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cause pe ople to lash out against a
convenient out-group (Esses, Jackson, &
Armstrong, 1998; Stewart , Pi tts , &
O sb o r ne , 2 0 1 1 ; Z a w a d z k i , 1 9 4 8 ) . T h i s
feeling of prejudice is only increased if the
individual perceives that the out-group is
cognitively linked to the source of
d i sc o nt ent ( D em o , 2 0 0 5 ; Z a w a d z k i ,
1948) .
Viewing racia l prejudice as an
accumulation of emotional defense
strategies enables one to understand the
phenomena as a strategy that brings
multiple forces together to define the
characterist ics and parameters of inter-
group dynamics and racia l identi t ies
(Dixon, Schel l , Gi les , & Drogos, 200 8) .
Scapegoat theory is closely tied to the
notion of conflict theory; hostility
towards the out-group wil l arise when the
in-group p erceives a confl ict with the
minority populat ion for scarce resources
(Esses et al . , 1998).
Fol lowing the writ ings of Kenneth
B ur k e ,
C. Allen Carter outlines three
elements of the scapegoat process:
hierarchical insecurity, a fear of death,
and ethical guilt . Hierarchical insecurity
can be simply defined as the feelings of
insecurity that come with being higher on
the ladder of power than others. The
definition of a fear of death is the fear and
insecurity with realizing the inevitability
of one's demise. Finally, ethical guilt can
be defined as the feelings of guilt that are
associated w ith not being able to fo l low
all of the rules and moral guidelines of
society at a l l t ime s. Wh ile Carter mak es
very clear and compell ing dist inct ions
between the ways these three elements
interact with each other, I wou ld argue
that two of the eleme nts can be a ttributed
to the genesis of one: a fear of death. It
does not seem pos sible to have insecurity
within those at the top of a hierarchical
structure witho ut having a fear of losing
one's power, and an imminent fear of
death is associated with this loss of
pow er. Thu s, a fear of death leads to a
sense of insecurity am ong those at the top
of the hierarchical ladder. This feeling of
insecurity leads the hierarchical elite to
enact laws and provisions that l imit the
m o v e m en t o f t h o se per so ns b el o w t h em .
No one is able to honestly follow every
commandment that is set by the forces of
society, thus leaving a sense of ethical
guilt for falling short.
Since, for the purposes of this
study, a general fear of death will be seen
as the gene sis for a ll sca pego ating
project ions, the two commonly ci ted
feel ings that represen t a fear of death,
frustration and hostility, will be used to
measure scapegoating project ions
(Zawadzki , 1948) . Hosti l i ty and
frustrat ion that are embodied by the
majority populous are projected upon a
minority community in six di fferent ways:
1. Indire ct Hostility: This is a
roundabout way of project ing
aggression, usually by devious means.
Common indirect tact ics have been
shown to include practical jokes and
malicious gossip
2. Irritability: This is a read iness to
project negative a tt i tudes w ith the
slightest bit of provocation. This
includes the project ion of rudeness
and exasperation.
3.
Nega tivism: Direct opposit ion that is
most often projected upon authority .
This is most commonly seen as a
refusal to cooperate that may span
from direct to in-direct
no nc o m pl i a nc e .
4. Resen tment: This is know n as any sort
of projected jealousy or hatred toward
o t he r s .
These feel ings of anger usually
refer to either a real or fantasized
mistreatment .
5. Susp icion: This sort of proje ction of
hosti l i ty upon others usually varies
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from a simple feeling of distrust to a
more direct bel ief of others planning
ha r m .
6. Ver bal Hostility: Neg ative feelings that
are expressed in either the style or the
content of speech. The style of speech
would include such vocalic strategies
such as a control over the tonality of
v o ic e .
The content of speech would
include everything from direct threats
of harm to simply bein g o vercri t ica l .
R a c i a l Pr eju d i c e a n d S ym b o l i c A c t i o n
Racism and other prejudicia l
persp ectives, by nature, are v iolat ions of
the hierarchical structures th at a im to
protect the fabric of civility and society
(Asma, 1995; Kenneth Burke, 1966;
M e n e s e s , 2 0 0 3 ; Musolff , 2 007 ) . Wh ile
racism is perceived with i ts approp riate
negativi ty by most of the American
populat ion, one out of eight Americans
still describe themselves as racially
biased (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2002) .
