The Effect of Metaphors on portraying Immigration in Political speeches. A Biopolitical View on Rhetorics

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Framework
2.1 Biopolitics
2.2 Political Rhetoric
2.2.1 Introduction
2.2.2 Figures of Speech
2.2.3 Conceptual metaphor
2.3 State of the Art
2.4 Methodology

3. Results and Discussion
3.1 General findings
3.2 Specific Findings of metaphors in Trump’s Corpus
3.3 Specific Findings of metaphors in Biden’s Corpus
3.4 Discussion of Findings
3.4.1 Introduction
3.4.2 Disaster metaphors
3.4.3 War and Conflict metaphors
3.4.4 Container metaphors
3.4.5 Animal metaphors
3.4.6 Journey metaphors

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

6. Transcripts

7. Metaphors

Abbreviations, Tables and Figures

Abbreviations

CMT: Conceptal Metaphor Analysis

CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis

Tables

Table (1) Source domains of Metaphors in Trump's and Biden's corpus

Table (2) Source domains of Metaphors in Trump's corpus

Table (3) Source domains of Metaphors in Biden’s corpus

Figures

Figure (1) Cognitive schema activated by 'fire'

Figure (2) Cognitive schema activated by ‘flooding’

Figure (3) Cognitive schema activated by ‘danger’

Figure (4) Cognitive schema activated by ‘war’

Figure (5) Cognitive schema activated by ‘container’

Figure (6) Cognitive schema activated by ‘animal’

Figure (7) Cognitive schema activated by ‘path’

1. Introduction

Biopolitics as a field has been established by Rudolf Kjellen in 1905. It is depicting a nation as a super-individual creature (Esposito, 2008). Every political discipline that is concerned with the welfare system and all forms of life is part of the biopolitical field. Immigration is part of a specific field in politics, known as biopolitics. It is an intersectional field between human biology, society and politics.

Biopolitical rhetoric has been a field of study for many decades, beginning in 1979 with Thomas Wiegele’s Biopolitics: Search for a More Human Political Science. Wiegele reports on the aggressive emotional rhetoric to influence public opinion regarding specific biopolitical topics such as the effects of drug abuse or the consequences of genetic technology (Wiegele, 1979). In 2007, political scientist Charteris-Blacks study regarding rhetoric devices in British politics suggests that especially metaphors are used to influence the audience’s opinion regarding certain biopolitical topics, such as birth control (Foucault, 2003) and immigration (Charteris-Black, 2007).

The use of metaphors in political discourse has been a thoroughly researched topic, analysed by political scientists such as Charteris-Black. While metaphors in fictional texts have been studied for centuries for their stylistic purposes, the interest in metaphors in political discourse became an increasing source of studies in the 1960s (Mio, 1997) Most of these studies, especially Charteris-Black and Mio based their rhetorical research on the work of ancient philosopher Aristoteles (Charteris-Black, 2014; Mio, 1997). The reasons for using metaphors differ, the first is linked to making a message more understandable for a broad audience through simplification, the second is concerned with establishing a certain atmosphere regarding certain topics (Lakoff, 1991). Mio adds three more functions of political metaphors, persuasion, resonating with underlying symbolic representation and the stirring of emotions (Mio, 1997). For this paper, all four functions are relevant, although the focus lies on persuasion, stirring of emotions and the creation of a specific atmosphere in regard to a theme. The reason for this focus is that the main concern of this paper is the portrait of immigration through the usage of metaphors. The simplification function of metaphors is taken into account, but it does not contribute directly to the shaping of the portrayal of political topics (Mio, 1997).

Charteris-Black analysed the frequency of metaphors stemming from specific domains regarding immigration in 2007 and established that immigration metaphors are often linked to natural disasters, specifically to floods. An example is the often used ‘tidal wave’ metaphor. He also mentions that other immigration metaphors are linked to journey and have an overall more positive tone, though those were not found in his corpus data. The study focused mainly on right-winged politicians and suggested that the employment of disaster metaphors links to connotate immigration negatively (Charteris-Black, 2007).

Regarding this connection between the usage of metaphors and biopolitics in mind, it seems interesting to look at metaphors used in connection to immigration in American politics. Immigration has continuously been an important part of the political agenda, especially the immigration via the southern border. Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency in 2016 the treatment of immigrants at the US-Mexican border has changed.

The following citation from a speech given by Donald Trump during the election campaign is an example of the portrayal of immigrants as a threat.

‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people’ (Trump, Discussion about taxes, 2015)

The depiction of immigration in his speeches during his time of presidency can therefore be analysed to get an insight into his immigration politics and the way he justifies the changes at the southern border.

In contrast to Charteris-Black, who focused on the way the centre-right and the extreme-right portrayed immigration in metaphors, this paper aims to compare the metaphors found in the centre-right party of the Republicans and the centre-left party of the Democrats.

The methods with which the metaphors are analysed and categorised are the Conceptual Metaphor Theory on the one hand and the Critical Metaphor Analysis on the other hand. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, from now on named CMT, defines metaphors as a way of communicating about an abstract entity in terms of some other entities (Semino, 2008). The Critical Discourse Analysis, from now on called CDA, enables the researcher to identify, classify and categorise a metaphor as well as to determine the usage and tone of it.

This paper aims to show how and in which way metaphors are used to shape the audience’s opinion regarding immigration as a biopolitical subject. It addresses two corpora, each holding a total of four speeches by two politicians, namely Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, and Joe Biden, his political opponent. These two politicians have been selected as the leaders of their parties, the Republicans, a centre-right party and the Democrats, a centre-left party. Both parties abide by different policy regarding immigration, as established by political scientists such as Melissa Gomez (Gomez, 2020). To establish a common base, the selected speeches will all be from the time period between 2018 and 2020, falling into the period of U.S. election campaigns for the 2020 election. These speeches share a similar audience as well, aiming at possible voters for the election. Besides that, all speeches deal with the topic of immigration in a smaller or larger scale and aim at the current situation of immigration at the southern border since 2016.

