when a judge declares foreign nationals to be citi-zens of the United States. Such a linguistic ac t literally createthe participants new statuses and new social realities. By ex-panding on such speech events, the full scope of constitutivelanguage can begin to be apprehended.In particular, the actual wording of political discourseshould not be overlooked, especially public communicationon the issues of the day. First, in the case of Proposition 187,mass media texts are a primary source of public discourse,and reveal certain ways of thinking abou t immigration amongthe reading public. Second, because all reading is interac-tive, language in newsprint is a mode of social action thatserves to articulate, affirm, and legitimate the social order.Newsprint participates in maintaining individual acquies-cence and social consensus about issues of the day. (Althoughalternative interpretive frameworks have some access to theprint media, s uch views are carefully bracketed a s marginalan d of minor significance.) Third, political discourse is a col-lective process. Newswriters (and the people whose voice theyseek out) tend to conform to established ways of speakingand writing that their editors and reading public accept. Ifthey do not, the institution and readers themselves will re-cast their ac co un ts in accordance with communicat ionnorms. By using established language in specific ways, news-papers present the common viewpoint. In this way, newsmedia formulate public opinion.

While linguistic meaning in American English or any lan-guage is not fured, is composed in context, and is expressed withvarying degrees of indeterminacy, the semantic domains thatcomprise everyday speech are in large part shared. Thus, in-ferences can be traced to words, phrases, and larger colloca-tions used in the communicative process by native speakers,The process of understanding the newspaper text takes placein a context that allows only certain degrees of semantic vari-ance. Since language is implicated in the constitution of socialreality, specific elements of the linguistic system, in particularthe semantic domains held in common among the communityof readers, are engaged in its construction. One of these ele-ments is metaphor. Through social-psychological clinical stud-

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Immigration Metaphors in Public Discourse

ies and cognitive science research, metaphor researchers havedemonstrated that prose metaphor reveals the worldview ori-entations in a range of texts and discourses (Gibbs 1994).

In this article we argue that newsprint media reinforcesparticular concepts in contemporary U.S . discourse on immi-gration. We do so by developing an empirical method to fur-ther cognitive semantic metaphor theory (Lakoff 1987, 1993)in a research framework compatible with other work on thematerial detail of political discourse (Chilton and Ilyin 1993).A s a new technique that builds on an independently devel-oped cognitive linguistic theory, this tool of Critical DiscourseAnalysis will be elaborated more fully in the body of this ar-ticle. In the latter part of the article, we add a complementarystudy designed to illuminate news media ideological precepts,focusing on the argumentation structure of the Los AngelesTimeseditorials on Proposition 187. In this way, we offer ex-plicit linguistic analyses of the actual words and texts of po-litical discourse on immigration in California during themid- 1990s. The framing of immigration for California voterswill be thus investigated in the light of critical discourse studiesand from a cognitive linguistic perspective.

Proposition 187Proposition 187 was overwhelmingly passed by the Californiaelectorate even though its provisions had been denouncedthroughout the campaign as unconstitutional. Indeed, it wasenjoined by the courts within hours of its enactment. Propo-sition 187 was designed to challenge and supersede federallaw, which already dictated sanctions against employers uti-lizing the labor of undocumented immigrant workers, and pro-vided for a policing body, the Border Patrol, to apprehend anddeport such immigrants. It would have denied a range of publicbenefits, including education and nonemergency health care,to undocumented immigrants. It also would have enlistedschool administrators, health care workers, social service per-sonnel, police, and other s ta te employees to ascertain the resi-dence st a tu s of an y apparently illegal alien (to us e thecontroversial phrasing of the referendum) among their clientsand for notifying the Immigration and Nationalization Serviceof suspected undocumented immigrants for deportation.This referendum was a decisive nativist response to tworealities. First, radical demographic change is taking place in

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the state. Latinos are becoming the numerical majority as theydisplace the white population, which has enjoyed numerical andeconomic predominance since statehood. Across the UnitedStates, the Latino population grew by more than 50 percent from1980 to 1990. This dwarfs the 9 percent increase of the totalU.S . population. Californias nearly eight million Latinos in 1990comprised 34 percent of the total population, an increase of 69percent from 1980 (Chapa and Valencia 1993, 166, 170).Latinosare projected to become an absolute majority in California by2040. In Los Angeles the trend is even more pronounced: Latinosare projected to be the majority by 2007 (Brownstein and Simon1993). For both the state and the nation, the demographicchange is augmented by undocumented immigrants. Theirpopulation has been particularly difficult to calculate, but onereport estimates 1.7 million undocumented individuals resideand work in Southern California. For Californians who assumethat Anglo-American culture is and should remain dominantand preeminent, these demographic changes have been unnerv-ing, and the undocumented serve as a perfect target for reprisal.A s such , Proposition 187 represents st atus politics, apoliticalmovement in which a once-dominant social group, perceivingits cultural values as dishonored by social change and rejectedby other groups, seeks to reaffirm symbolically its decliningprestige (Woolard 1989, 268-69).Second, the referendum was triggered by the end of aforty-year economic boom propelled in large measure by themilitary industrial engine. With the end of the Cold War,Californias economy contracted. Over 830,000 jobs were lostbetween 1990 an d 1993, primarily in the defense sector. ASa result, poverty exploded. In the 18-month period followingthe closure of Lockheed [ the largest employer in the S anFernando Valley of Los Angeles], for instance, 80,000 newwelfare cases were added, mainly in the east Valley (Davis1995, 27). The economic recession also led to reductions instate and local governmental incomes and created budget-ary problems. For this reason, Governor Wilson called for thefederal repayment of state costs associated with undocu-mented immigration.

Metaphor and Public PerceptionDuring this period, immigration was represented in the me-dia in distinctive ways. In order to discuss what constituted

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Californias public discourse on immigration during theProposition 187 campaigns, we identify the metaphoric rep-resentation used in the print media to characterize immigra-tion in California.There is a vast literature extending back to Aristotle thatargues tha t hum an s fashion their social world on the basis ofmetaphoric thinking. To cite a public policy theorist who heldsuch a social constructivist perspective, Donald Schon (1979)posited a particular use of metaphors in developing responsesto social policy issues. He called it the seeing asprocess. Henoted that there is always more than one way to conceptual-ize social policy issues. Schon provides examples of this pro-cess by contrasting two policy responses to the issue of verylow-income urban communities. The public commonly per-ceives su ch a community as a n eyesore or an urban blight, asit grows it becomes a scourge or epidemic. Schon argued tha tas soon as a n issue is seen as a problem, a particular percep-tion of it becomes fixed, and a language becomes establishedto talk about it. A s that idea becomes fmed in perception an dlanguage, a solution in kind an d m anner unfailingly follows.For instance, the use of the disease metaphor leads to notionsof source, associations that may not be appropriate to think-ing about low-income neighborhoods. In this medical model,curing the so-called disease may include eradicating the slum.Mental rigidity se ts in and the seeing-as process radically re-du ces access to alternative ways of conceptualizing the issue.Thus, fewer solutions are entertained.

Viewed differently, the very same policy issue might notbe considered a problem. For example, rather t ha n taking theview th at very low-income urban communities are social prob-lems to be extirpated, Schon suggested that taking anotherlook might lead to a wiser response. In certain economic situ-ations, low-income ur ba n communities tend to spring up assolutions. People in these communities demonstrate ingenu-ity in providing infrastructure for themselves without personalfunds or government support. Thoughtful policymakers haveviewed these as natural)) or folk communities, rather thaninfestations. Such alternative conceptualizing may inspiremore effective policy responses.Frequently, Schons call to creatively reconceptualizepolicy issues through metaphor has not been heeded. Theconsequent futile recycling of old conceptions is evident inmuch public policy. Yet, commonly accepted solutions for

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entrenched social problems regularly fail to effect change. Inthe face of such policy failures, we tend to redouble our com-mitment to the so-called solution, instead of reconceptualizingthe issue. In many cases, what we do is redouble our com-mitment to the so-called problems.Providing alternative views of policy issues requires flex-ibility of language as well. Schon characterized creative policy-making as utilizing the power of generative metaphors todiscover new ways of conceptualizing the policy issue. In thebest of circumstances, these metaphors occur at policy-for-mulation impasses to serve as new ways of identifylng the situ-ation. In the light of the frequent failure of comrnon-sensesolutions based on worn-out metaphors, Schon argues for theconscious use of metaphor as a guide; thus , the present ar-ticle offers a n explicit evaluation of the U . S . metaphoric dis-course on immigration.Metaphor and ComprehensionMetaphor has been a topic of study for over 2,000 years, pri-marily in rhetoric, literature, and philosophy. From this studycomes the observation that figurative language gives structureto our worldview. For example, the seventeenth-century Nea-politan Giambattista Vico, in many eyes the first modern his-torian, replaced Descartess cogitowith his own verumfactum;namely, we know the truth about matters as we ourselvesshape them. That is, Vico came to see metaphoric conceptsas crucial to how we understand our world.Nearly three centuries later, Lakoff and Johnsons (1980)work signaled the advent of cognitive science in understandinghow metaphors shape everyday thinking. For Lakoff andJohnson, a metaphor is the mapping from one semantic sourcedomain to another semantic domain, the target domain. Thesource domain generally includes the parts of our physical worldthat are handy, familiar, and easy to think about. The targetdomain is conceptually more obscure. We borrow the concep-tual structure of the familiar to get a handle on the recondite.Then we use the borrowed structure extensively or exclusively.For example, consider the sentence: She is the blossomof my garden. Here, the word bZossomis a metaphor tha t em-ploys the source domain plant to structure how we conceivethe target domain female.2 Note that the target domain word,she, is a third-person singular pronoun marked for gender but142