Furthermore, 80 percent of white
Americans have racia l ly biased feel ings
that they might not even recognize
(Dovidio & Gaertner, 2002) . The rebirth
of these conscious and unconscious
racia l ly biased perceptions can be
explained thr ough the lens of socia l
learning theory . This theory asserts that
the individual 's perceptions about a
certain out-group direct ly correlate with
the att i tudes that are expressed by the
individual's parents or social
environment (Gerstenfeld, 2002) . By
organizing complex socia l information
through perceiving many disparate
me mb ers of the out-group as being a ll the
s a m e ,
many individuals wi l l adopt a v iew
of out-group homogeneity often with
ethnocentric characterist ics (Asma, 1995;
Gerstenfeld, 2002) .
At the heart of all discourses is the
action that is used to condense an d form
reality from them. This is called symbolic
action, a process of selecting one reality
while at the same t ime deselect ing
another (Burke, 1966) . The set of
knowledge that one uses throughout this
process is ca l led a terminstic screen
(Burke, 1951 ) . These scree ns of
know ledge serve as our just i f icat ion or
reason ing for select ing one real i ty over
another. Any definit ion or terminology ,
no matter h ow m uch of a reflect ion of
real i ty this terminology may b e, is the
selection of one's reality and the
deselect ion of another (Burke, 1966) . An
expert and pioneer of discursive
formations and symbolic act ion, Kenneth
Burke discusses how the early Church
forbad any persons to duel . Instead, the
two chal lengers would merely go for a
walk where the duel was to take place,
arm ing himself in the case that he wer e to
meet an armed enemy. By direct ing the
intention of this walk enem ies wer e
able to have their duel without crossing
the Church's sanction on the pract ice
(Burke, 1966) . The same sort of direct ion
of racist intentions can be seen in m odern
immigrant discourse. While one of the
dominant discursive formations selects
and defines Latino and Mexican
immigrants as criminals , the a lternative
reali ty that mos t of these m igrants are
peaceful an d law abiding is not selected.
This process of select ion and de-select ion
allows one to direct racist intentions
through discourse in order to narrow the
view ability of the aud ience 's reality,
allowing one only to see the discursive
structure of reality that is presented
(Kenneth Burke, 1966; Hattery , Embrick,
& E . Smith, 2008 ; Portes, 2009) . This
process of condit ioning racist p rejudice
and discontent comes from a moralizing
and meditat ive point of v iew (Hart , 1967) .
Visual and discursive metaphors
are often used to condense the complex
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While there may be no direct evidence
between the metaphorical discursive
formations of restrict ive immigration
policies and systematic human rights
violat ions, i t has been show n that there is
a direct l ink between these formations of
imm igration d iscourse and civi l r ights
violations such as racial profiling (Arnold,
2007) .
In an attemp t to separate racia l
profiling from color profiling, one author
suggests that color profiling is merely a
prima facie indicator of one's race and
therefore is free from the morally
problematic characterist ics of discerning
one race from another (Corlett , 2010) .
The author goes on to further suggest that
the matter of deg ree nature that is
problem atic within racia l profi l ing is not
an issue in the light of color profiling
(Corlett , 201 0) . Wh ile the author does
attemp t to groun d color profi ling w ithin
the boundaries of acceptable socia l
pract ices, one cannot deny that an
individual's color is no more of an
indicator of that person's legal status than
their race (Arnold, 2007; Chapkis , 2003;
D el g a d o ,
2 0 0 3 ;
Musolff , 200 7) . W hethe r
one decides to call it racial or color
profiling the main point is that these
arrests ,
stops, and interrogations are
often not made on the basis of the
individual 's beha vior or act ions but
mere ly on their perceived legal status tha t
is conceptually based on their skin color.
In the end, no matter how accurate an
officer may be in even correctly
identifying a Latino individual from a
Japanese individual, the individual is sti ll
being subjected to the discursive
formations th at simpli fy such socia l
constructions as race and class (Arnold,
2 0 0 7 ;
A sm a , 1 9 9 5 ; C h a pk i s , 2 0 0 3 ) . U nd er
this light, it is impossible to separate
racial profiling from color profiling,
because to profi le one based upon the
skin color is ultimately to profile them
b a sed u po n t h e c o m m o n sk i n
characteristics of a particular racial
gr o up .