The reader will be introduced to biopolitics with the help of Foucault’s main works Society must be defended and Roberto Esposito’s Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy and establish which rhetoric and stylistic devices are found most commonly in this specific field. Then it will establish the methodology used in the analysis, namely the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Critical Metaphor Analysis. Next, the speeches of Biden and Trump are analysed individually regarding their metaphors and then compared with each other. Finally, this paper is concluded and possible proposals for future research are established.

2. Framework

2.1 Biopolitics

The field of biopolitics was first defined and introduced by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen in his 1905 publication The State as a Form of Life. Kjellen introduced the idea that the institution of the state is in itself a biological organism that behaves like single being (Dettling, 2018). The consequences of this proposal are, for the state-body to survive and flourish, its inhabitants and government, compared by Kjellen to the organs and the brain, have to be diverse in their professions and act in unity (Tunander, 2001).Kjellen defined the state as a super-individual and leaned on metaphors to illustrate the validity of his proposal, describing the state as ‘lifeform’ with a ‘vitalism’ (Esposito, 2014, 16). He did not include how the inhabitants are controlled or influenced by the government to keep the state-body intact.

In the 1970s, Michael Foucault, a French philosopher, modified the term biopolitics by the definition to it as a ‘technology of power’ (Foucault, 2003).

He also mentions Kjellen’s idea of the state-body. Foucault explains that biopolitics as a "[...] new technology of power is not exactly society, nor is it the individual-as-body. It is a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot be easily counted.” (Foucault, 2003, 245). Biopolitics focuses on the population that makes up the state-body and is concerned with fertility, morbidity and the relations between the individuals in the population. The mechanisms within biopolitics include statistics, forecasts and measurement, all contributing to the power of regularization (Foucault, 2003). Those mechanisms are used to intervene in the respective fields, for example fertility, on a general level. These could include the modification of birth rates by establishing more of a work-life dynamic for young families in an effort to balance out the death rates in order to stabilise the population. The modification of birth rates is a good illustration of the power of regularization, which is, so Foucault, the redefined power of what has been the sovereign. Instead of taking lives and letting live, the power of regularization is dedicated to making live and letting die. It can not only control birth rates but also mortality. (Foucault, 2003).

Regarding the power of regularization, Foucault also mentions the functionality behind ‘State Racism’. The core of racism, according to Foucault, is to enforce the hypothesis that for the population to live and to flourish, other individuals or groups must disappear and die. It acts as a mechanism that dictates who is supposed to live and who is supposed to die.

State Racism can be used to justify certain political actions regarding specific groups, for example migrants. To establish a justification, it is vital to categorise the target group in a way that changes their value and portray them in a negative way (Wiertz, 2019). This is established by creating dissociation between the population and the target group, for example by establishing the ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality.

The ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality is based on the psychology of the human mind, which is inclined to judge and categorise. The mentality works by diverting groups based on their differences, for example race, nationality and wealth (Handel, 2013). Henri Tajfel, a British social psychologist drew a connection between the categorisation in ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ factions and ingroup favouritism (Tajfel et al., 1971). Members of the own group are favoured while members of the other group are rejected.

Another option to change the valuation of a target group is the use of specific rhetoric devices. The use of figures of speech such as parallelisms and metaphors can become tools to reduce the value of the target group by creating an atmosphere of fear around them (Brendese, 2014).

This means that, by social psychology and political rhetoric, a government can justify the exposure of migrants to physical harm and living conditions that may cause illness and death by establishing that migrant lives have a different value compared to the other parts of the population. Wiertz establishes that the categorisation of migrants in legal, illegal, voluntary and forced contributes to splitting the migrants into groups (Wiertz, 2019). This makes it easier to state whether or not a migrant should be allowed to become a citizen and a part of the state-body.

Roberto Esposito’s approach to biopolitics allows a good insight into why tate Racism as a mechanism works to dehumanise and objectify a specific target group, like in this example migrants. It introduces a new paradigm, immunization, to fill the gap between the two main piles of biopolitics, biology and politics (Esposito, 2008).

Immunization dwells on the same concept as the power of regularisation: to make life and let die. In contrast to it, Immunization functions as a combination. Like its eponym in the medical world, it works by introducing a small portion of a political pathogen, a disease agent , to cause immunity (Esposito, 2008). While the pathogen is not explained deeper in any of Esposito’s works, immunity becomes a key feature of his paradigm of immunization. Immunity functions based on the knowledge of what belongs to the state-body and acts destructive towards what seems to be pathological. (Bird, 2013). Regarding immigration, the immunity declares which criteria an individual must fulfil to be recognised as a citizen of a state, for example having a passport or paying taxes. Immunization is the driving force of immunity. The establishing of immigrants as a group that has a negative effect on the state body, creates the stimulus needed for the construction of criteria (Short & Bird, 2017).

The part that belongs to the state-body is described as community. The community works on a specific set of ‘identity-making’ rules linked to the relationship between the members (Esposito, 2013). This relationship is often based on common traits of the members, such as religion, a similar ethnic background, race, and wealth (Bird, 2013). Members of a community are called the proper by Esposito (Bird, 2013). By the ‘identity-making’ rules the community becomes an enclosure with the need of immunize itself against anything that is external, against the immune, the ‘non-being’, the ‘not-having’ anything in common (Esposito, 2008).

The immune, the ‘non-being’ outside the enclosure represents the improper and is a strong contrast to the proper, as Bird states:

“Already we have an organic dimension of the proper: what belongs to the body is that which contributes to its internal harmony, balance and integrity, while what is improper is what breaks down or attack such integrity.” (Bird, 2013, 7).

Bird continues by stating that the need to keep the inner peace of the community leads to an increasing fear of the improper which results in stricter ‘identity-making’ rules. This can then result in forms of discrimination such as racism (Bird, 2013). Anyone who does not fulfil all criteria of the community is then seen as an ‘alien’. An example given by Bird is the ability of the authority to demand citizenship papers from anyone that does not fit the criteria. This procedure is becoming more common in the United States and Europe (Bird, 2013).