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otherwise an unspecified placeholder. The metaphor createsa semantic association that is in no way natural or necessary,but contingent. Consider a contrasting sentence: She is thethorn in my side. Here the word thorn is a metaphor tha t em-ploys the same source domain, plant, to establish the rela-tions used to understand the unspecified target domainpronoun. The associations of this second sentence are alto-gether different and yet ju st as automatic. Cognitive linguis-tic research has noted that this kind of metaphoric linkagetakes place in natural language via lexical metaphors, con-ventional phrases, and non-metaphoric expressions.To expand on these examples, Lakoff and Johnson cite aset of conventionalized English expressions used to talk aboutLOVE (1980, 49). They group them into three types of meta-p h o r ~ : ~OVE AS A PHYSICAL FORCE: I could feel the electricity be-tween us; There were sparks; The atmosphere was charged,and so on. LOVE AS WAR: She fought him ofi Hefled from heradvances; She is besieged by suitors; He has to fend themo f f ,and so on. LOVE AS MADNESS: I'm crazy about you; She drivesme out of my mind He constantly raves about her, and soon. These and many more expressions can be classified in acognitive model of the target domain, LOVE. Formally, metaphoris an ontological mapping of one semantic domain onto an-other. It should be kept in mind that such cognitive mappingsof love are culturally and linguistically specific. In the Dene(Navaho)and Korean languages, for example, no madness map-ping for love exists. Speakers of these languages are startledby the conventional use of such phrases in English.Metaphors thus codify our world. Understanding the tar-get domain is made easier by its association with the sourcedomain. For twenty years, the metaphoric basis of humanthinking across the most foundational aspects of daily life hasbeen explored. These include semantic domains dealing withour sense of time, our orientation in space, our experience ofwhat constitutes an event, our understanding of things, andour means of talking about ideas (Lakoff and Johnson 1980;Lakoff 1987, 1993; Lakoff and Turner 1989).Moreover, stud-ies have indicated that metaphoric thinking takes place ineveryday discussions, institutional settings, and social scienceand physical science discourse (Gibbs 1994).4

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Metaphor and Social InstitutionsFor Lakoff and Johnson, metaphoric mappings are a major formof hum an un de rs tand ing5 This ambitious cognitive scienceclaim has important social implications. For instance, StevenWinter has argued that legal thinking is profoundly metaphori-cal (1989).While it is commonly assumed in the legal profes-sion that the First Amendment to the U . S . Constitution is a setof doctrinal rules that is deterministically applied to particularcases, Winter argues that the principles are not absolute butare historically contingent. Moreover, from municipal judges tothe Supreme Court Justices, jur ists make decisions accordingto the metaphor that characterizes the First Amendment, andalthough they may think they are applying a doctrinal man-date, they are interpreting it by means of a metaphor. Winterexamines this process in the history of the concept of freedomof speech. The idea has changed over time, and with it the waythe legal profession thinks about the body of the law has alsoshifted, with weighty social consequences.

In the seventeenth century, John Milton said: T ru th iscompard in Scripture to a streaming fountain. Early char-acterizations of the First Amendment likewise implemented theflowing water metaphor, an d it was designed to insure the freeflow of ideas, a conceptualization that emphasized progresstoward essential Truth. During that period, such understand-ings focused on limiting possible governmental interference innew ideas. Once those ideas were expressed, however, if theywere deemed outmoded or an obstacle to the Truth, theybecame open to governmental restriction. By the twentiethcentury, Oliver Wendell Holmes argued against the prevailingfree-flowing stream model of the First Amendment and pro-moted the current marketplace o j ideas metaphor. The en-tailments of this metaphor, including a different normativemeasure, transform the First Amendment. Whereas the flow-ing water metaphor emphasized the value of new ideas, themarket metaphor accentuated the economic value of ideas.Furthermore, multiple truths were entailed, rather than thesingle Truth originally envisioned by the framers of the Bill ofRights. Corresponding legal consequences follow the changeof metaphor from flowing water to marketplace. Differentialtaxation of print media would not have been tolerable in lightof the earlier metaphor, but was acceptable under the currentone. Its social consequences were far-reaching.

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Immigration Metaphors in Fublic Discourse

More to the point of our present study, Woolard (1989) an a-lyzed the importance of metaphoric constructions in English-onlylegislation, a Latino issue in California politics. Woolard ascribesthe 1984 success of anti-liberal forces in San Francisco on thebilingual ballot measure to the tactical use of a metaphor thatreframed a civil rights issue. That is, a conservative political groupdenounced the bilingual ballot, a provision of the 1975 VotingRights Act designed to ensure greater electoral participation in amultilingual electorate. They presented their Proposition0,whichwas designed to eliminate bilingual ballots, as a progressive mea-sure, however, not a reactionary one. They successfully con-structed an image of the non-English-speaking Latino and Asianpopulation as being incarcerated by their home languages. Byusing a LANGUAGE AS PRISON metaphor, bilingual ballots were de-scribed as oppressive shackles that imprisoned non-Englishspeaking voters, and Proposition0 was characterized as a mea-sure that would more effectively enfranchise these citizens. TheLANGUAGE AS PRISON metaphor characterized bilingual ballots as anobstacle that voters should strike down as an act of liberation.In spite of the condemnation of Latino leaders, Proposition 0passed. San Franciscans, who make up one of the most progres-sive electorates in the country, were brought around to the viewthat they would liberate fellow voters by giving them English-onlyballots. This reframing of the political issue was made by way ofmetaphor.

In these ways, metaphor structuring takes place in socialarenas. Such structuring has been attributed to such insti-tutions as education (Miller an d Fredricks 1990),law (Win-ters 1989), and a range of political activities (e.g. Voss et al.1992, Pancake 1993, van Teeffelen 1994, Lakoff 1991, 1996,Chilton 1996).Metaphor AnalysisNow we turn to the construction of the political representa-tion of a demographic process, immigration, using a replicablemethod to sample the public discourse of the campaign. Asample of Los Angeles Times texts is illustrative of the rangeof use and type of metaphor:

To partic ipants in such [public anti-immigrant] ses-sions, Californias growing ethnic and racial diver-sity-celebrated by many as a source of strength-is

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Santa A n a , Moran, and Sanchez

more of a call to arms. For FAIR [Federation forAmerican Immigration Reform] strategists, who areenthusiastic proponents of assimilation, diversity isa suspect notion.I think people are mistaken in taking a rosy viewof multiculturalism, said Garrett Hardin, a FAIRboard member and noted ecologist. If they want toknow the u ltimate result of mul ticultu ralism, lookat Yugoslavia.The more we encourage multicultur-alism, the more we encourage conflict and socialchaos. I t leads to loss of freedom.Hardin, a co-founder of Zero Population Growth, isan advocate of lifeboat eth ics .Fearing th at the

nation may soon exceed its carrying capacity (aterm borrowed from fish and game management),Hardin calls famine relief counterproductive andbacks incentives for sterilization. Some consider hima genius, but others call his views reprehensible.In the long haul,said Hardin, a professor emeri-tu s at UC San ta Barbara , every nation . . . musttake responsibility for taking care of its ownpeople.His wife, Jane Hardin , si ts on the board of Califor-nians for Population Stabilization, a Sacramentogroup also seeking immigration restrictions.Critics say Hardin a nd other FAIR advocates fan theflames of anti-immigrant backlash,but FAIR back-ers shift the blame elsewhere: to lawmakers whohave failed to heed FAIRS urgings that the flowmus t be halted.I think anti-immigrant sentiment is rising in thiscountry today, a nd I think its rising because policy-makers didnt do their job, said Roger Conner, aFAIR architect and longtime executive director.Few people doubt that FAIR has been instrumental-both in the public relations an d legislative spheres-in helping to elevate the once-obscure ssue ofimmigration to national prominence.Theyve been succes sfu l in shaping the debate,concedes [Cecilia] Munoz of the National Council ofL a R a z a . (11 /2 4/9 3, A-1)

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This excerpt from the Los Angeles Timesexemplifies the exten-sive use and distribution of metaphor in newspaper text. Be-yond metaphor, this excerpt exhibits Hardins use of deixis7 toput distance between American society and the immigrantOther, and depicts the reporters use of other forms of discoursefeatures to create a conceptually cohesive and esthetically at-tractive text. Metaphor enables the newswriter to present thisaccount in an accessible manner. Much more than mere deco-rative embellishment, however, metaphor plays a powerful roleas it constructs ways of seeing many aspect of social life.8The lexical instances of metaphors in this excerpt are setin boldface to draw attention to ways of speaking and think-ing we often ignore when reading. Highlighting them makestheir associations more apparent to the reader. It is impor-tant to recognize that their semantic associations are auto-matically reinvoked with each repetition, whether or not thereader is cognizant of the metaphor. The semantic force of themetaphoric linkages is no less potent when the metaphorbrings no attention to itself. Indeed, perhaps a n unobtrusivemetaphor is more effective in its capacity to reinforce aworldview when the reader is unaware of the articula ted link-age, its attendant entailments, and ultimate implications, sinceno conscious consideration is given to its association.