M E T H O D S
A m et h o d o l o g i c a l a ppr o a c h
consisted of four activities that follow a
linear plain: locating artifacts, identifying
materia l , analyzing the materia l , and
defining the rhetorical situation. This
o pen-end ed m et h o d o l o g i c a l a ppr o a c h
allowed for the development of theory
through an i terat ive process of data and
theoretical analysis , continually veri fy ing
the relat ionship between the data that is
obtained from art i facts with the
theoretical presumptions of scapegoat
theory (Ott , 1998) .
Locating rtifacts
As defined by Goetz and Lecompte
( 1 9 8 4 ) , an art i fact is anything that may
help i l luminate research questions such
as,bu t not l imited to : legal recor ds,
w r i t t en d o c u m ent s , m em o s , d em o g r a ph i c
information (Brock & Scott , 1989) . For
the purposes of this study a collection
publishing's by major media outlets such
as art icles , reports , and e ditoria ls wer e
us e d .
Arti facts were gathered using
LexisNexis Academic online database for
the years 2009-2011. 532 results were
displayed, of which 414 were found to
speci f ica l ly deal with American
immigration.
Identifying Material
Not a ll discursive represe ntations
of immigration and migrants f i t within the
context of scapegoat theor y . In order to
identify relevant material , each artifact
wil l be evaluated upon whether or not the
artifact displays one, or all , of the
fol lowing sentiments toward immigration
and migrants: frustrat ion and
h o st i li t y ( G r eenw o o d , 1 9 7 0 ; Z a w a d z k i ,
1948) . These two categories have been
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show n to be the basis for d iscursive
sca peg oatin g an d therefore are a wa y to
identify which artifacts will be relevant
for materia l analysis (Zawadzki , 1948) .
nalyzing the Material
Once relevant materia ls were
gathered they were then analyzed for one,
or more, of the six sca pegoa ting
project ion tech nique s: indirect hosti l i ty ,
irri tabi l i ty , negativism, resentment ,
suspicion, and verb al hosti l i ty . This
approach toward analysis did not
consider the internal factors that often
drive prejudice and scapegoating
(Zawadzki , 1948) . This approach rather
provided an understanding of the way
that intergroup pre judice is discursively
represented with respect toward the
migration of minority groups.
R E S U L T S
The task of analyzing the major
discursive representations of immigration
within the current news media is a
daunting task to say the least; with the
topic itself being full of political rhetoric
and historical taboos. Coupled w ith this
sense of ambiguity are the endless
personal , socia l , and economic factors
that come along with analyzing racia l ly
charged theoretical frameworks such as
scapego ating. N everthe less, indirect
inferences can be drawn between the
most common of scapegoating project ions
and the way p oli t ica l discourse , and the
su b seq u ent new s m e d i a , w h i c h su r r o u nd s
the current immigration debate.
2 9 A total of 229 articles were
analyzed for the year of 2009. The m ost
numerous scapegoating tact ics
throughout the year of 2009 were those
that projected feel ings of resentment ,
which is defined as either real or
fantasized mistreatment . One example of
this is a comment made by John Prigge, a
city councilman for Elgin Illinois, when
asked about the effects that i l legal
imm igratio n has on the city: It 's killing
Elgin .
I firmly believe its killing Elgin
Elgin has a modest populat ion of 108,000
with forty percen t of the populat ion of
Caucasian decent and thirty-f ive percent
listed as Hispanic. This simple view of the
city 's demographics proves that whi le the
issue of i l legal-immigration may truly be a
burden on a few of the city's resources, it
seems more l ikely that the growing legal
Hispanic populat ion, are being mistaken
for i l legal-immigrants. Nevertheless,
there is no economical proof ever put
forward to support the claim of the initial
comment in question, and clearly
portrays a feel ing of anger bec ause of a
sense of mistreatment .
Strict opponents to i llegal-
imm igration often argue tha t the legal
Hispanic migrants that currently reside in
the U.S . are in some w ay universal ly
united in opposit ion as well . For exam ple,
Joe Mil ler (Alaska) , when speaking on
behalf of the legal migrant populat ion
stated , . . .step forw ard and say 'you're
screw ing us up, you know . Com me nts of
this nature clearly reflect a sense of
irritability, one of the scapegoating
project ion strategies. The previous
statement was actual ly stated in support
of a then future rally where Miller had
nam ed several me mb ers of the Hispa nic
advocacy group You Don't Speak For Me
as attendees a nd spe akers of the ra l ly .
