The Role of Media in Shaping Public Perception of Immigrants

Immigration has become one of the most important topics in the political debate and the public media for the last decade. This study analyzes the patterns of words that the press uses to describe immigration and immigrants. We will focus on conceptual metaphors and their linguistic manifestations in the British, American and Croatian mainstream newspapers. This study attempts to gain an understanding of the strategic use of conceptual metaphors to construct and shape the context of the immigration discourse. The cognitive theory is outlined (see Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2002, Goatly 2007, Barcelona 2000, Croft et al. 2004) and applied to the immigration discourse as found in the public media (see Wodak 2015, van Dijk 2000, Cunningham-Parmeter 2012, Musolff 2015, Drulak 2006, etc.). The results of the analysis of a representative data of immigration metaphors show that a small set of 'conceptual frames' underlies the perception of immigrants. Several competing metaphors have been identified: immigrant=alien, migration=water, flood, immigration=movement/journey, etc. These metaphors are constantly repeated in different discourses that revolve around the concept of immigration. This study empirically attempts to identify how the media formulates its views about the migrants. In exploring the phenomenon of immigration we have used an interdisciplinary approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, including socio-political and linguistic perspectives. The outcome of this research may provide the relevant source for future research to measure media’s role in shaping and defining public opinion about immigration issues.


Introduction
Geo-political changes and new conflicts forced population movements and migrations to the European Union and the United States. The number of immigrants increased dramatically in 2015. This phenomenon has left its traces in different discourse types, especially in the language of politics and the media. In this paper we will focus on the following research objectives: a) to identify dominant metaphors that were used in the recent immigration discourse, b) to analyze the role of conceptual metaphors in shaping our perception of immigrants. This study tries to identify the most dominant metaphors employed in the newspaper coverage of immigration issues. The contemporary framing in public discourse on immigration is examined through a data-driven metaphor analysis. The corpus on which this analysis is based consists of the internet archives of the American, English and Croatian newspapers (150 articles). The results of the previous research will be reviewed.
In this paper the cognitive theory of metaphor is outlined (Lakoff & Johnson 2003, Kövecses 2002, Goatly 2007, Barcelona 2000, Croft, W., Cruse, A. D. 2004, Ungerer, F., Schmid, H. J. 1996, and it is applied to the selected data found in the public media. Many corpus-based linguistic analyses have already examined images of the immigrants in the media (e.g. Wodak 2015, van Dijk 2000, Cunningham-Parmeter 2012, Charteris-Black 2006, linking this topic with the cognitive linguistic theory. A recent study by Musolff (2015) shows how dehumanizing metaphors are used in mainstream newspaper coverage. This paper attempts to gain an understanding of the strategic use of conceptual metaphors in the context of the recent immigration discourse. We will examine the interrelations among metaphor, discourse and social context.

The concept of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees
The concept of immigration is complex by its nature and its metaphorical realization changes according to the context. According to CD (Cambridge Dictionary) available from https://dictionary.cambridge.org) the term immmigration is generally defined as 'the process by which people come into a foreign country to live there.' The meaning of migration is etymologically related to both animals and people, and it originally derives from the Latin migrationem to move from one place to another.
In the contemporary context, immigration has been conceptualized within a security framework, e.g. Such can be the case with drugs, immigration, health matters, natural disasters, international crime and ahost of other broad security matters. Available from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/immigration (Accessed 09/01/2019).
In the sam dictionary (CD online) the term immigrant is defined as 'a person who has come to a different country in order to live there permanently. ' Immigrants are often associated with some other terms such as asylum seekers and refugees. Asylum seeker (genuine/bogus asylum seekers) refers to 'someone who leaves their own country, often for political reasons or because of war, and who travels to another country hoping that the government will protect them and allow them to live there.' (CD online) The term refugee defines 'a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of a war.' (CD online) Wodak (2006) indicates that these two concepts (immigrant and asylum seekser) are mixed in the immigration debates in the UK, pointing out that new phrases can be produced, such as "illegal asylum-seekers", "illegal immigrants", "illegal refugees", "economic immigrants", "economic refugees", "bogus-asylum seekers" and "asylum bombers".
The distinction between asylum seeker and refugee is primarily a judicial one. Some other terms are used within the legal framework: legal/ illegal/undocumented immigrant, e.g.
The mixing of these words influences the immigration discourse in such a way that the public could hardly make a distinction between the two groups of immigrants.
The term guest worker defines 'a person who lives and works in a foreign country for a limited period of time, doing low-paid work'. e.g.
In the public debate immigrants are framed as a problem in three different areas: as a threat to national identity and security, and as a cause of unemployment. Judicial treatment of illegal, undocumented immigrants have been at the forefront of political, media, and institutional discourse.