This procedure is seen as the mechanism of State Racism, as display of biopolitical power as further described by Brendese, who uses the example of the 2010 ‘papers please’ law in Arizona, which does not only allow the authorities to demand the citizenship papers from anyone whom they suspect of not being a citizen. A lack of citizenship papers then leads to incarceration and deportation (Brendese, 2014). The following incarceration and deportation can be seen as an illustration of the immunization paradigm: The improper is detected, capsulated and ejected.

2.2 Political Rhetoric

2.2.1 Introduction

‘Rhetoric lies at the heart of politics’(Krebs & Jackson, 2007, 42)

This quote from Krebs and Jackson’s paper Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms points to the central role that rhetoric plays in politics. This is especially true for political communication. The reason for its importance lies within the characteristic of politics as a set of abstract concepts that must be explained and illustrated to the public in a simpler manner (Mio, 1997).

Rhetoric has been defined as the study of persuasive communication by political linguist J. Charteris-Black. It is underlined that rhetoric is also the study of effective communication, in oral as well as in written form. He addresses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to establish the function of rhetoric as a tool to identify, analyse and understand the means and methods of persuasion and to decide when which method is appropriate (Charteris-Black, 2014). If a speech or a statement is successful in persuading the respective audience, the rhetoric applied was effective. This is measured in a democracy by voting, whether it is in parliament regarding a proposed law or in a public election (Charteris-Black, 2014). Furthermore, to act as a device for persuasion, rhetoric can be used as a tool to produce conviction, as stated through Mio earlier (Mio, 1997).

Aristotle stresses that if an audience lacks knowledge regarding the theme of the argument, the use of rhetoric can lead to conviction by creating insight. Insight is gained by using ‘notions possessed by everybody’ (Aristotle, 2008, 7).

Regarding political rhetoric, Aristotle defines three additional functions based on three different motivations: creating acceptance to a proposal that they claim has a beneficial function, creating rejection to a proposal they claim has a disadvantageous function and judging a proposal as just or unjust by establishing the relation to the possible consequences (Aristotle, 2008). An example of political rhetoric in action is how the 2003 Iraq War was portrayed. Politicians had a different standpoint regarding the war, which led to a different rhetorical approach:

Members of the Bush administration portrayed the war as just and necessary by claiming that the role of the USA as a leader and friend that liberates the world (Halverson, 2003). If the war was to be cut short, it would have negative consequences and allow the opposing site to destroy and threaten. Therefore, they created a rejection in regards towards ending the war and an acceptance regarding a continuation based on the claim that the USA will then be seen as defender of humanity and decency (Awla, 2016).

Critics of the war such as activist Cindy Sheehan stated that the war was unjust and ‘based on a lie of historic proportions’ (Sheenan, 2005). She underlined that ending the war would be beneficial since the war itself precipitated huge humanitarian cost. Continuing the war would therefore mean a steady and significant rise in the loss of human life.

The preceding examples illustrate that specific themes can be presented through political rhetoric in different manners. In the examples it was the thematic of war, for the analysis part of this paper, the focus will lay on immigration. Successful political rhetoric is, so Mio, capable of persuading the audience and can influence and shape their perception of a theme (Mio, 1997). Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the rhetoric devices employed in the political rhetoric in regard to immigration to reveal in how far this influence takes place.

Political rhetoric requires different strategic devices. The chosen example is an instance of the rhetoric of war, which has been studied and analysed by linguists such as Lakoff. Lakoff stated in his 1991 paper Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf that rhetorical devices, especially the use of metaphors can lead to a successful political rhetoric (Lakoff, 1991). The variety of rhetorical devices and other stylistic characteristics that shape political rhetoric will be further discussed in the following chapter.

2.2.2 Figures of Speech

In Analysing Political Speeches, linguist Charteris-Black states that figures of speech can contribute to persuasion, which is, as stated before, the main goal of rhetoric. They do so by shaping the meaning of certain topics (Charteris-Black, 2014).

There are two major categories of figures of speech, scheme and trope.

Schemes target the syntax by deviating from a normal sequence of sentences and word orders. They create a rhetorical effect as well as a stylistic appeal. Figures that belong to the category scheme are, for example, chiasm, parallelism, anaphora, ellipsis, repetition and antithesis. Their functions are often connected to emphasising a certain subject or proposal. For example, epiphora, anaphora, parallelism, and repetition all rely on repeating words, phrases or syntactic patterns to put emphasis on them and therefore intensify the meaning (Charteris-Black, 2014).

Tropes are defined as figures of speech that change the meaning of words so that they either gain an additional meaning, divert from their literal sense, or lose their literal sense completely. The category of trope includes stylistic devices such as metaphors, metonyms, allusions, irony, and hyperbole. The use of tropes influences ‘an audience by turning the senses of words away from what is expected to draw attention or other possible meaning.’ (Charteris-Black, 2014, 45).

Both schemes and tropes allow a speaker to focus the audience’s attention on the information or proposal they provide them with. If it strengthens the focus on an item, it foregrounds it, if it weakens the focus, it backgrounds it (Tomlin, 1987). In addition to this focusing, figures of speech can also be ‘devices for simplifying and giving meaning to complex and bewildering sets of observations that evoke concern’ (Edelman, 1977, 217).

This paper focuses on tropes, more specifically on metaphors, since their use is connected to positive or negative evaluations the intensification of an approach. Edelman states that metaphors in political speeches play a central role to shape political values, attitudes and perceptions (Edelman, 1977). The goal of this paper is to determine in which way a trope such as a metaphor can influence the perception of a specific topic, namely immigration.