The very ne xt day an art icle w as
published stat ing that the group had
made no such promises to appear at the
event . This suppos ed l ie highlights an
irrational scrabble, on the part of Miller at
least , to do whatever is deemed necessary
to make his c la ims sound the most
appea ling , thus hinting at a sense of
irritability.
The scrabbling of misinformation
in order to support one's c la im would not
be a strategy solely dedicated to the
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project ion of irri tabi l i ty , butverbal
hostility as well . In an editorial published
by the Manassajournal Messenger of
Virginia stated that the local police are,
using the drop in v iolent crimes in 2008
as proof that the county's i l legal
imm igratio n policy is doin g its job . First
of a ll , this c la im would have to assum e
that i l legal-immigrants are
disproportionally incl ined to commit a
crime than those persons who are within
the U.S. borders legally; no proof has ever
been put forward to support this c la im.
The article goes on to state, Mu rde rs
went up 20 percent -- from 10 to 12 -- in
2 0 0 8 .
Rapes stayed the same. Robberies
went down 8.8 percent and aggravated
assaults we nt down 36.5 percent . The
author states that since there was n ot an
across the board cut in Part I crimes
against persons and crimes against
property than the local police are not
justified in suggesting that this is a
significant drop in crime. Linking i llegal
immigrants so int imately with a
discussion of these Part I crimes
enthymematical ly suggests that i l legal-
immigrants are not only more criminally
inclined, but are also more inclined to
commit some of societ ies worst crimes.
This is a clear indication of overcritical
verbal hostility.
Raymond Herrera , a national
spo k esm a n fo r t h e M i nu t em en P r o j ect
stated that, The trave sty is that they're
trying to embed a criminal element into
our society at the expense of the real
Am erican , This com me nt clearly displays
a bel ief that i l legal-imm igrants are not
only disproportionally criminals , but a lso
that there is a deliberate effort to corrupt
the perceived sterile morality of
Am erican society , thus f i t ting the
definition of direct suspicion. For the
purposes of this study, feelings of
suspicion can be defined as a belief that
others are planning harm.
Indirect hostility is a feeling that
was not readi ly found within the art i facts
of 2009, this could possibly be attributed
to the polar nature of the subject,
nevertheless there were a few instances
found. One art icle of note was published
by a local newspaper in Pennsylvania
discussed how Voice of the People USA
plan s to hold a, si lent prote st dur ing the
tria l of two Shenandoah teens accused of
beating an i l legal Mexican immigrant to
death last July. In response to criticism
brought fourth against the protest , the
rally lead ers stated that they, are no in
way trying to glorify those who killed Mr.
Ram irez, but rather, to counter other
potentia l protests that are meant to
encourage i l legal immigration and
dem onize those wh o oppose i t. The
picketing of a funeral, on both sides of the
argument , is a devious strategy to support
one's argument , when considering the
definition used for indirect hostility in
this study.
On Apr il 24, an article titled, Gov.
Brewer: Feds Denied National Guard
reques t was the f irst of ma ny art icles
that discussed how the governor was
very surpr ised that the Obama
administrat ion did not send the requested
250 addit ional National Guard troops to
help with the enforcement of border
protection. In retrospect, the act of
requesting the increase in National Guard
troops was an obvious stretch given the
poli t ica l environment and seemed to be
more of an act to solidify a sense of
identi f icat ion among those who general ly
oppose the Obama administrat ion as well
as comprehensive immigration reform.
Brew er wou ld later mak e the comm ent , I
just feel very d isappointed that the
federal government has not stepped up
and done what their responsibi l i t ies are,
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and have left the control, i f you will , left
up to our local law enforcem ent . Not only
this comment, but also the entire act of
requesting mil i tary support from a
government that has clearly expressed
that i t wi l l deal with imm igration
enforcement at the governmental level ,
reflects a sense of direct opposition and a
refusal to cooperate or what has been
defined as negativism.
2 1 A total of 276 new spap er art icles
were analyze d for the total year of 2010.
SB 1070 reached the Arizona state
legislature in January of this year, l ighting
a spark underneath the fermenting
immigration debate that started after the
disastrous eve nts of 9/11. Most of the
imm igration d ebate du ring this year is
focused around f ive key issues: SB 1070,
racial profiling, assimilation, jobs, and the
dist inct ion b etwe en legal vs . i l legal
i m m i g r a nt s .