Conceptual metaphors in media discourse on migration: cognitive approach
Metaphors are very powerful and natural cognitive processes, which help us to understand the complex issues in nature and our society. New metaphors change both the ordinary language we use and the ways in which we perceive and understand the world. People tend to define different metaphors according to familiarity in the way that more abstract or novel concepts are understood in terms of more concrete experiences. So, the concept of immigration is partially understood in terms of the more concrete concept of the water (waves, flood).
It is almost impossible to offer even a passing survey of the modern literature on metaphor. Many scholars from a variety of disciplines have produced new and important results in the study of metaphor. Therefore, we will focus our attention on those works which are relevant for the discussed topic.
In linguistics in the 1980s it became clear that metaphor was a cognitive phenomenon and that it was pervasive in human language. According to Lakoff and Johnson, metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature… If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor". (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 3). Petrie and Oshlag (1993: 582) claim that metaphor gives an answer to the question of how it is possible to learn something radically new. The essence of metaphor lies in understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. It allows one domain of experience, the target domain, to be reasoned about in terms of another, the source domain. A domain is a background knowledge structure which includes related words, concepts and inferences. Similar view is shared by Z. Kövecses (2002: 4): "Thus, abstract terms such as life, arguments, love, theory, ideas, social organizations are target domains, while journeys, war, buildings, food, plants, etc. are source domains. The target domain is the domain that we try to understand through the use of the source domain." However, in order to understand metaphorical projections cognitive linguists propose that one should start by finding the network of connections between the source and target domains.
Some immigration metaphors such as the wave of immigration and the immigrant invasion can be connected to a body of water or an army in a battle field (see Cunningham-Parmeter 2012: 1555-1556. It means that we can lay out a set of correspondences between the source and those of the target.

Data analysis
The corpus consists of 3020 words na 195 immigration metaphors. All articles which contained one immigration metaphor either in a headline or in the text were selected for sampling. Within the framework of cognitive linguistics we will analyze the collected data. The corpus is based on the analysis of the American, British and Croatian mainstream newspapers pu- In exploring the phenomenon of immigration an interdisciplinary approach is used, combined with the qualitative and quantitative research methods, including socio-political and linguistic perspectives (Rasinger (2008), Litosseliti (2010)).
The selection of conceptual metaphors was based on the immediate linguistic context and the source domain. Corpus-based approach to conceptual mappings allows us to investigate a range of contextual propeties of metaphors. We will rely on the ' source-induced' and 'context-induced' metaphors. According to Kövecses, Z. (2015: 15) some of the contextual and cultural factors '... play an important role shaping metaphorical conceptualizations, more specifically, in creating (often novel) metaphors'.
Nine different source domains are recognized in the collected data: humans, natural forces, movement, building/container, wars, object/non-human, plants, sports/games and animals. According to the results of the analysis, the words frequently associated with the phenomenon of immigration are the following: illegal, transit, undocumented, massive, uncontrolled, large-scale, high, unlimited, significant, unrestricted, excessive, unchecked, massive, large, vast and big. We have also analyzed the frequency of verbs associated with immigrants or immigration. The most frequent verbs are the following: accelerate, combat, control, curb, cut, discourage, guard, halt, increase, limit, manage, march, melt away, move forward, naturalize, prevent, protect, reduce, regulate, restrict, secure, stop, tackle, take action, uproot. These verbs clearly reveal our attitudes and intentions towards the immigrants. They are to be controlled, dicouraged, limited, etc.
The following table shows the results of the analysis of the selected data. Source domains will be accompanied by some representative examples:

Buildings/ containers
11% "Many of these people are serious, violent offenders, and I want them out of our communities and in federal detention centers now". 5.
Wars 10% "One of the most interesting, and possibly decisive, tugs of war in the immigration policy debate is happening largely beneath the radar of this nation's media organizations" 6.
Object/ non-human (cheap labour) 7% "These Americans see cheap immigrant labor as a way to enrich the wealthy while creating a near permanent underclass for whom the American dream is always just out of reach". 7.
Plants 6% "The city's immigration accelerated in the 1970s through a classic pattern of daisy chain migration with 'seed' immigrants sponsoring close relatives who eventually sponsored others". 8.
Sports/ games 5% "The new fees send the wrong message to people who want to play by the rules and are willing and able to work toward the American dream". 9.
Animal 4% "The county executive, Steve Levy, created an uproar last fall with a plan to protect the people of Suffolk from illegal alien fugitives".
According to the results of the analysis of the selected corpus the most frequent source domains of conceptual metaphors associated with immigration are the following: immigrant as an alien, immigrant as a flood, immigration as movement, etc. Due to limited space, only selected instances from corpus will be discussed.

a) Alien (23%)
Alien is confirmed as the dominant metaphor in the immigration discourse. The term illegal alien implies two components: otherness and illegality. Similar linguistic cathegorization of foreigners is found in Greek and Latin language (the Latin word barbarus 'strange, foreign, alien, barbarous,' from Greek barbaros' foreign, strange; ignorant'). Barbarian applies to whatever pertains to the life of an uncivilized people. There are two levels of conceptualization in this particular case: an immigrant can become an alien, the alien can become illegal (Cunningham-Parmeter 2012: 1555-1559. Aliens are often seen in the context of criminal activity and safety (illegal alien fugitives, criminal alien). In the following examples an immigrant is seen as an alien: (1) "A little help on illegal aliens". (New York Times, 06/02/2005: title, Available from https://www.nytimes. com/27/03/2019) (Accessed 01/04/2019).
(2) "She added: when ICE is carrying out the removal order of an immigration judge, our officers are responsible for the safety of the alien and members of public who come into contact with the alien on a commercial flight". The term alien is also used in order to provide a difference between us and them, implying that some people do not belong to a particular group in the society and cannot be considered as constituent part of it. These metaphors are used in the following examples: (6) "He cited Benjamin Franklin's complaint that German immigrants in Pennsylvania had made his home 'a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them'…". (New York Times, 31/03/2007: 54, Available from https://www.nytimes. com/28/03/2019) (Accessed 28/03/2019).
(7) "Illegal immigrants are imbedded in our nation, so allowing them to apply for a work visa would be a goodway to draw them in and set a path for them to become legal, said Mr. Nunez".

b) Natural forces (waves, flood, wind, storm, fire) > (21%)
The forces take many shapes in the physical world: waves, wind, storm, fire, etc. These forces effect various changes. Metaphorical conceptualization of several domains in terms of forces is reflected in the following examples: immigration=flood, immigration=tidal waves, immigration=stream, immigration=influx, etc. The results of the analysis show that the schematic conceptual metaphor immigration is a flood is quite frequent in English. The source domain natural forces (water, flood, waves, storm, etc.) covers 21% of the collected data.
The metaphor immigration is a flood provides an image of the natural disaster in order to speak about people who might present a potential danger for the society. This type of discourse involves the use of phenomena of tidal waves to underline the unpredictable movement of immigrants within the state. It is obvious that immigration is described in the terms of excessive flow of water having destructive abilities. Immigrants can also be regarded as a wave of largest invasion. This implies that certain action has to be taken in order to stop them from 'invading' the state (see Biria 2012: 38-39). Metaphorical conceptualization of several domains in terms of forces (water) is reflected in the following examples: (15) "That America is being overwhelmed by a flood of immigrants has become conventional wisdom across the political spectrum, presented in books from, on the right, Reihan Salam of National Review, the son of Bangladesh immigrants; in the center, Francis Fukuyama of Stanford, whose mother immigrated from Japan; and on the left, Jefferson Cowie of Vanderbilt University, who actually counsels his fellow progressives not to fear more immigration". The most effective metaphor is realized through the source domain of natural phenomena (storm, influx, waves, water) associated with migrants. Migrants are represented as a natural force that can destroy the welfare.