Cataloguing Public Discourse MetaphorsWe examine the metaphoric s tructures promulgated by the LosAngeles Times o characterize the demographic process of im-migration during the period of the Proposition 187 referendum,since they provide a measure of the collective way of seeingthis political issue, as well as a measure of the discourse thatinformed public opinion before the day of the referendum vote.To establish empirically rigorous grounds, we catalogued theLos Angeles Timesdiscourse on immigration in California dur-ing the Proposition 187 campaigns. We selected the Los Ange-les Times because it is the newspaper with the greatestdistribution in California, it is considered the sta tes newspa-per of record, it is the local newspaper of Californias mostpopulous city, and it is home to the nations largest Latinopopulation. Furthermore, the Los Angeles Times is a highlyregarded newspaper tha t has taken moderate positions in re-cent California politics and maintained a high professionalstandard in reporting on the political events surrounding the

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campaign of Proposition 187. In its coverage, the reportersmaintained a relatively careful balance of professional detach-ment and civic concern despite a rancorous debate onimmigration that polarized California politics. In fact, a con-ventional content analysis (i.e., pre-theoretical and non-meta-phorical) of a subset of six weeks of articles on Proposition 187demonstrated that its reporters made concerted efforts topresent political events and political adversaries in a balancedlight. Given this professionalism, the present metaphor analy-sis should be taken as an accurate measure of the public dis-course on immigration and as an evaluation of the Los AngelesTimesas a mass media source.

While print media were not the sole source of public in-formation and representation during the campaign, specifictechnological advances now permit systematic research onsome print media sources, including the Los Angeles Times.The complete texts are now available in a format that facili-tates computer-assisted analysis. An empirical method basedon na tural language research principles (Labov 1984) wasemployed to review the newstexts. In order to avoid a biasedcount of the metaphoric representations of immigration, thepresent sample included all the articles in the Los AngelesTimespublished on Proposition 187 from August 1993 (whenthe California governor called for federal repayment of s tatecosts associated with immigration) until the measure wasbrought to a state-wide vote in November 1994. The total of117 articles were examined for metaphor and other figurativelanguage. Over 2,200 total instances of metaphor were cata-logued in th is body of newspaper texts.g The present articlereports on approximately 10 percent of the total database, fo-cusing specifically on tokens for which the target domain isIMMIGRATION, the demographic process.

Immigration MetaphorsTwo metaphoric mappings s tand out in the public discourse onProposition 187, in which metaphors are used to characterizepeople, the immigrants, or immigration as a demographic pro-cess. In the first metaphoric mapping, immigrants areoverwhelmingly characterized as animals. Examples include:The electorates appetite has been whet with the red meat ofdeportation as a viable policy option; Beaten-down agents, givenonly enough resources to catch a third of their quarry, sense the

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objective in this campaign is something less than total victoy; andEmployers hungering fo r really cheap labor hunt out the for-eign workers. Immigrant are debased and dehumanized by suchimagery. N o other people, not even notorious individuals whomone might expect to garner subhuman characterizations, aredegraded in this manner. Beyond the IMMIGRANT AS ANIMAL meta-phor, other metaphors of immigrants were revealed, such asIMMIGRANT AS SOLDIER,nd IMMIGR ANT AS DISEASE (SantaAna 1999).In this article, we will present a second metaphoric mapping,targeting the demographic process: Immigration is most fre-quently characterized in terms of water metaphors.Table 1 presents dominant, secondary, and occasionalmetaphors used for the demographic process. By dominantmetaphor class we mean metaphors with a similar source tha toccur relatively frequently and appear in a great variety offorms. In the LosAngeles Timesdata sampled, dominant meta-phors comprise the greatest proportion of all tokens charac-terizing immigration. o Secondary sou rce domains ap pear

Type Source Domain Totals PercentagesDominant DANGEROUS W A T E R S , 115 52%

e.g. floods, tideSecondary WAR, e.g. invasion 44 20%

A N I M A L , e.g. runaway 17 8Yoothers, e.g. WEATHER, 25 11%BODY, e.g. disease 12 6%

C OM M ODIT Y, HISTORY,tc.Occasional (various) 8 4%

Grand Total 22 1Source: 116 Los Angeles Timesarticles published June 1992-December 1994. Percentages are rounded up . The table accoun tsfor metaphors that target immigration, i.e. the demographicprocess. It excludes metaphors that target immigrants as people.Secondary metaphors occur in multiple tokens, bu t far fewerthan the dominant metaphor. Occasional metaphors are singleinstances of a domain.

Table I . Immigration metaphors published during Proposition 187campaign.

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much less frequently an d with less variety of expression. Onesuch metaphor for immigrants is I MMI GR ATI ON AS WAR:1. Some believe that [Governor Pete] Wilson, by fil-ing a lawsuit aga inst the federal government a nd ar-guing that illegal immigration is tantamount toa foreign invasion, ha s made a whipping boy of mi-grants. (9/27/94, A-3)2. People are saying, I dont like th is Third Worldtakeover,aid Guy Weddington McCreary, a NorthHollywood Chamber of Commerce member favoringthe initiative. It is literally an invasion an d veryupsetting. (9 / 17 /94 , B-3)

By occasional metaphors, we mean those expressed onlyonce or a few times and that do not seem to be associated withmore prevalent source domains. All the occasional metaphorsin this sample are single instance tokens of a source domain.Immigration as Dangerous WatersThe greatest number of tokens are water metaphors. To char-acterize the movement of people as moving water might seemquite natural, even appropriate, but it must be emphasizedthat such a conceptual construction of peoples movement isnot the only possible metaphor. The major metaphor for theprocess of the movement of substantial numbers of humanbeings to the United States is I MMI GR ATI ON AS DANGEROUS WATERS:

3. awash under a brown tide (10/2/94, A-3)4. Like waves on a beach, these human flows are lit-erally remaking the face of America ( l o /14/93, A-1)5. a sea of brown faces marching through Downtownwould only antagonize many voters ( l o / 17/ 94, A-1)6. In April, Gov. Pete Wilson sued the federal gov-ernment to recover costs associated with illegal im-migrants, claiming that they are sapping the statebudget, taking jobs from legal residents an d swamp-ing hospital emergency rooms. (6/ 12/94, A-3)7. the human surge (7/5/92, A-3)

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8. Councilwoman Joyce C. Nicholson said illegalimmigration is a serious problem and the stat e ofCalifornia is drowning in it. (9/ 17 /94, B-2)9. the inexorable flow (9/2 2/9 3, A-1)

The dangerous waters of immigration come in many forms:rough seas, treacherous tides, surges. These metaphors rarelyinclude anthropomorphic terms, except to imply ethnicity andrace, for example, changes to the complexion of the UnitedStates. On another note, the use of the term Ziterally in Ex-ample 2 demonstrates a tacit recognition of the inferential forceof the metaphor of invasion. Again in Example 4, the expres-sion face ofthe nation is a metaphor, there is nothing literalabout the term literally. In such cases the adverb is hyper-bole, heightening the supposed severity of the cultural changecaused by non-European immigration. Note that immigrationwaters are seen as dangerous, presented with adjectives suchas inexorable (10/2/93 , A-1).