One interest ing observation about
this particular period is the cookie-cutter
fashion by which news art icles are
written covering the aftermath of the
Arizona bill , as well as the several states
that would fo l low up with the
introduction of similar bills. The articles
wou ld usually fo l low this pattern: X and Y
are currently under f ire a fter proposing a
bill that is similar to Arizona's restrictive
imm igration bi l l SB1 070 . These art icles
would usually provide statistical data in
either support or rejection of the
proposed restrict ive policy . For example,
a more l iberal ly leaning author stated,
According to a recent study by the P ew
Hispanic Center . . . from 2007 to 2009, an
estimated 300,000 i l legal immigrants
entered the United States annually , down
from 550,000 whi le a more con servative
author wou ld ci te , The Pew Rese arch
Center est imated in 2008 that Nebraska
had about 45,000 i l legal immigrants, up
from about 30,000 in 2000. As one
author for the San Bernardino County Sun
states ,
surveys such as these only take
into account those wh o are wi l l ing to
come forward and discuss their i l legal
status , and therefore cannot be rel ied
upon for any strong statistical
representation of the i l legal/ legal migrant
populat ion. This back and fourth of
statistical correctness hints at a general
feeling of either real or fantasized
mistreatment on both sides of the debate.
Another proli ferate theme
throughout the year was the number of
art icles that touched on the essen tia l
undermining of U .S . nat ional law that
i l legal immigration presents. This
argument is usually presented from the
point of view of the legal citizen by
usually noting how the undermining U.S .
national law undermines the rights of a l l
the citizens within its borders. For
example, one editoria l published in the
Washington Post in May stated, . . . the
presence of so many i l legal migrants in
the United States without enforceable
rights undermines the rights of everyone
else . This l ine of argume ntation is usually
tied in with the issue of san ctuar y cities
or those cities who by either practice or
by law protect i l legal immigrants. S ince
the early 1980s over 40 cities and
counties across the U.S . have adopted
these p olicies , which basical ly state that
they will not use local resources to
enforce federal immigration laws. One
ex a m pl e o fthis , published in the El Paso
T i m e s ,
points to an apparent hypocrisy
within the Obama administrat ion when
dealing with these ci ties , Everyone ha s
noticed the hypocrisy of the government
going after Arizona and ignoring the
sanctuary ci t ies By paring the Obam a
administrat ion with commentary about
the undermining of national laws and
rights ,
the discourse is able give
just i f icat ion for presen ting a sense of
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direct opposition to authority; a direct
opposition to authority is defined as
negativism.
A no t h er a r g u m en t th a t w a s a l so
closely t ied to the issue of und erm ining of
national laws is the issue of assimilation.
I t is commonly argued, mostly from a
more l iberal perspective, that it wou ld be
impossible to d eport a l l o f those person s
who are in this country i llegally, and
therefore there must be a mechanism
develope d to open a path to legal
ci t izenship. Amnesty has a lso been
commonly brought up as a solution to this
issue.
One editoria l published in The San
ntonio Express c o nd enses t h is a r g u m ent
by stating, It is phy sically and finan cially
impossible to deport 12 mil l ion
u nd o c u m ent ed w o r k er s a nd t h ei r
famil ies . Our nation would be better
served by fully assimilating these families
into Am erican society . On the other side
of this argument the common statement
is that granting amnesty or some other
form of assimilat ion would sim ply just i fy
the i llegal act of entering this country
dishonestly. In an editorial published by
the Sacramento Bee i t was stated that
assimilat ion, as well as birthright
citizen ship, for i l legal imm igra nts is
unjust and unfair to people who play by
the rules. Statemen ts such as these
clearly show that there is a sort of
perceived mistreatment is being thrust
upon legal c i t izens every t ime someone
enters the U.S . witho ut going through the
established rou tes. This is an examp le of
the scapegoating strategy that has been
defined as resentment .
2 1 1 A total of 240 new spap er art icles
were analyzed for the months between
Janua ry-June of 20 11. A storm of
immigration reforms seemed to sweep
across the conservative US after the
passage of SB1070, and thus during this
time much of the political discourse
surrounding immigration is focused on
the aftermath of the passage of the bill .
Much of the debate during these months
has focused on three key issues: lack of
r eso u r c es , la w l essness , a nd g o v er nm e nt a l
i na d eq u a c i es .