c) Movement (journey, path, marching, etc.) > (13%)
It is important to underline the role of the metaphor immigration is a journey. This metaphor forces people to understand that the process of immigration is complex. It implies a path with a certain goal and direction towards the ultimate goal. So, undocumented immigrants have to step forward, come out of the shadow and come into the sunlight (see Biria 2012: 35). Changes are often conceptualized metaphorically as movement (marching, move toward, to go much further...) that involves a change of location or to have a route. This is indicated by the following examples:  (23) "Ministar unutarnjih poslova Davor Božinović izjavio je u Zagrebu tijekom održavanja skupa Agencije za europsku graničnu i obalnu stražu (FRONTEX) da nema nikakvih naznaka oživljavanja balkanske rute u smislu nekih novih migrantskih valova"., Available from https://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/ b oz i n o v i c-n e m a -n a z n a k a -oz i v l j av a n j a -m i g ra n t s k ebalkanskerute/995914.aspx (Accessed 11/04/2019).

d) Container (11%)
With the rise of international migration, immigrants move from outside the state's boundaries, entering the territory of the host country.The nation/state is conceptualized as a bounded area (nation's border) or territory that has to be protected and kept secure from any external factors. It is important to underline the significance of the two metaphors nation as body and nation ashouse (or Europe as fortress) often used as a model of container metaphors. The following examples elaborate the use of container metaphors: (30) […] The door will have to be closed on more than 87,000 overseas students a year if overall net migration is reduced to the "tens of thousands" as promised by David Cameron. (The Daily Telegraph, 19/11/2010, Available from https://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8143514/ Foreignstudent-must-take-brunt-in-immigration-cuts-saysadviser.html (Accessed 28/02/2019).

f) Object or non-defined entity (7%)
Immigrants are seen as impersonal and they are a raw material, workforce, cheap labour, day laborers that can be easily replaced. Furthermore, they can be defined as a skeleton, which suggests that their physical structure and appearance is not compatible to the origins of a particular culture (see Biria  (44) "Some at yesterday's event said they feared that terrorists would slip through improperly protected borders or that legal workers would increasingly lose jobs to an illegal workforce". (45) "The Government doesn't have a clue how many illegal migrants make it into our country to join the estimated one million already here who have melted away into the black economy"., Available from https://www.express.co.uk/news/ uk/601556/Borderless-Britain-Torrent-stowaway-migrantshead-the-UK (Accessed 10/04/2019).
In these metaphors the current migration policy is represented in business terms in which migrants are defined as an object of trade between countries. They are perceived as commodified objects; that is, the objects that are "fairly distributed." They are just a cheap labour and workforce.

g) Plant (6%)
The results of the analysis show that 6% of the migration metaphors tend to conceptualize an immigrant in terms of plants and roots. Immigrants are often depicted as seed immigrants or as thorny parts of a particular society. The terminology which can be found within this context includes the metaphors like the new crop of immigrants. Furthermore, immigrants are seen as people who can spring up among a particular generation (examples from Biria, 2012: 24). The following examples are registered in the corpus: (51) "But his approach has ignited protests and raised old questions about the role of police departments in immigration matters, a thorny part of the rancorous national debate". (New York Times, 29/04/2007: 10, Available from https://www. nytimes.com/28/03/2019) (Accessed 28/03/2019).
(52) "The bill aims to reduce legal migration in the future by eliminating family sponsorships outside the overall numbers set by government, and ending the diversity visa, which brings thousands of fresh seed immigrants by lottery to New York each year". (New York Times, 30/05/2007: 59, Available from https:// www.nytimes.com/28/03/2019) (Accessed 28/03/2019).
(53) "The city's immigration accelerated in the 1970s through a classic pattern of daisy chain migration with 'seed' immigrants sponsoring close relatives who eventually sponsored others". (55) "It also raises the questions of whether one can simply uproot people from entirely different cultural universes and expect them to thrive in societies that may subscribe to other values, with radically different expectations of their citizens"., Available from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article3141005/Tidal-wave-migrants-biggest-threat-Europewar.html (Accessed 09/02/2019).