Within the IMMIGRAT IONAS D A N G ERO U S WATERS category of meta-phors there are very clear subcategories. The first subcategoryof the dangerous waters category is volume, which emphasizesthe number of immigrants. With these volume terms, individu-als are lost and the m ass is presented negatively with strongadjectives such as relentless and overwhelming:

10. the foreigners who have flooded into the coun-try (11 /10/9 2, A-1)11. [California Governor] Wilson said: What weought to be doing is focusing on the fact that fed-eral failure continues to provide this massive flowof illegal immigrants into my state and the otherstates. (7/2 3/9 4, A-3)12. the relentless flow of immigrants (5/3 0/93 , A-5)13. a n overwhelming flood of asylum-seekers haveput the country in a n angry funk (10/1 /92 , A-1)

The second subcategory of dangerous waters is movement,which emphasizes the direction of migration, primarily north-ward from Mexico to the United States. A s for destination, thenation is metaphorically conceived as a container (Lakoff 1987;Chilton 1996) and the migration as inward-flowing stream:

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14. Residents of the Sa n Fern ando Valley are in-creasingly outraged abou t illegal immigration-if notimmigration generally-in th e face of economic hardtimes, growing congestion, widespread crime and adramatic influx of Latinos (8 /1/ 93 , A-1)15. the tide and flow of illegal immigration (10/26/94, A-27)16. Glenn Sp ence r. . . says his interest in the su b-ject was sp arked abou t two years ago when he be-gan not ic ing that an influx of minorities hadf looded the c i ty . He compi led r esearch andlaunched a newsletter tha t he circulated among hisneighbors. Ultimately, he formed Valley CitizensTogether, but the group changed its name afterresidents from other p arts of Los Angeles wantedto get involved. ...When asked what motivates him,Spencer points to the photos of his two blond, blue-eyed grandchildren on the mante l in h is orderly liv-ing room. What Id like to achieve is a little betterworld for my grandchildren,he said. I dont wan tmy grandchildren to l ive in chaos. Isn t thatenough? (11 /15 /94 , A-1)17. the flood of legal an d illegal immigrants stream-ing into the country (9 /7 /93 , A-3)

The third subcategory of dangerous waters is control,which emphasizes the efforts to reduce the immigration ofundocumented workers. This is because dangerous flows ofimmigrants are understood to lead to social chaos, as docu-mented in Example 16 and the extended Los Angeles Timesexcerpt above. Such metaphors characterize immigration aswaters to be, for example, stemmed:

18. a n attempt to stem illegal immigration (12/22/94 , B-1)19. the opportunistic criminal element tha t exploitsour porous borders (11/27/92, A-3)20. On the oth er ha nd , [President Bill Clinton]warned, if the government is unable to show somemore discipline in i ts control of illegal immigration,Im afraid the genie out of the bottle will be pas-sion to shut off legal immigration. (8/13 /93 , A-1)

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21. executive director of the Federation for Ameri-can Immigration Reform . . . said Clintons approachis akin to trying to dam the Mississippi withtoothpicks. (9/7/93, A-1)

The connotations of the dangerous waters metaphor areextensive. By treating immigration as dangerous waters, theindividuality of the immigrants lives and their humanity arebackgrounded. Instead of seeing individuals, we imagine afrightening scenario of deadly water played ou t with deuastat-ingfloods and inundating surges of brown faces.What is being washed away? Anglo-American culturaldominance is threatened by the sea of brown faces. Sinceonly a trickle of evidence has to be demonstrated to invokealarm, floods are a perfect metaphor to inspire dread andfear. The DANGEROUS WATERS metaphor obscures the real con-tribution of the hard-working, family-oriented immigrantwho believes in the American dream. Emphasis on volume,movement, and control of these dangerous waters dimin-ishes his or her humanity.Following the conventions of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff1993), we now presen t the D A N G E R O U S W AT E RS metaphor interms of an informal description and a formal ontologicalmapping. First, by means of an informal narrative, Narra-tive 1, we suggest the principle that governs the patterns ofinference labeled as I MMI GR ATI ON AS DANGEROUS WATERS in the LosAngeles Times:This narrative is based on a n ontological mapping, in cogni-tive semantic terms, established between the semantic do-AS DANGEROUS WATERS is tightly structured to map the ontologymains O f WATER and IMMIGRATION The metaphor labeled IMMIGRATION

A flood of immigrants is flowing into America. It threatens todrown Anglo America. By its sheer volume, the flood will coverth e land of America with a sea of people who do not look, ac t, orspeak like Anglo Americans. The people already on the land willbe washed away. For those who remain the land will be differ-ent. The land can absorb an influx in small quantities, bu t th isflow is so large that it threatens to change the contours of theland. The land will be eroded. The land will be irreversiblychanged, which means destroyed.

Narrative 1. Dangerous Waters as Immigration.

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of floods and tides onto the domain of immigration. The map-ping is as follows:a. Immigration corresponds to moving waters.b. The United Sta tes corresponds to a bounded landsubject to change from floods.c. Greater immigration corresponds to an increasedthreat to the land.d. The lands vulnerability to flooding correspondsto U . S . susceptibility to cultural change.

Nation as Ship at SeaSuch ontological mappings do not stand alone, bu t are linkedto other mappings in hierarchies of concepts. Th us the I MMI GR A-TION AS DANGEROUS WATERS metaphor is linked to the NATION AS HOUSEmetaphor, which is instantiated in Examples 4, 8, 10, 11, and13, among others. Paul Chilton (1996)notes that the NATION ASHOUSE metaphor is used in international relations, as well asdomestic relations. Another metaphor with which it is invokedis the NATION AS SHIP metaphor. In this latter metaphor, the shipis not strictly the government, but the country as culture,economy, and society. The ship can also be California or LosAngeles. Here, in the context of Proposition 187, immigrationis portrayed as a menacing ocean on which the nation as shipnavigates. The ship in the Los Angeles Times texts is alwaysimperiled by rough seas. At times there is an interesting doubleview, with immigrants as the ocean as well as passengers onthe ship. In these examples, the safety of the lifeboats is lostwhen they become crowded with illegal immigrants:

22. th e crush of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles islike overloading the lifeboats of a sinking ship23. compared the United States to a lifeboat thatcould only accommodate 10 people at one time. . . .If you put 40 people on a lifeboat it will sink andno one will be saved (10/28 /9 4, B-3)

(12/14/92, B-1)

The tempestuous seas are caused by the immigrant waves andthe economic storms that rock the nation. Again, the metaphorattributes the danger to immigrants and implies that the native-154


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born are threatened by their presence. The same entailments areused in Garrett Hardins identification of an ecology metaphor;namely, that the United States is a Zifeboat with a cawing ca-pacity strained by overpopulation brought on by immigration.Proposition 187 advocates exploited the SHIP OF STATE meta-phor by naming their major organization SOS (Save Our State),since with each mention of the organization the metaphoricentailments of danger were reinvoked. The organizationsnamealludes to the nautical expression Save Our Ship, which isthe Morse code distress signal for ships a t sea.12A s an acro-nym that was routinely spelled out in newspaper writing con-ventions, the metaphoric entailments were reproduced, andhence reinforced, at least forty times in the 1994 LosAngelesTimestexts alone.Peter Brimelow, in his best-selling book AZien Nation: Com-mon Sense about Americas Immigration Disaster, also usedthese metaphors in a powerful manner, characteristically atthe expense of immigrants:

24. The 1965 Immigration Act did not open the im-migration floodgates: it opened the immigrationscuttles-the influx is very substa ntial, bu t itsp ur ts lopsidedly from a remarkably small num-ber of countries, just as when some of the scuttlesare opened in one side of a sh ip . Which is why theUnited States is now developing a n ethnic list-andmay eventually capsize. (1995, 18)

In this example, Brimelow crafts an image that presents im-migrants as a faceless mass, while focusing on the nationsperil of taking on an ethnic list. He again builds on the entail-ments of IMMIGRATION AS DANGEROUS WATERS to separate people ofcolor (who equal DANGEROUS WATERS) from real Americans (whoequal PASSENGERS) (280)I 3 Brimelow reiterates this stance atmany points in his book:

25. A s late as 1950, somewhere up to nine out of tenAmericans looked like me. That is, they were of Eu-ropean stock. And in those days, they had anothername for this thing dismissed so contemptuously asthe racial hegemony of white Americans. They calledit America.(59)26. America a t the time of the Revolution was bira-cial, not multiracial, containing both whites and

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blacks. But th e political nation-the collectivity thattook political decisions-was wholly white. (18)

While he thinks tha t the United States should pu t a n end toimmigration, except for people like himself, Brimelows inso-lent message was effective in persuading noted liberal andprogressive commentators to his point of view, as the bookjacket of Alien Nation advertises. He is able to present his viewsin powerful a nd compelling ways by me ans of straightforwardprose and metaphors that resonate with common sense;which is to say, the nativist view packaged as the commonlyheld values of American society.

Alternative Immigration MetaphorsIn metaphoric terms, the advocates for Proposition 187 weresuccessful in shaping the debate. Few metaphors refuted orreinterpreted the DANGEROUSWATERS metaphor in our comprehen-sive cataloguing of the Los AngefesTimesarticles on immigra-tion. A s summarized earlier, language has long been seen asshaping worldview. Metaphor is privileged over most o the r lin-guistic elements in this process, because it is a central meansof conceptualizing the social world, as well as our basic physi-cal orientation, social scientific and physical scientific think-ing (Lakoffand Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987,Gibbs 1994).Thus,it is important to recognize its power in public discourse .

The Los Angeles Timesnews writers did not provide alter-native metaphoric representations when they compared thecontending positions on Proposition 187. Th us , while by cur-rent s ta nd ar ds of journa listic professionalism th e Los Ange-Zes Timeswriters presented a balanced accoun t of the issues,they certainly did no t present a balanced account of th e im-migration debate in terms of metaphor. l4 The news writersunmindfully promulgated only the metaphoric worldview of theadvocates for Proposition 187. Hence, contras ting worldviews,or differing visions of th e country in terms of metaphors, werenot provided for the electorate.