2.2.3 Conceptual metaphor

The term Conceptual metaphor has been established in modern times by the linguists Lakoff and Johnson. It is defined as ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff, Johnson, 1980, 5). The reason why conceptual metaphors can act in this way is linked to the construction of the human mind. The human mind can think through visual processing (Arnheim, 1969). This phenomenon is known as visual thinking or picture thinking and occurs in 60 – 65 % of humanity (Deza, 2009). Thinking in visuals is closely linked to thinking illustratively, therefore, metaphors can act within a metaphorical concept (Lakoff, Johnson. 1980).

A metaphorical concept consists of conceptual elements. These elements are often bound to general knowledge and activate a wide range of associations, or, as Charteris-Black names them, ‘entailments’ (Charteris-Black, 2014, 157).

An example of a metaphorical concept that can also be found in the corpora of this paper is HATE IS FIRE. A metaphor that is based on this metaphorical concept follows:

‘[…] fanning the flames of fear and racism against Latinos.’ (Biden, 2020)

The HATE IS FIRE metaphor works with framing a political issue and activating specific entailments in regard to the conceptual elements. Following Charteris-Black’s example, the following figure of the conceptual element fire was created:

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Figure 1- Cognitive schema activated by 'fire'

The image of fire, according Charteris-Black, is marked by ambiguity. While in some metaphorical concepts fire is connected to everyday-tasks such as cooking (Charteris-Black, 2014), in the concept HATE IS FIRE, it is associated with powerful negative emotions such as fury, and the loss of control. Fire is also linked to destruction as in metaphors such as ‘the disease spread like wildfire’ and heat, not only on a literal level, but also in connection to emotions.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory has been established by Lakoff is expressed as A is B such as HATE IS FIRE (Awla, 2016). A stands for the target domain, while B stands for the source domain. The goal of a metaphorical concept is the experience and understanding of one image (namely the target domain) through a second image (namely the source domain). Looking back at our example HATE IS FIRE, the concept of hate is experienced through the concept of fire. CMT is useful to identify possible metaphorical concepts and therefore helps to identify and classify metaphors found in a text.

2.3 State of the Art

The subject of metaphors in political speeches has been horotughly researched for the last four decades, especially since Lakoff’s and Johnson’s paper ‘Metaphors we live by’ in 1980. Lakoff presented a study, based on the conceptual metaphor analysis he presented in Metaphors we live by, in 1992. This study examined the use of conceptualised metaphors in the gulf war and proposed that metaphors have been used to justify the actions of war (Lakoff, 1992. 463). According to Mio ‘to make a metaphor is also to make a political claim’ (Mio, 1980. 119). Following studies regarding this subject have been Charteris-Black’s study: Britain as a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 election campaign as well as Coleman’s & Richie’s study: Examining Metaphors in Biopolitical Discourse in 2011. Yassen Awla published a paper in which he extracted and analysed metaphors from US inaugural speeches in 2016 (Awla, 2016). This paper does not focus on a specific kind of speech but rather takes a variety of speeches from two different political parties into account. It is therefore close to Charteris-Black’s study with the addition of centre-left speeches performed by Joe Biden. Similar to Charteris-Black’s study a time frame is set. This is necessary to ensure that the situation of the immigration system does not differ.

The issue of biopolitics has also been examined numerous times, seeing a rise in published studies since the establishment of this subject by Michal Foucault in the 1980s (Coleman & Ritchie, 2011). Within biopolitics, the subject of immigration plays a specific role. Brendese defines how immigration is perceived through the biopolitical lens as a ‘differential distribution of life and death’ (Brendese, 2016). Foucault established in ‘Society must be defended’ that the key topics of biopolitics are, among others, ‘life and difference’ (Wiertz, 2020.). Wiertz, a German political linguist, claims that the biopolitical concept has clear limitations when it comes to an analysis regarding immigration (Wiertz, 2020). ‘Life and difference’ as thematic produces ‘binary distinctions of inclusion and exclusion, life and death, politics and humanitarianism’ (Wiertz, 2020). While Wiertz suggests that immigration with this binary biopolitical approach is less nuanced, this paper will focus on the ‘life and difference’ thematic to stay within the default length. The focus will therefore lie on the evaluation of immigration in a biopolitical scope of binary distinctions.

2.4 Methodology

This paper aims to examine the use of metaphors and the function of metaphors in a corpus of political speeches with a focus on the language used regarding immigration. To investigate this topic on a broader level and compare the usage of metaphors between the two chosen politicians, two corpora, each comprised of the transcript of four speeches, were created. The speeches were held between 2018 and 2020 and deal with immigration.

The chosen politicians are Joe Biden, current president nominee of the Democratic Party, a centre-left party in the United States (Glueck, 2020) and Donald Trump, who the current president and also the current president nominee of the Republican Party, a centre-right party in the United States. The stand on immigration of both parties in general and the politicians specifically, differ. One the one hand, the Republican party in general and Donald Trump specifically have a restriction approach. The plan is to limit legal and prevent non-legal immigration. The Democratic Party on the other hand plans to limit non-legal immigration and support an easier access to citizenship for young people. (Hansen, 2019)

This specific time frame was chosen since Trump’s presidency was marked with changes to the portrayal of immigration in his speeches, the immigration system in general, and the handling of immigration particularly at the southern border. These changes were and are met with criticism (Kashyap, 2020).

The three central research questions proposed are ‘What kind of metaphors regarding immigration can be found in Trump’s and Biden’s speeches?’, ‘What similarities and differences are observed between conceptual metaphors in the two corpora’ as well as ‘What purpose do these metaphors serve?’. To explore these questions, the corpus data will be analysed by drawing upon two main approaches.

The first approach is CMT, an analysis from the field of cognitive metaphor analysis. CMT is a quantitative analysis which will help to establish the identity of the metaphors found in the corpus (Awla, 2016).