h) Sports/game (5%)
Games and sport are characterized by certain properties that are commonly used for metaphorical purposes. Metaphors such as to play by the rule or to tackle reform are often used in the immigration debate (see Biria 2012: 50-51). Additional examples from the domain of games and sport include: (57) "The new fees send the wrong message to people who want to play by the rules and are willing and able to work toward the American dream". (USA Today, 08/06/2007: 25, Available from https://www.usatoday.com/28/03/2019) (Accessed 28/03/2019).

i) Animal (4%)
Conceptual domain of animals is being mapped onto the conceptual domain of humans. Some newspapers depict immigrants as flocks moving across the border. This metaphor is used in the similar way like some expressions which can be found within the water category (see Cunningham-Parmeter, 1580-1585. Percentage of animal metaphors are quite limited in the corpus (4%). (61) "Administration officials said they were also planning to step up efforts to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who were members of street gangs. And they said federal agents would fan out across thecountry to hunt down alien fugitives who have discourses that revolve around an idea of immigration. The results of the data show that the most frequent source domain is the one in which immigrants are conceptualized as a foreign body within the host society or as illegal aliens (23%). The second source domain covers the context of natural forces (flood, waves, storm, etc.) frequently used (21%) in the public media. Immigrants can be also conceptualized in the terms of movement/journey in which they are depicted as passengers (13%). They have their own path to earned citizenship, they move toward citizenship, etc. The container metaphor (11%) is deeply ingrained in the human mind. It is an ontological metaphor in which some concept is represented as having an inside and outside. Immigrants are perceived as a group of people outside of the state or community. The state, nation is seen as a bounded area. Attitudes towards the immigrants is expressed in the following example: I want them out ofour communities. Immigrants are often conceptualized in the context of a war zone (10%) as invaders and conquerors. Common metaphor is battle over immigration. In some examples immigrants are perceived as non-defined entities (7%), such as illegal workforce, cheaplabor. The domain of plants (6%) is used as a source of metaphorical categorization of immigrants. In this context immigrants are depicted as seed immigrants or as thorny parts of a society. Games and sports (5%) are also used to conceptualize immigrant population, e.g. to play by the rules. In many cultures humans are commonly viewed as abnimals. Percentage of animal metaphors is quite low in the corpus (4%), e.g. to hunt down alien fugitives.
These examples raise important questions about the function of conceptual metaphors in political and media discourse. The migration debate in public media shows that immigrants are dominantly described in a negative context (crime, natural disaster, as non-humans, etc.). Consequently, this behavior creates the ideological dichotomy of "them" and "us".
It is quite evident that negative representation of migration is realized using metaphor (animal, plant, object, natural catastrophe/war, etc.). Judicial treatment of illegal immigrants have been at the forefront of public discourse (political, media, and institutional discourse), e.g. undocumented, illegal immigrants.
Empirical research in different languages has shown that the same conceptual metaphors are used in different national or local contexts. Namely, English and Croatian media reports use almost the same metaphors with reference to immigrants. The results of previous research show similar data (see Wodak 2015, Biria 2012, Cunningham-Parmeter, K. 2012, Musolff 2015, Drulak 2006. It seems that culture specific concepts begin to merge into global metaphors, e.g. immigration=flood; immigrants=aliens, plants, animals. We are faced with uniform conceptual framework of the immigrants in the mainstream media and Internet sources. We can also see the effect of social and political setting on metaphor use.
The 'toxic metaphors' of the migration debate deserve our attention. Namely, if we want to maintain our moral responsibility to report neutrally on immigration, there's good reason to pay attention to the choice of metaphors referring to the immigrants. These new metaphors can create powerful images of immigration and new perception of our reality. Further research is needed to clarify the role of media in shaping public attitudes to migration.