The proponents of Proposition 187 appealed to the natu-ralized, bu t not necessarily n a tu ra l view of immigration asflowing waters. With th e DANGEROUS WATERS metaphor, they in-spired dread by speaking about inundating floods and surgingtides. With th e exception of the clergy, in particular then-Arch-bishop Roger Mahoney ofLos Angeles, all part ies employed the

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DANGEROUS WATERS metaphor. A s Los Angeles Times columnistGeorge R a m o s reported, on a debate between adversaries ( lo /10 /9 3 , B-3), while back ers of Proposition 187 called forimmediate drastic reductions in immigration and punitive ac-tions against the undocumented and their children, pro-immi-grant advocates did not say what they would propose to c urbillegal immigration, if, as they say, 187 is not the answer. Op-ponents of Proposition 187 eventually admitted th at there wasan illegal-immigration problem but were reluctant to pro-pose alternatives to Proposition 187. At this particular forum,the absence of an alternative perspective was evident. Ramosdescribed the event moderator as having wondered aloud ifthe hesitation on the part of the immigrant advocates hur t theanti-187 cause. N o competing metaphoric view of immigrationwas offered a t the event. Nor was a n alternative view advocatedin most anti-Proposition 187 commentary. The common re-sponse of opponents of Proposition 187 was to describe howobjectionable its backers were. In the absence of a credible al-ternative viewpoint, this amounted to an ad hominemattack.

This could have been avoided with t he consisten t use ofmetaphors to characterize immigration affirmatively. In thehistory of U . S . views on immigration, there have been peri-od s when immigration was sought after vigorously. Then, en-dors ing imagery was use d. Andrew Carnegie , for on e,expressed his estimation of immigrant workers in positiveterms as flowing water:

Were the owners of every gold and silver mine in th eworld compelled to send to the Treasury at Wash-ington, a t their own expense, every ounce of the pre-cious metals produced, the national wealth wouldnot be enhanced one-half as much as it is from thegolden stream [of immigrants] which flows into thecountry eac h year (1885, 27 , cited in part inCalavitas (1996)).

Thus, affirmative metaphors were readily available to repre-sent a pro-immigrant view, even as spoken by a nineteenth-century robber baron.I5Both the advocates and opponents of Proposition 187 usedthe same kinds of metaphors, a nd articulated a situation inwhich native-born citizens were imperiled by a tidal wave ofimmigration (12/8/93, A-3) . From the vantage point of cogni-tive linguistics, the pro-immigrant advocates gave their implicit

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assent to their opponents social values. Instead of offering rivalmetaphoric characterizations of immigration, advocates for theimmigrants denied the claims and characterizations of theiropponents, which left them defending a status quo that hadbeen seriously challenged.The period of anti-Latino political initiatives did not endwith Proposition 187. In 1996, the California Civil Rights Ini-tiative, as Proposition 209 was cynically called, abolished state-wide use of affirmative action (Chavez 1998). In 1998, thebrazenly named English for the Children initiative, Proposi-tion 227, effectively ended bilingual education for Californias4.5 million non-English-speaking children. Proponents for af-firmative action and bilingual education were immediatelyplaced in a defensive position due to the strategic linguisticrepresentation of the referenda (Santa Ana, in preparation).Most strikingly, legitimate competing representations of theissues in metaphoric terms were absent. In the absence of al-ternative metaphoric framings to balance the political debates,the possibility of further anti-Latino referenda remains large.

Analysis of Lo s Angeles Times EditorialsOne question that arises from the foregoing analysis of thepublic discourse is how closely the conceptual framework con-sciously articulated by the print media institution, the LosAngeles Times, fits with the predominant metaphoric repre-sentation of immigration during Proposition 187. Prose meta-phor, a feature of discourse that has not drawn muchattention, is not presently considered a measure of journalis-tic objectivity, so it is premature to condemn the newspaperfor bias, however foundational. 6 So we compared Los Ange-Zes Times editorials (during the last six months of the 1994campaign) and news reports (during the eighteen-month Propo-sition 187 campaign), which indicated no difference in thepattern of metaphors registered in two distinct newspapergenres. IMMIGRATIONS DANGEROUS WATERS dominated both sets oftexts. Yet, the Los Angeles Timeseditorials steadfastly excori-ated Proposition 187. Consequently, we compared otheraspects of the editorials, especially their rhetorical structure,to clarify this ostensible contradiction.Newspaper editorials are important to any investigation ofthe material detail of public discourse and the formation of

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public opinion, because editorials a re the clearest expressionof a newspapers ideology.Indeed, the editorial is the formation place for news-paper ideologies. . . . Confronted with fundamentalchanges in the social and ethnic context, many read-ers have sought for interpretative frameworks, fordefinitions and explanations of the new situationand for practical guide-lines for future communica-tion and action. Editorials, even more tha n the newsreports on which they are based, offer precisely suchpractical, commo n-sense frameworks for makingsense of the social situat ion (van Dijk 1991, 150,emphasis in the original).

Furthermore, van Dijk fixes the ideological force of a n edito-rial on the interpretive frameworks it utilizes to present itstopics to readers. Editorial st ruc tures, in contras t to relativelyunconscious metaphor choice, are deliberately constructedto convey, even persuade its readers to, the editors views.Editorial descriptions of the contending parties and pointsof view involve stylistic choices intended to evoke emotionalresponses, as well as rational consideration, on the part ofreaders. Although not at the same level or on the same ba-sis, su ch purposeful s tructur ing offers readers a way of per-ceiving the world that parallels the process of metaphoricunderstanding. For this reason, it is fitting to compare thestructure of the Proposition 187 editorials of the Los Ange-les Timesfrom August to December 1994 (including post-elec-tion editorials) to the prose metaphors of its news reports.The focus in this section is on comparing the description ofthe contending parties address ing Proposition 187, followedby a n analysis of the way pro an d con arguments were madein the Los Angeles Timeseditorials.The Los Angeles Timeseditorials were uniformly opposedto Proposition 187 and editorial writers were scathing in theircharacterization. The most neutral description called the ref-erendum: the measure that would prohibit state and localgovernments from providing education, health care and othersocial services to illegal immigrants (11 6/94, B-20). Morepassionate descriptions included half-baked (1 0/2/9 4, M-4),draconian (10/28/94, B-6) ridiculous (10/30/94, M-6), andwrong morally ...wrong politically (11 /2 /9 4 , B-6). The edito-rial writers frequently included indirect quotes of opponents

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of the referendum. For example, conservative politicians Will-iam Bennett and Jack Kemp were said to have essentiallycalled the ballot measure what it is-an unconstitutional an dnativist reaction to a complex problem, a misconceived mea-sure tha t carries the potential to spread poison elsewhere andundermine the very spirit of democracy in this country ( lo /2 1 94, B-6). Furthermore, editorial writers provided extensiveand numerous quotes from a whole range of opponents toProposition 187. A sampling of quotes at tributed to differentindividuals in a single editorial includes: an angry knee-jerkreaction, immoral.. godless,fundamentally flawed,abomi-nation, a fraud and a hoax, and so on (11 6 /9 4 , B-20).

Through such characterizations, the editorial writers soughtto discredit the proponents of the referendum. In fact, the ma-jor organizers and spokespeople for Proposition 187 were oftennot even named, with the exception of political candidates whovoiced their support as part of their campaigns. When candi-dates were singled out , it was frequently in unflattering terms:Rogan is a conservative who opposes virtually all forms of guncontrol. He supports Proposition 187 and, on the basis of oneevening spent with the Border Patrol, has made inflammatorystatements about the motivations of Mexican immigrants ( lo /31 94 , B-6) and then theres Pete Wilson . . .who grandstandson the volatile illegal immigrant issue, even advocating the odi-ous Proposition 187 . . . he is utterly, totally, hopelessly wrongon Proposition 187 (10/30 /94, M-6).In con trast, the opponents of Proposition 187 were posi-tively portrayed as farsighted (11/ 12 /94, B-7), eloquent,and prominent (1 2/ 6/ 94 , B-20). If the opponent was a can-didate for office, then he or she was termed co ~rageou s~l o /28 /94, B-6), brave, widely-regarded an d a top-tier contender(1 0/ 21 /9 4, B-6). Opponents were named an d their photosometimes accompanied the editorial. Conversely, no photosof Proposition 187 proponents made th e editorial page of theLos Angeles Times during the period under study. This rhe-torical structure of foregrounding opponents an d background-ing prop one nts served to diminis h the s tan din g of theProposition 187 spokespeople.

Likewise reports that bolstered the anti- 187 position werecarefully cited, even the ungainly Summary of LegislativeAnalysts Estimate of Net State and Local Government FiscalImpact. Such reports were lauded by Los Angeles Timesedito-rial writers as: penetrating and time-proven analyses written

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by highly regarded professionals of whom Republican andDemocratic legislators alike avail themselves (11 2/94, B-6).In contrast, no reports or studies in support of Proposition 187were ever named in the editorials.The characterization of the unnamed voters for andagainst Proposition 187 was also asymmetrical. On the onehand , there were the thoughtful Californians and the resi-den ts of a mature California (9116/9 4, B-6). These peoplestood in contras t to California voters lured by the quick fix(10 /27 /94 , B-6), who abandon all reason (11/2 /94 , B-6),and define illegal immigration as nothing but a problem-ignoring the powerful economic benefits that derive from thisvaluable labor pool (11/2 /94 , B-6). After the election, theLos Angeles Times continued its articulated opposition toProposition 187 in a rare explanation of the vote: It is hardlysurpris ing that the global backlash against population pres-sure by poor people is a powerful force here, where a deeplyrooted middle class perceives itself to be threatened and viewsexisting public policy as ineffectual. Proposition 187 is asymptom, not a cure (11/ 13 /94, B-18).