This paper follows Lakoff’s approach to the conceptual metaphor analysis, first presented in his book Metaphors we live by in 1980. Lakoff suggests that concepts are necessary for communication as well as orientation for the individual as well as a community (Lakoff, 1980). Metaphors help to structure and to organise unknown and abstract concepts by relating them to everyday concepts. They can function like this since ‘the mind is a connective organ, it works only by connecting and can connect any two things […]in different ways’ (Richards, 1936). A metaphor, especially a conceptual metaphor, always has a source domain and a target domain. The target domain is the concept or the idea that is to be explained or illustrated through another concept, the source domain (Lakoff, 1980). An example of a conceptual metaphor is ‘He shot down all of my arguments.’. The conceptual representation of this metaphor is ARGUMENT IS WAR (Lakoff, 1981). The target domain is the argument while the source domain is war.

To extract the metaphors from the corpus that deal with immigration, the corpus is scanned for the lexical items’ ‘immigrant’, ‘immigration’ ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum’. This strategy has been put into use by other researchers such as Charteris-Black in his analysis about conceptual metaphors regarding immigration in the right-wing parties of Great Britain in 2006. The metaphors are then categorised regarding their source domains and the findings are presented in a chart. For each source domain, two example metaphors will be chosen to present and explain the concept behind it.

The second approach is CDA. This method focuses on qualitative analysis and comes into use after the metaphors of the corpus have been extracted and identified. It is used to answer the question of ‘How and why are metaphors used?’. For this purpose, the paper relies on the five functions of metaphors that have been established by Lakoff and Mio: Simplification, persuasion, activating underlying symbolic representation, stirring of emotions and the creation of an atmosphere (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Mio, 1997). It is important to state that a metaphor may have more than one single function.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1 General findings

The general analysis of metaphors regarding immigration in both corpora revealed that both politicians draw upon a range of source domains. Those domains are associated with struggle, beliefs, nature, body movement, and physical environment. The selection of domains seems to be in accordance with the approach of literature researcher Nicholas Howe, who claims that ‘metaphors define politics through a range of experience’ (Howe, 1988, 100). The source domains used in the corpora express metaphors are related to the personal experience, the social activity and the traditional beliefs of the audience (Howe, 1988).

The domain of war and conflict is based on the concept of struggle, more specifically on the struggle to either maintain a status quo or strive for a specific goal. Metaphorical concepts belonging to the domain of war and conflict are, for example, IMMIGRATION POLITIC IS WAR. The domain of plants as well as animals and sexuality draw on the associations with the concept of nature and can create connections and comparisons between nature and the target domain, for example immigrants.Metaphorical concepts that can be categorised into the domain of nature and the domain of animals and sexuality are IMMIGRANTS ARE ROOTED IN AMERICA and IMMIGRANTS ARE ANIMALS.

The totality of source domains is presented in table (1).

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The general analysis presents a wide range of source domains in both corpora. The different domains are arranged successively in the order of their frequency in the overall data. It is important to state here that the metaphors listed are all metaphors that are explicitly connected with the thematic of immigration. They do not make up the total of metaphors that can be found in both corpora.

In total 140 metaphors were identified out of 8 speeches, 4 held by each politician. Trump corpus holds 54,7 % of the totality of metaphors while Biden holds 45,3 %. Trump’s speeches seem to be slightly more metaphorical. When the word count of Trump’s corpus is taken to account, a total of 16937 words and compared to Biden’s corpus, which reaches 9127 words, the rate is perceived differently.

The number of metaphors belonging to each source domain differs greatly between both corpora. Six of the source domains can be found in both corpora, namely the domains of religion, nation, machine, disaster, journey, and war and conflict. While metaphors belonging to those domains are found in both corpora, their frequency differs greatly. For example, as seen in table (1), Trump’s speeches include 27 (35,5 %) disaster metaphors whereas Biden’s speeches include 2 (3,2 %). A similar difference is noticeable in the metaphors associated with the source domain of journey. In Trump’s speeches an entirety of 3 (3,9 %) journey metaphors can be found while Biden’s speeches include 9 (12,7 %).

Some source domains are completely absent in either of the corpora. The domains of diversity, building, light and fire, and plants are exclusively found in the Biden corpus, the domains of container and animals and sexuality are solely found in the Trump corpus. The overall most dominant domain is disaster, making up a totality of 20,9 %. The difference of the frequency, as stated before, is significant (3,2 % and 35,5 % respectively).

The second and third most dominant domains are war and conflict (20,1 % of the overall findings) and container (12,9 %). The difference in frequency is significant in the domain of war and conflict (36,5 % and 6,6 % respectively). Metaphors rooted in the domain of container are completely absent in the Biden corpus and only exist in the Trump corpus where they make up 23,7% of the total metaphor count.

In conclusion, metaphors of a variety of domains are utilised in the two corpora. The total number of metaphors regarding immigration is higher in the Trump corpus by nearly 9 %. Differences are also detected in the employment of source domains between both corpora, with some domains being found exclusively in the Biden corpus, for example building, and others, for example the domain of container, being exclusively employed in the Trump corpus.

The reasons for the difference in frequency in these domains could be related to the speaker’s and their parties’ ideology as well as the rhetorical goals. Those reasons will be discussed further in 3.4. The following sections, 3.2 and 3.3 deal with the specific findings in both corpora.

3.2 Specific Findings of metaphors in Trump’s Corpus

76 metaphors regarding immigration were found in total in Trump’s corpus which are not equally distributed over the four speeches. The third speech, the one Donald Trump held in Arizona with a focus on immigration as a topic on 18th August 2020, holds the majority of metaphors. This speech contains 31 metaphors equalling 40,8% of metaphors in Trump’s corpus. The second speech, held in May 2019 regarding changes in the immigration system, constitutes 26,3% with twenty metaphors. 17 metaphors equalling 22,4% stem from the 1st speech, also known as the Border Wall Speech. The fourth speech which contributes the smallest amount of metaphors, 8 (10,5%) in total, is Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in August 2020. It must be noted that the latter contained a variety of topics and was not focused on immigration alone. Table (2) presents the source domains applied in Trump’s corpus. The domains are arranged in the order of their frequency.

