Infesting our country: discursive illusions in anti-immigration border talk

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how, despite the need to flee dangerous regions, online and print newspapers rely on negative portrayals of migrants and immigrants to forward nationalist positions, including the belief that so-called foreigners are a threat to the security and economic well-being of a nation. Specifically, using the Discourse of Illusion as our main analytic framework, the analysis demonstrates the ways in which dehumanization is central to forwarding ideological positions against migration. Our findings are then used to discuss larger issues of how media is transforming the ways in which political ideologies are constructed and circulated.

全世界范围内的移民都有躲避危险的需求。尽管如此，媒体则在大肆负面报道世界各地的移民潮。本文以纸媒和网络新闻为数据，研究了媒体如何通过对移民的负面报道彰显其国家主义情结。例如，在报道中，记者表达了移民对国家安全和国内经济的威胁，体现出媒体对国家的保护。本文采用了幻象话语 (Discourse of Illusion) 这一分析框架。分析证明了非人性化的是媒体体现其反移民意识形态的核心手段。文章的结论表现出政治意识形态对媒体报道的影响。特别是，政治意识形态是如何在媒体报道中建立和传播的。

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• borders
• migrants
• critical discourse analysis
• media

关键词:

• 移民问题、边界、 移民者、批评性语篇分析、媒体

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christopher J. Jenks is Associate Professor and MA Programme Leader in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research is broadly related to three areas: discourse analysis, global Englishes, and English language teaching. Within these sometimes overlapping areas, he investigates issues ranging from translingualism to Asian Englishes. He is particularly interested in how spoken and written discourse performs a range of communicative actions (e.g. trolling and arguing) and indexes a number of social phenomena (e.g. nationalism and race).

Aditi Bhatia is Associate Professor and Postgraduate Programme Leader in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is interested in the discursive construction of social and political phenomenon from a critical discourse analytical perspective. Her goal is to better understand how people in society use language in identity-construction and argumentation. Her most recent book, Discursive Illusions in Public Discourse, puts forward a multi-perspective discourse analytical framework, which seeks to theorize and analyze how ideological arguments posed by competing groups are formed and spread in society for the purpose of achieving collective consent.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 NGOs define immigrants and migrants in terms of the following: ‘An immigrant is someone who makes a conscious decision to leave his or her home and move to a foreign country with the intention of settling there. Immigrants often go through a lengthy vetting process to immigrate to a new country. A migrant is someone who is moving from place to place (within his or her country or across borders), usually for economic reasons such as seasonal work.’ (https://www.rescue.org/article/migrants-asylum-seekers-refugees-and-immigrants-whats-difference) This paper adopts both terms to cover both person movement as well as intentional relocation.

2 The Telegraph is a daily British Broadsheet; it is considered to have a right-wing slant (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/03/07/how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers).

3 Comment Central is platform for news and policy debate.

4 CNBC is an American business news channel with a left-centre editorial slant (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cnbc/).

5 Brietbart is an American far-Right news and commentary website.

6 The American Spectator is a right-wing American news media website.