‘Like an animal I was treated’: anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse

K E Y W O R D S : immigrants, immigration, Latinos, metaphor, metonymy, political discourse, print media, Proposition 187, public discourse, racism Discourse & Society Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 10(2): 191–224 [0957-9265 (199904) 10:2; 191–224; 006826] ingly by voters in spite of a great deal of pre-election controversy surrounding its provisions. It was enjoined within hours of its enactment and ultimately determined to be unconstitutional by state courts. Proposition 187 would have denied a range of public benefits, including education and non-emergency health care, to undocumented immigrants in California. It would also have made school administrators, health care workers, social service personnel, police and other state employees responsible for establishing the immigrant status of clients and for notifying the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) of suspected undocumented immigrants for deportation. An examination of the metaphoric structures used in this type of public discourse will provide a reflection of the political language that ‘frames’ public opinion (Schön, 1979). The dominant immigrant metaphor used in the Los Angeles Times was IMMIGRANTS ARE ANIMALS. Since it has been argued that everyday metaphor embodies the common-sense world-view of its target domain (Gibbs, 1994), in this case undocumented immigrant workers, a picture is drawn of the way these individuals were characterized in public discourse during California’s most recent period of xenophobia.