The argument structure of the Los Angeles Timeseditorialsis regular and uncomplicated. Van Dijk ( 199 1, 133)suggests thatstatements of opinion in editorials fall into three categories: defi-nitional, explicative, and moral. Defining opinion statementsanswer the question: What happened? Explicative opinionsaddress the question: Why did it happen? and at times pro-vide an account of causes for particular events. Moral opinionssubsume prediction, recommendation, conclusion, and moralpronouncement by answering the question: What should bedone? Van Dijks classification describes the LosAngeles Timeseditorial structures. In its attention to topics involving Proposi-tion 187 and illegal immigration (asundocumented migrationwas invariably termed), the Los Angeles Timesmore frequentlyassumed the role of a teacher than a preacher (Page and Shapiro1989).The LosAngeles Timesseldom resorted to moral opinions,but often posed didactic yes/no questions that were elaboratedin the body of the text and explicitly answered. Alternatively,editorial writers posed rhetorical questions a t the end of an ex-planatory portion of the editorial that was structured to persuadethe reader of the Los Angeles Timespoint of view.

We turn to one particular editorial for more detailed discus-sion. The LosAngeles Timespublished it a month before the voteon Proposition 187. Its argument structure reveals the ideological161


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stance of the editorial writers. The Law of Unintended Conse-quences (10/2/93, M-4) begins first with a n explicit moral themeand an evaluative theme, both of which are stated as questions:I s a referendum that roils schools and makes snoops out ofteachers what California wants? And, will California producethoughtful policy that can be a model for the nation or a half-baked approach that could have dangerous consequences? Theexplicit answer is offered: We strongly recommend a novote.(The contrast of thoughtful policy to a half-baked approachis reiterated throughout the editorial.) The editorial writers ex-plain why Proposition 187 has become a fever pitch issue, ref-erencing the supporters of Proposition 187 and their emotionaland irrational presentation of the topic (especiallyas comparedto the LosAngeles Timeseditorial writers).The preceding serves as introduction to the main themeof the piece: Proposition 187 will produce many unintendedbad results much like Proposition 13, which was an inadvert-ent fiscal disaster for state and local communities. While ad-mitting that Proposition 187 is appealing since it is based onthe assumption that something must be done, the editorialwriters reject Proposition 187 by posing six unintended con-sequences of its approval: Decimate this states low-wage la-bor pool; Deny people basic medical care; Throw kids outof school; Turn teachers into spies; Send a message thatis counterproductive; and Risk losing federal aid.The six consequences become capitalized headings for sixsubsequent paragraphs of the editorial, each elaborating thepredicted negative consequence. The format of the headingsinvokes the question posed at the outset of the editorial: IsProposition 187 what California wants?A s an example, to answer the question of whether Califor-nia should decimate its labor pool, the editorial writerscharacterize immigrants as a low-wage, high productivity la-bor force that provides California with positive economic ben-efits, making it the envy of the world. The editorial writersspecifically mention the industries most often associated withthe gross exploitation of immigrant labor: garment manufac-turing and agribusiness.

An explicit answer is given to the question: What drawsmost immigrants? The experts are virtually unanimous.. .thelure is jobs, however ill-paid, not welfare. The editorial writ-ers then recommend that the United States and Mexico workout a n arrangem ent th at acknowledges the magnet ,162


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minimizes the exploitation, and discourages illegal resettle-ment in the United States .Along the way, the editorial writers define the Public Good

as policy decisions taken with the long-term perspective in mind.Short-term policy decisions, for example barring children fromschool, are associated with the proponents of Proposition 187.They also remind their readership that many children of immi-grants are citizens who are fully entitled to public educationand restate the unconstitutionality of Proposition 187 as a statereferendum designed to supersede federal law.This brief description does not enumerate all the pointsmade in this well-constructed commentary. The Los AngelesTimesconcludes that 187 purports to offer a simple answerto a complex phenomenon; it really is no answer a t all. I t thensummarizes its effect on immigration, its legal consequences,and i ts social divisiveness.

There is little overt moralizing in th is editorial, which is rep-resentative of other LosAngeles Timeseditorials. The argumentsagainst Proposition 187 are framed in terms of financial irre-sponsibility, poor legal wording, practical unenforceability, andsocial divisiveness.

Conflict or Concord in Representation?It might be argued, then, that a conflict exists between theanti-Proposition 187 editorial position and the anti-immigra-tion metaphors of its news stories. The political position ar-ticulated in the Los Angeles Timeseditorials was undercut bythe DANGE ROUS WATERS metaphors. Since the judgment of theCalifornian electorate was overwhelmingly in favor of Propo-sition 187, it would seem tha t the metaphors promulgated bythe various news writers, editorial writers, pundits, andspokespeople quoted in the Los AngeEes Timesweakened theanti-Proposition 187 th ru st of the editorials, since the meta-phors invoked peril and urgency, which contradicted the sta-tu s quo and fiscal arguments of the editorials.The existence of conflicting ideological stances between theLos Angeles Times news reports and editorials is not likely,however. In a volume studying public opinion as a dependentvariable, Page an d Shapiro (1989) note the important, long-standing biases of U.S. newspapers. In order of rank , the mostpronounced is a nationalistic and ethnocentric bias, followedby a n anti-Communist an d pro-capitalistic bias with an

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associated theme of maligning the political Left. The third andfourth are a minimal government bias and a pro-status quo,pro-incumbent bias. While it must be stated that such blan-ket generalities have little value if overextended, the tenden-cies toward nationalist and pro-status quo biases threadthrough the LosAngeles Timesrepresentation of immigrationto the public during the 1994 political year.

We argue, then , tha t although the Los Angeles Timesedi-torials are in opposition to Proposition 187, they do not takea pro-immigrant stance. The Los Angeles Timesused the termillegal immigration thirty times more frequently than a moreneutral term such as noncitizen. It did not use the pro-immi-gration term, undocumented immigrant. While describingProposition 187 as a unconstitutional and nativist referen-dum, the Los Angeles Timesalso describes immigration as avery real problem (11/ 10/94 , B-6) requiring a solution ( l o /30/94, M-6). A s Donald Schon would predict, the so-calledsolution is shaped by the narrative of the dominant metaphor:IMMIGRAT ION AS D A N G ERO U S WATERS. The Los Angeles Times solu-tion is to beef up border enforcement (12/ 16/94, B-6), toregulate the flow of workers, and to establish a bilateralaccord.. asa way of controlling the immigration flow (11 26/94, B-7). In the Los Angeles Timesview, this will permit theorderly movement of temporary workers into agriculture an dother industries in which they are needed (10 /30/94, M-6).Thus, the Los Angeles Timescharacterization of immigrationin its editorials can be described as follows:

Immigration is a permanent part of the California social settingan d provides a steady, net economic benefit to the s tate . Califor-nia has always absorbed immigrants without disrupting estab-lished power relations, including Anglo cultu ral dominance. Recentimmigrant population increases during an economic recessionhave led to vocal nativist anger, yet the increases have not dis-rupted dominant power relations. Proposition 187 is an extremeproposal to eliminate this valuable labor pool. I t will create eco-nomic disequilibrium across all economic sectors. I t is more costlythan doing nothing. The federal government has become awareof nativist anger. This perception will effectively lead to federalresponses to reduce the flow of immigrants at minimal cost to th estate. California will then stand to gain even more as the laborpool is controlled to serve its economic interests.Narrative 2. TheLos Angeles Timespolitical position on immigrants

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A s the narrative summarizes, the editorial emphasis on fis-cal arguments obscures the humanity of undocumented work-ers, much in the same way that the DANGEROUS WATERS metaphordoes. There was almost no discussion in the Los Angeles Timeseditorials of the human costs borne by the immigrants, but onlythose borne by citizens and the state. Human rights and dig-nity were never broached. In the six months of editorials underconsideration, economic exploitation of immigrants was onlymentioned twice. Frequently cited were the financial benefitsthat immigrant labor brings to agribusiness and garment manu-facturing. The Los Angeles Timeseditorials fail to mention thatthese are associated with immigrant abuse. The Los AngelesTimeseditorial writers made a concerted effort to educate theirreaders about the excesses of Proposition 187, but did not at-tempt to explain the economic engines driving internationalmigration. Its rejection of Proposition 187 was most indignantwhen it came to the possible monetary losses to the state-notthe daily human costs sustained by the immigrants, or the ethi-cal obligation of a citizenry that profits from their energies. Theso-called solution proposed by the Los Angeles Timeswas toregulate immigration flow to better exploit the pool of low wage,high productivity labor pool.Further evidence that the Los Angeles Times news reportmetaphors and the editorial argument structure are not in con-flict, but share a view of dehumanized immigration, is found inthe absence of contestation between the newspapers genres.While Halliday (1978) notes the existence of anti-languages(oppositional discourses that evolve outside of the dominantdiscourse in order to controvert its practice), Fairclough (1989,9 1)proposes that even within the dominant discourse there arecontained anti-languages. In the case of the LosAngeles Times,if ideological support for Proposition 187 existed within thenewspaper, one might find a contained anti-language, that isto say, evidence in the news reports that the newswriters dis-avow the Los Angeles Timeseditorial position. For example, adecidedly more anti-immigrant expression might be manifestin news reports, in defiance of the dominant editorial discourse.Nothing of the sort was detected, however.In sum, by comparing the metaphor representation of thediscourse of IMMIGRATION in the Los Angeles Timesnews reports,and the editorial argumentation in the LosAngeles Timesdur-ing a political campaign that targeted undocumented immi-gration, we find that the Los Angeles Times anti-Proposition