Table (2) Source domains of metaphors in the Trump corpus

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The main domains found in Trump’s corpus are disaster (35,5%), container (23,7%) and animal and sexuality (18,4%). In the most dominant domain, disaster, the frequency in all four speeches is nearly equal. The disaster metaphors contribute around 35% to 37,5% to the total amount of metaphors found in the respective speech. The metaphorical concept that stems from this domain is IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL DISASTER (Charteris-Black, 2006). In the Trump corpus, most of the disaster metaphors distributed between the four speeches connect to natural disaster associated to an exaggerated flow of water, such as ‘flood’ or ‘flow’.

For the domain of container, the occurrence is also equally distributed, with the container metaphors making up between 22,6% to 25% of the total amount. The main metaphorical concept of this domain is THE NATION IS A CONTAINER (Anikeeva, 2017). Those metaphors are, as portrayed by Semino, often connected to an intrusion of an outside group and work with terms such as ‘pressure’ and ‘straining’ (Semino, 2008). In Trump’s corpus those terms occur frequently in all 4 speeches.

In contrast to the two most dominant domains, the domain associated with animals and sexuality is less equally distributed. The second speech lacks this domain, in the 1st speech, the domain only contributes 1 metaphor equalling 5,9% to the total count while in the 3rd speech the disaster domain equals the disaster domain in its frequency, supplying 35,5 % to the amount of metaphors found.

Domains occurring less frequently are religion, war and conflict, journey, and machine. The differences between the four speeches regarding this metaphor domains are severe. The domain of journey and nation only occur in one of the speeches, the machine domain is only covered in the first and second speech and the domain of religion is absent in the fourth speech. Only the domain of war and conflict occurs in all four speeches with a marginal difference between the first and fourth speech (11,7% and 12,5% respectively) and the second and third speech (5% and 3,2% respectively).

To summarise, the most important domains of metaphors employed in Trump’s corpus are disaster and container. For those two domains, the difference in frequency in all four speeches is not significant. In percent, the occurrence differs by 2,5 % at most between the speeches. Other domains, such as animal and sexuality or war and conflict are not equally distributed, metaphors from those domains are not found in all four speeches.

3.3 Specific Findings of metaphors in Biden’s Corpus

63 metaphors regarding immigration were found in general in Biden’s corpus. The metaphors are not equally distributed between the four speeches. The majority, 42,8% are found within the third speech, one Biden held at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Conference in August 2020. This speech, like the second speech which is Biden’s statement regarding immigration from October 2018, focuses on immigration and immigration policy as a main theme which could cause the high frequency of metaphors occurring in those two speeches. The second speech contributes 36,6% to the total metaphor count. The first speech regarding Hispanic Heritage month held in September 2020 and the fourth speech, held by Biden on the Democratic National Convention in August 2020, contribute less metaphors (11,1% and 9,5% respectively). Similar to Trump’s less metaphorical speeches, it is important to mention that those two speeches deal with a variety of topics that are only loosely or not at all connected to the thematic of immigration.

The variety of source domains and their distribution in the four speeches is depicted in Table (3).

Table (3) Source Domain of Metaphors in the Biden corpus

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As presented in table (3), the domain that is most often used is war and conflict. This domain contributes 23 metaphors equalling 36,5% of the overall occurrence of metaphors in Biden’s speeches. The second and third speech have nearly equal amounts of war and conflict metaphors, namely 10 (43,4%) and 12 (42,8%), while the first speech contains 1 (14,3%) of these metaphors. The 4th speech lacks this domain completely. The domain of war and conflict is often represented with the metaphorical concept POLITICAL ACTIONS ARE WAR, stemming from the concept ARGUMENT IS WAR (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In Biden’s corpus the domain is often associated with the political actions regarding immigration, using terms such as ‘attack’ and ‘harm’. The war and conflict domain is the most frequently used domain in this corpus, contributing 22,1% more to the total metaphor count compared to the second most frequent domain, journey. This over occurrence of this domain and its frequent use in three of four speeches is significant. Semino states in his 2008 paper ‘Metaphor in Discourse’ that a prevalence of a metaphorical concept in discourse can reflect the view of the speaker regarding a topic (Semino, 2008). The significance of war and conflict metaphors in Biden’s corpus will be further analysed in the following chapter, 3.4.

Other more dominant source domains are journey, diversity and light and fire. These three domains are included in all four speeches, though they are not equally distributed among them. For example, journey metaphors contribute only 4,4% of the total count in the 2nd speech and 21,5% in the 3rd speech.

Less frequently occurring domains in Biden’s corpus are plant, nation, disaster, religion and machine. In these domains, the difference in frequency is significant. The domain of religion only occurs in one of the speeches, the third, contributing 1 metaphor (3,7%) to the overall count. Disaster metaphors are included only in the 1st and 2nd speech, conducing one metaphor each (12,5% and 4,4% respectively). The domains of building and nation is distributed in a similar fashion only occurring in two of the speeches. Metaphors of the domains of plant and machine occur in 3 speeches with plant metaphors not occurring in the 4th speech and machine metaphors being absent from the 1st speech.

In conclusion, the most important domain by far in Biden’s corpus is the domain of war and conflict. Other frequently occurring domains are journey, diversity and light and fire, which are included in all four speeches. Less frequently used domains are differently distributed in a severe way and are only used in two or three of the speeches.

3.4 Discussion of Findings

3.4.1 Introduction

The following chapter aims to interpret the results of the analysis in 3.1 – 3.3 and explain them against the theoretical backgrounds presented in chapter 2.

The domains found through the analysis are divided into categories and then discusses separately. The focus of this chapter lays on the functions and purposes the metaphors serve regarding the biopolitical topic of immigration. To accomplish the explanation of the possible functions of the metaphors, this paper relies on the critical discourse analysis as presented by Charteris-Black in 2014 as well as focusing on the main functions described by both Mio and Lakoff / Johnson, namely simplification, persuasion, stirring of emotions and creation of an atmosphere.It will also take into account that metaphors can have not only one but various of these functions.

The results of the general analysis in 3.1 revealed a totality of 140 metaphors, unequally distributed between 12 domains. It is noticeable from table (1) that some domains are more frequently employed than others. A stronger focus is therefore placed on the five most dominant source domains, namely disaster, war and conflict, container, animals and sexuality and journey.

The focus is partly due to the claims made by Semino that the over occurrence of specific domains can lead to the establishing of an ideological base grounded on ‘common sense or natural viewing of things’ (Semino, 2008, 33). Semino claims that the most important source domains in political discourse are war, journey and container. Those three domains were especially dominant in the chosen corpora, though their contribution as presented in table (1) is significantly different.

The reason for the overall occurrence of the five most frequently used domains could be that all five are familiar domains of which the respective audience hold either some knowledge or has personal experience of. This is even more reasonable when one is reminded of Lakoff’s statement that conceptual metaphors are linked to a source domain that is familiar and in which the audience is able to rely on their ‘everyday experiences’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 8). This causes the audience to not only gain a better understanding of the political concept behind immigration, since they are ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 5), but also opens the door to the other functions that are linked to metaphors such as persuasion and stirring of emotions through activating the cognitive schemes that are linked to the conceptual metaphor.

The general results found and presented in table (1) closely resemble the findings of Charteris-Blacks 2006 study regarding immigration metaphors in a corpus of centre-right and right-winged political speeches. The main domains found in this study were, as mentioned earlier, disaster metaphors and in addition to that, container metaphors (Charteris-Black 2006). Domains not found in the corpus but mentioned is the domain of journey metaphors, which is a domain also occurring frequently as stated in table (1) but has an overall higher occurrence in Biden’s corpus. This study is in general close to the analysis conducted in this paper since the data includes politicians from centre-right parties. As stated in chapter 2.3, the Republicans are an American party that is classified as centre-right.

The differences found in the distribution of the domains is examined in the following chapters. In each section that follows two metaphors serve as examples to represent their domain. Both metaphors are linked to a metaphorical concept and their functions in light of a possible ideological background are presented.

3.4.2 Disaster metaphors

Linguists like Charteris-Black have discovered in earlier studies that ‘disaster metaphors have an important history in political communication on the topic of immigration.’ (Charteris-Black, 2006, 14).

Within the corpora analysed in this paper, the domain of disaster is the most frequent one. Disaster metaphors make up 20,9% of the total identified metaphors regarding immigration, contributing 29 metaphors. Both the Biden and the Trump corpus include disaster metaphors, but Trump’s corpus has a 9 times higher occurrence of them compared to Biden.

An example for a disaster metaphor in the Trump corpus follows:

‘The Biden plan would unleash a flood of illegal immigration like the world has never seen.’ (Trump, Immigration Speech, 2020)

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Figure 2 - Cognitive schema activated by 'flooding’

The ‘flood’ metaphor links to a metaphorical concept, IMMIGRATION IS FLOODING. In this particular instance, the example metaphor was taken from the speech Trump held as part of his election campaign in Arizona. Arizona has a history of flooding with the most recent one taking place in 2014 (Burkitt, 2018). This means that IMMIGRATION IS FLOODING can activate a range of associations, the schema, in the mind of the audience. A cognitive schema activated by ‘flooding’ is presented in figure (2).

Disaster metaphors that dwell on metaphorical concepts like IMMIGRATION IS FLOODING, function often by turning immigrants to objects and turn the attention away from their stories and their personalities (Charteris-Black, 2006). The devaluation of immigrants is part of a biopolitical strategy in which an atmosphere of fear is created around them (Brendese, 2014). The use of the flooding metaphor in Arizona, targeting an audience that has personal experiences with the physical destruction a flooding can bring, is useful to devalue immigrants and turn them into objects of fear. As Wiertz stated, it is necessary for a politician to devalue the target group, in this instance immigrants. In addition, the categorising of immigrants also plays a role (Wiertz, 2019). Note that the example metaphor does state that it is a ‘flood of illegal immigration’. The categorisation of immigrants into legal and illegal adds to the devaluation of those who are connoted negatively as illegal.

The speaker implies with this metaphor that any change in the present immigration system will bear a danger for the audience. This implication further points to the functionality of the IMMIRATION IS FLOODING concepts which is twofold: Simplification of the issue of immigration to make it easier for the speaker to then create a certain atmosphere, in this instance, fear that is beneficial to the political ideas of the speaker.

Disaster metaphors are not only found in Trump’s corpus as stated above. In 2 instances they also occur in Biden’s Corpus, in the 1st and 2nd speech. An example metaphor follows:

‘[…] or any of the waves of immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity’(Biden, Speech regarding Hispanic Heritage month, 2020)

Here the metaphorical concept is IMMIGRANTS ARE COMING IN WAVES.

While the description of immigrants with the image of ‘an excessive flow of water’ (Charteris-Black, 2006), can again work to depict immigrant negatively by turning them into objects and raising the fear of flooding, the metaphor ‘waves of immigration’ can have a different meaning in the US. The metaphor is used to describe the time periods in which migrants reached the US with the first wave happening between 1680 and 1776 and the most recent, the fourth wave, happening between 1965 and today (Pacrousse, 2018).

The use of this metaphor implies a functionality to activate an underlying cognitive representation (Mio, 1997) as well as a stirring of emotions. Biden does not state that he is talking about a specific ‘wave of immigration’ but establishes that all immigrants that came in any of the waves seek a safer future. While the metaphor mind sound devaluating since studies like the one conducted by Charteris-Black point out that ‘tidal wave’ metaphors are used to condemn immigrants and objectify them in the British corpus he analysed, the conceptual metaphor ‘ waves of immigration ’ is perceived differently due to the history of immigration in the U.S.

3.4.3 War and Conflict metaphors

War and conflict metaphors have been the centre of research in political discourse in studies such as the one conducted by Semino in 2008. Semino states that the source domain of war can be applied to any target domain that links to an experience involving difficulties and danger (Semino, 2008).