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187 editorial stance is compatible with the dominant DANGER-O U S W A T E R S m etaph or . Bo th t he ed i to r i a l wr i t e r s andnewswriters, by means of editorial argument s tructu res andprose metaphors, emphasize controlling the volume of immi-gration. The editorial emphasis is on immigrants and immi-gration as a commodity. Consequently, however anti- 187 theeditorials are, they are also anti-immigrant. They argue forconventional solutions to a perceived problem, rather thanattempting to reconceptualize immigration. To address the so-called immigration problem, they call for better regulation ofCalifornias renewable resource. With this fiscal point of view,the Los Angeles Times readily passes over the human costs,the ethical responsibility that Californias public should as-sume as the principle economic beneficiaries of the low-wagelabor of immigrant workers, and the international sources ofand reasons for immigration.

ConclusionThe present study ha s engaged the actual texts of the publicdiscourse on immigration, as sampled from the Los AngelesTimes.Two analyses were chosen to reveal the material ele-ments of the political discourse that conceptually framed theconcept of immigration for California voters in 1994. First, themetaphors used to describe immigration in Los Angeles Timestexts were analyzed with a method based on a cognitive theorytha t takes metaphor to be a central means by which hu m an sconceptualize worldviews and values. The dominant metaphorused by all parties in the debate was a distinctly anti-immi-grant metaphor that tends to evoke fear and concern amongthe electorate, DANGEROUS WATERS. N o sustained alternative meta-phoric representation of immigration was found in the newstexts of the Los Angeles Times.In the second analysis, the argumentation s tructure of theLos Angeles Timeseditorials were analyzed to reveal an ideol-ogy that commodifies immigrants and discredits the referen-dum because of its fiscal, not human costs. In both theselanguage analyses, the ideological character of public discourseand of the Los Angeles Times editorials were appraised andfound compatible.

The public discourse of 1994 in California, as revealed inthe metropolitan newspaper of the largest city in Californiaand the largest Latino city in the United States, dehumanized

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immigrants. The Los Angeles Times ideology conceptualizedimmigrants in metaphoric and argumentational terms thatmade it acceptable, commonplace, and natural to overlook thehumanity of nearly two million people when speaking aboutimmigration to California.

RecommendationsGiven the constitutive power of metaphor, certain observationscan be noted. For one, the predominant metaphor, D A N G ERO U SWATERS, did not make reference to the economics of immigra-tion, as did others such as IMMIGRANT AS BURDEN or IMMIGRANT ASCRIMINAL. The theme of this predominant metaphor, and indeedthe crux of the referendum, was not fiscal, bu t cultural. Thedebate on immigrant costs and benefits, on the so-called wel-fare lure (11/19 /94, A-l) , or on the international magneteffect of Californias taxpayer-financed health programs (9/1/ 93 , A-1) was less important, as measured by the numbersand types of metaphors it generated. For the electorate, fearof loss of Anglo-American hegemony was the ultimate concernin Proposition 187. Citizens Together organizer Glenn Spen-cer expressed this agitation in Example 16 when he said, Idont want my grandchildren to live in chaos. Isnt thatenough? When the anxiety is more palpable, as in Example27, then the metaphors tend to become militaristic:

27. Weve lost ou r cou ntry without ever firing ashot, a man said. And theyve done it using ourmoney. (8/30/93,-1)

Social sentiment, worldview, and the underlying deep val-ues of the public may be sampled in the immigration meta-phors of public discourse. Metaphor analysis provides anexplanation for the behavior of the electorate a t large and thesupporters of Proposition 187, in particular throughout thepolitical season. They were found by Mehan (1997) to be dis-missive of the rational discourse of authorities on the eco-nomics of immigration. Instead they were interested inpersonal anecdote about the alien marauder (9 /6 /9 3, A-1)or fortune-seekers 6/21/93, A-3). Economics, it seems, wasbesides the point.The metaphor analysis undertaken in this article may beused to evaluate the effectiveness of political strategies, both

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for social scientists and social advocates. For example, from ourpoint of view, the pragmatic political strategy taken up by main-stream opponents to Proposition 187 was self-defeating. Theyadmitted that undocumented immigrationwas a serious prob-lem (9 /26/94, A-16), while averring its economic benefits (11/24/93, A-1). In addition to being contradictory, this strategyconceded the anti-immigrant values encapsulated in the DAN-GEROUS WATERS metaphor, rather than offering an alternativemetaphoric vision of immigration to the United States.These comments are not a rebuke of advocates of immi-grants or progressive ethnic politics. The aim of this post hocanalysis is to focus attention on the force and pervasivenessof the I MMI GR ATI ON AS D A N G E R O U S WATERS metaphor. Its potency inconstructing a worldview is vast, in so far as the premises ofits grounding epistemology, Experiential Realism, are valid(Lakoff 1987).Additionally, the preponderance of DANGEROUS WATERS meta-phors demonstrates the unique access an d control of the me-dia in diffusing a steady stream of stories and imagery, whichin this case reinforced a single rendering of immigration, ratherthan multiple renderings. The media have unique access tothe public and control over the form of the message that isdisseminated (van Dijk 1993). Thus, responsibility lies withthe media to take into full account the role metaphor plays inmaking the social world comprehensible. The unrealized re-sponsibility of journalism, then, is to provide the full range ofimages that their readership needs to reflect broadly the so-cial and political world. For the responsible press writer, rec-ognition of the constitutive power of prose metaphor mightaffect daily copy. Alternative metaphors would give indispens-able balance to news stories, which the readership evaluatesin terms of metaphoric understanding, and not solely by wayof rational reflection on facts and figures.The authors admit to a sense of frustration with Californiasunderstanding of immigration, as expressed in its public dis-course. Metaphor analysis, in our view, unearthed the depthand ubiquity of the societal values of the referendum voters.The D A N G ERO U S WATERS metaphor signals continuing misgivingsabout Latinos and our apparently still foreign culture. Still,we can point to the historical contingency of a societysworldview, particularly its political aspects. The metaphors thatstructure society are malleable. Woolard (1989) has demon-strated the efficiency of insurgent metaphor in reconstructing168


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an electorat es view of a political issue. For progressive poli-tics, which almos t by definition are a minority enterpri se, morecreative and concerted use of insurgent metaphors is criticalto fashion a coherent and compelling political agenda that iscompatible with notions of social justic e and the best, deeplyheld American values of fair play.

NotesWe are grateful for the research support of the Chicano MetaphorProject students: Pamela Alcoset, Elva Cortez, Enrique Covarrubias,Cristina Fernandez, Luis Garibay, Darlene Gomez, Valente Guzman,Pedro Jimenez, Steve Lozano, Ramona Ortega, Diana Martinez,Eduardo Rivas, and Monica Villalobos. This research was supportedby the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the Committee onResearch of the UCLA Academic Senate , the UC California PolicySeminar, and the Ford Foundation. We benefited from the trenchantand complementary readings of two anonymous readers for Az t lh .We would like to thank Guillermo Hernkndez, UCLA Chicano Stud-ies Research Center Director, for his critical endorsement. We areindebted to the Dean of Social Sciences, Scott L. Waugh, and theAssociate Vice Chancellor, Raymund A. Paredes, who supported thedissemination of this research a t various conferences. The views andopinions expressed here are those of the principle author and do notnecessarily represent those of the California Policy Seminar or theRegents of University of California.