The domain of war and conflict is the second regarding total frequency, contributing 23 metaphors equalling 20,1% to the total amount of identified metaphors. Here both corpora feature the domain, but the occurrence is not equally distributed. The Biden corpus has a 6-time higher occurrence rate of war and conflict metaphors than the Trump Corpus.

An example for a war and conflict metaphor in Trump’s corpus follows:

‘Over the last several years, I have met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration ’ (Trump, Border Wall Speech, 2018)

This specific metaphor stands at the end of a passage in which Trump lists several examples of American citizens being hurt and killed by illegal immigrants (Trump, 2018). The metaphorical concept behind this metaphor is IMMIGRATION IS DANGER. As stated by Semino, war metaphors are often structured to evoke cognitive schemas based on experiences marked by struggle, difficulties and danger. This implies that IMMIGRATION IS DANGER is able to induce the activation of cognitive schemas as presented in Figure (3).

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Figure 3 Cognitive Schema activated by 'danger'

By directly connecting immigration to crimes committed against American citizens, Trump is able to stir the emotions of the audience, which is the first function of this specific conceptual metaphor. The notion of a danger that is coming from a target group can turn them into a threat. This function is rooted in social dynamics such as ingroup favouritism and intergroup conflict (Tajfel et al, 1971). The stigmatisation of immigration categorised again as illegal (Wiertz, 2019), and the victimisation of the American citizens add to the persuasive function of the metaphorical concept IMMIGRATION IS DANGER. Biden’s corpus holds a variety of war and conflict metaphors. It is the domain that occurs most frequently in the totality of his corpus, contributing 36,5 % to the total metaphor count. An example metaphor follows:

‘Whether it’s repeated attacks on Dreamers or his [Trumps] campaign of terror against immigrant communities […].’ (Biden, Speech at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Conference, 2020)

This metaphor is uttered regarding Trump’s immigration politic and therefore belongs to the metaphorical concept of POLITICAL ACTIONS ARE WAR, more specifically to IMMIGRATION POLITICS IS WAR.

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Figure 4 - Cognitive Schema activated by ‘war’

Biden, as a Democrat and election rival to Trump uses this metaphorical concept to condone Trumps immigration politic as an act of war, in this metaphor specifically as an act of terror. The functionality of this metaphorical concept is twofold. The metaphor can also provoke the activation of cognitive schema as presented in figure (4), which turns the more abstract issue of immigration politics into a simpler construct.

In contrast to Trump who uses the war metaphor to describe immigration as a threat, Biden applies the war metaphor to describe Trump’s politics and behaviour towards immigrants. Similar to Trump, this metaphor also prescribes roles to the two participants but instead of turning immigration into a threat and therefore immigrants into enemies, the immigrants are victimised. This is a strategy described by Semino as ‘interpretations of metaphorical expressions and the strategic extension or evocation of other’s metaphors’ (Semino, 2008, 85). Using this metaphor, Biden does not only simplify the complicated topic of immigration politics but also stirs negative emotions towards Trump in the audience, which is the second function of the example metaphor.

3.4.4 Container metaphors

Container metaphors are also among the group of source domains that Semino detected as most frequently used in political discourse (Semino, 2008). Other researchers such as Charteris-Black discovered that metaphors associated with the domain of container occur frequently regarding the topic of migration, especially among politicians belonging to far-right parties (Charteris-Black, 2006).

A core characteristic of container metaphors is that they contain an inside and an outside orientation (Lakoff, 1980). Semino adds a more specific definition to this characteristic, stating that ‘groups, institutions, and particularly nation states, are conventionally constructed as containers, so that belonging (to a group, institution, nation) corresponds to being ‘inside’ and not belonging to being ‘outside’ (Semino, 2008, 95).

The domain of container is exclusive to the Trump corpus where it contributes 18 metaphors equalling 26,8 % to the total amount. It is the second most dominant domain in the corpus. In Biden’s corpus the domain is lacking, which is noticeable. The nature of a container metaphor is associated with a nation having ‘an inside and an outside and therefore in relation to political discourse requires both the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ (Charteris-Black, 2006, 28).

This circumstance can be seen as an illustration for Esposito’s established labelling of groups as the proper and the improper. As stated by Esposito, only the proper are members of the community that lives inside an enclosure and the improper are outsider that are often marked as a threat (Esposito, 2008).

The abstinence of this domain in the Biden corpus could be connected to his claim that he wants politicians ‘to stop using immigration as a political tool to divide us into ‘us’ and ‘them’’ (Biden, 2018).

Trump’s corpus in contrast contains a variety on container metaphors, distributed in all four speeches. An example for a container metaphor follows:

‘ Our current immigration system works at cross-purposes placing downward pressure wages for the working class’ (Trump, Rose Garden Speech, 2019).

This example metaphor is a typical container metaphor and established the metaphorical concept IMMIGRATION PRODUCES PRESSURE ON THE CONTAINER which entails the conceptual metaphor THE NATION IS A CONTAINER.

The source domain container dwells on the common feeling that the human body is often conceptualised as container, since it is necessary for the human mind to determine what belongs and what does not belong to itself. This is connected to the natural need to be in control (Charteris-Black, 2006). Since biopolitics views the state as a ‘multiple body’ (Foucault, 2003, 245), container metaphors work by activating cognitive schemas as presented in Figure (5).

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Figure 5 - Cognitive schema activated by 'container'

IMMIGRATION PRODUCES PRESSURE ON THE CONTAINER is functioning based on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. The ‘us’ are the established citizens, in this specific instance the working class, who experience the pressure, caused by ‘them’, the immigrants. This leads to the portrayal of the outside group, the immigrants, as something negative which works to create an atmosphere of fear and rejection regarding them. The use of the term ‘pressure’ was thoroughly analysed by Charteris-Black, who noted that the term is commonly used within centre-right political discourse. He also added that, just like disaster metaphors, container metaphors devalue and dehumanise immigrants by turning them into objects (Charteris-Black, 2006).

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