1. Linguistics has both constructivist and positivist streams ofresearch. Constructivism encompasses both Critical Discourse Analysisan d cognitive metaphor theory. Constructivism assumes tha t cogni-tion is a mental construction. Its tenets contrast with those of thepositivist paradigm. Within the positivist point of view, the social worldis made u p of things that are independent of our thinking an d haveconstitutions unaffected by human interaction. Consequently, thesethings fall into evidently natural groupings. When we turn our atten-tion to them, the so-called natural categories of these social objectsmay be discovered, an d we can make statements tha t mirror our dis-coveries. One linguistic goal within the positivist paradigm is to providethe means to accurately transmit these statements about the osten-sible immanent order of the world. These are s tated in terms of logi-cally consistent propositions that correspond to the real social world.Emphasis in positivist theories is placed on th e expression of so-calledfacts. Ways of expression that are non-factual or figurative are less

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Santa Ana, Moran, and SBnchez

important. In strong forms of positivist linguistics, literal sentencesare normal and unmarked. Non-literal expressions such as metaphorcan only be understood by means of literal ones. Thus, in order tounderstand the expression Truth is the daughter of Time, he positivistrequires a corresponding literal expression, such as Truthful state-ments are consistent with real world facts and logical inference. Sincein this positivist view the interpretation of metaphor is dependent on acorresponding literal expression, metaphor consequently is a n inci-dental aspect of language. On the other hand, to various degrees,constructivists have imputed a larger role in humankinds way ofmaking sense of the world through metaphor and other associatedlanguage behavior, as is the case in the present research.

2. Two sets of labeling conventions are used. In the metaphoranalysis, following the conventions of cognitive metaphor research,italics indicate that reference is being made to a particular word,such as garden. Metaphors a re also italicized. The specific word onwhich the token of the metaphor turns, as in blossom, is pointedout with boldface in the enumerated examples. The use of capitals,as in PLANT, indicates the semantic domain.3. Lakoff (1993) dist inguishes between the labels of metaphoricmappings and the metaphoric mappings themselves. The labels, suchas LOVE AS MADNESS,re mnemonic names for a se t of mappings ofconceptual correspondences between a source and a target domain(1993, 207). In this article, such mappings will be presented. Themappings are an effort to characterize the ontological correspon-dences between the entities of the source domain th at are mappedonto the target domain. By convention and for convenience the namesof mappings are also called the metaphor.

4. For an illuminating summary of metaphoric thinking, see Gibbs1994.5. A s noted above, the premises of this research paradigm areconstructivist, no t positivist. From the point of view of constructivistlinguistics, the measures of theoretical success are: conceptual co-herence across as many semantic domains as possible; and a com-prehensive account ing of the linguistic expressions in t he text. A s ananonymous Aztlcin reader pointed out, a positivist criticism ofcognitivist arguments is that they do not prove that metaphoricreasoning leads to cultural cons truc ts. Skeptics of the constructivistenterprise will hold the converse; namely, tha t for the case of LOVE ISMADNESS,ur cultural cons truct of love leads us to make statementssuch as When Thelma is around I cant control myself: Cognitivistscounter that the meaning, use, a nd source of this an d a tho usan dconceptually related statements about LOVE cannot be explained withinthe positivist framework, and are falsely described in non-cognitiveaccounts as merely accidental tur ns of phrase. Within constructivistcognitive linguistic theory, each such example is understandable

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precisely because it is linked by networks of inferences and entail-ments that are metaphoric at base. Furthermore, cognitivist theoryspecifically acknowledges cultural domains of metaphor, such asLOVE. Other domains, such as UP-DOWN orientational metaphors areargued to be universally embodied for huma ns , since as infants,regardless of our particular cultural sett ing, each of us mu st come toterms with the fact that we are creatures subject to gravitationalforces . The paradig mat ic conf lict be tween posi t iv is ts a n dconstructivists will not be resolved in this article.6. Metaphors and other quotes from the Los Angeles Timesareidentified by a month, day, year, an d article page number; for ex-ample (10 /28/9 4, A-3).

7. he term deixis refers to the use of words such as that, this,them, those, here and there, among others, that index or point outthings in the world. Deixis creates ad hoc classifications of THIS ver-sus THAT. When people are involved, deixis is the principle means tocreate the Other. For a discussion of deixis in the Proposition 187debate, see Mehan (1997) ,and Johnson (1994)on the constructionof Chicano/Mexicano/Anglo identity along the Mexico-U.S. border.

8. There is a view that metaphor above all is a rhetorical devicethat writers chose to enhance their compositions. This is true inpart . However, to assume tha t style is the only purpose of metaphoris to ignore the extent to which metaphor is woven into language,natural language texts, and discourse. Indeed, one of the mostgrammaticalized components of linguistic st ructure, prepositions,are metaphorically based. Chilton extends this criticism against thepurely rhetorical view of metaphor in political discourse by remind-ing us th at metaphors are passed back a nd forth between partici-pants in dialogues and conversations, giving communicative cohesion,and providing a means for both consensus an d conflict (1996, 37).

9. The Los Angeles Timesis now commercially archived on com-pact discs (CD-News).The archived articles are purchased fully in-dexed. This permits the retrieval of every article published for a givenperiod that was indexed under a heading, such as illegal alien orimmigration.Thus the data-gathering is systematic, not ad hoc, sincethe texts to be studied were selected on the basis of a n indepen-dently derived index. The computer files of each article were thenread by different people and coded for metaphorical information,thus providing intersubjective assessment of the metaphor tokens;that is, a newstext instance of a metaphor. Each token was inputtedinto a computerized database with seventeen pieces of journalistic ,metaphorical and contextual information. When a source an d targetdomain was first assigned to individual tokens, it should be notedthat the names given to the semantic domains were in no way re-stricted or in any conscious way predetermined. The only mandatewas to try to specify the source an d target domains . Thus there was

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a great deal of variation in the initial inputting . The next s tep was toedit the database. Alphabetic sorting of the database on the sourcedomain placed all tokens with similar source dom ains together. Thewording used to characterize similar source domains was then re@-larized so that , with the next alphabetic sorting, similar tokens wouldgroup together. This cycle of sorting and editing was repeated untilall the tokens were arranged systematically. Through th is procedurethe research team became familiar with the database , an d the majortypological dimensions of the source conceptual domains becameclear. This procedure was remarkably enlightening. The same cyclicprocedure was followed for the target domain, in order to organizeand unde rstand the conceptual dimensions of the datab ase. Throughthese sort and edit cycles, the source a nd domain labels were clari-tied, one token at a time in full context. N o particular conclusion wasforced, a lthough clear patterning emerged.10. Another criticism of the cognitivist account of metaphor isthat mappings are considered to be constitutive. More accurately,the ontological mappings are constitutive, while the particular word-ings of each individual token in the text is a n ins tantiation of themapping. The mappings of the immigrant and immigration are bothlinked to more encompassing domains s uc h as NATION AS HOUSE andNATION AS BODY. See Chilton (1996)for a sophisticated analysis of themetaphors articu lating Cold War international relations which alsoinvoke NATION AS HOUSE and BODY metaphors. These abstract mappingsmust be interlinked in order to make sense of the world. Thus themappings create hierarchical relations across semantic domains,which is the level of abstraction at which the constitutive claim ismade. On the other hand , as presented in Table 1, the classificationof dominant, secondary, and occasional metaphors operates at thelevel of text an d is based on quantity as well as coherence of meta-phor tokens.

11. Example 1 contains ano ther metaphor, namely whipping boy,because this particular token ha s I M M I G R ~ N Tas its target domain, andnot IMMIGRATION, which is the semantic domain discussed in this ar-ticle. This metaphor was recorded in the full database. There arealso metaphors that pertain to the Proposition 187 issue, but thatinvolve neither immigrant or immigration target dom ains. These willnot be discussed in this article, but along with other associated meta-phors, and other California referenda, are being investigated in abook-length project.

12. The Morse code signal call for help was originally chosenbecause of the ease of signaling the sequence . . . - - - . . . and notbecause of any reference to meaning.13. Another criticism of the cognitive metaphor app roach notedby a n anonymous Aztldn reader is th at the full range of entailmentsan d implications noted in Narrative 1 are not made in each article or

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by each news writer, thus the narrative is unsubstantiated. Spacedoes not permit listing the 115 DANGEROUS WATERS instantiations lo-cated in 1 17 Los Angeles Timesarticles, but they do subs tantia te thenarrative. For the metaphor analysis to be valid, it is not necessarythat each individual writer articulate the full narrative. Lakoff hasnoted th at the full range of entai lments of a metaphor a re tacit withthe first linkage of separate semantic domains, an d available to beemployed by others. If any associated entailments are metaphori-cally invoked, unde rstanding among interlocutors i s made by au to-matic reference to the other stated associations. It is from thesenetworks of associations tha t each entailment draws its comprehensi-bility. Brimelow also uses the DANGEROUS WATERS metaphor. In fact hisbook-length discussion of immigration provides a good example ofthe use of the entire DANGE ROUS WATERS narrative. Moreover, a goodwriter can evoke a whole narrative in a few sen tences (asexemplifiedin th e long Los Angeles Times excerpt),which is a ske tch of lifeboatethics. Finally, the use of metaphor to establish a narrative (calleda n allegory in medieval scholarship) is not limited to political d is-course. Scientific spheres of thought often evoke metaphors, suchas comparing the solar system to a n atom.

14. Subervi-Velezs (1994) comprehensive review of media cov-erage of Latinos, in mass media ins titutional terms , indicates seri-ous shortcomings continue to disfavor Latinos. News report studiestha t find a n anti-Latino bias include Fishman an d Casiano (1969),Sanchez (1973), Chavira (1977), Gutierrez (1977), Tan (197 8),Fernandez an d Pedra

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