Since it is currently law to grant
ci t izenship to any persons born within
the borders of the US, it has becom e a
com mon argum ent that these i l legal ly
b o r n
children will ultimately have entire
famil ies that wi l l become a burden upon
socia l resources and cohesion. Most of
this line of argum entation takes the form
of statements of verba l hosti l ity b y
displaying att i tudes that are negatively
overcritical. For example, one article
published in the San Gabriel Valley
Tribune stated that , In 2010 there were
over 300 ,000 births in the United States
to i l legal immigrant mothers. By granting
chi ldren of i l legal imm igrants' c i t izenship,
the chi ld can eventually anchor an entire
family into the United States, even though
they gained access to our nation i l legal ly .
More d irect statem ents of verbal hosti l ity
l ike what was stated by Rep. Daryl
Metcalfe when discussing how the
children of i l legal immigrants are the
mos t direct threat to our nation: They
are brought up in this nation and then
tear i t dow n, By framing the argu me nt
around tax payer dollars that go into the
education of these children, one is able to
draw the sense of humanity out of the
debate in order to focus the public's
attention around the issue of taxpayer
dol lars .
B y fr a m i ng th e a r g u m e nt a r o u n d
the assumption that the chi ldren of
i l legal-immigrants wi l l grow up to deceive
and che at society the project ion strategy
moves out of the realm of verbal hostility
and into the realm of direct suspicion.
Another key issue that was present
was the apparent lack of governmental
involvement in the enforcement of i l legal
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imm igration laws. Thu s, it is sa id, the
states must take action in order to protect
themselves from the economic and socia l
woes of i l legal immigration. A statement
written by Rep. Lamar Smith highlights
the central argum ent , We have tools to
l imit i l legal immigra tion, but the Oba ma
administrat ion is not enforcing the
immigration laws on the books.
Comments of this nature are most
definitely m ean t to be an open reb ell ion
against the conventions of current
governmental policy , and thus are a
negativistic hostility projection strategy.
By ma king an us vs . the m contrast
between the conservative base that is
aggressively pushing for strict
immigration reform and the Obama
adm inistrat ion, the author is able to
condense and sol idi fy a sense of
identi f icat ion among those who would
agree with a stricter imm igration policy .
The Democratic poli t ica l base uses a
reciprocal argument to achieve the same
cohesive effects among the growing
Latino voter base. Bui lding upon this ,
some have even suggested a
premeditated and conscious effort by the
Obama administrat ion to disrupt state
and local authorit ies from enacting these
immigration policies; this emphasis on a
premeditated effort shifts the effect that
is being presented away from the realm of
negativism and into the realm of direct
suspicion.
Like any other strongly divided
poli t ica l deba te, there we re som e strict
instances of verba l hosti li ty , and perha ps
some of the most critically interesting.
State Rep. Daryl Metcalf would make the
curious dist inct ion between legal and
non -lega l imm igratio n by stating, It 's not
immigration, [ it 's an] i l legal-alien
i nv a si o n . T h i s c o m m ent c o nd enses w h a t
would seem to be a common conservative
affect of prejudice that assumes all Latino
immigrants, no matter what their legal
status ,
are criminals in nature and must
b e , i f not physical ly , men tal ly separated
from the rest of the American populat ion.
Another instance of part icularly strong
verbal hosti l i ty was a comment given by
Kansas Rep. Virgi l Peck during a press
confere nce, Looks like to me , i f shooting
these immigrating feral hogs works,
maybe we have found a (solution) to our
i l legal imm igration pro blem Here , Rep .
Peck is c learly project ing a thre atening
sense of hostility by directly comparing
Latino immigrants to pest like feral hogs
that are routinely shot from helicopters.
C O N C L U S I O N
Issues such as immigration have,
and pos sibly a lways w i l l be, very polar in
nature and thus has the tendency to
attract at least a few instances intensely
negative rhetoric. The six strategies
defined as strategies used for
sc a peg o a t i ng m ea ns w e r e seen a s a n
effective means to evaluate artifacts by
focusing on the att i tudes behind the
project ive behavior.
While using a basic search with
LexisNexis Academic databases, for
newspaper art icles that simply contained
the word ' i l legal-immigration' were useful
to identi fy that these scapegoating
project ive behaviors actual ly do exist
within modern immigration discourse, i t
was found to omit many art icles from
major U.S . publicat ions. For example, any
given Lexis-Nexis Academic search wi l l
only display a maximum of one thousand
results so natural ly ma ny art icles wi l l be
omitted unless the search is more acutely
defined. While this is not unexpected,
what was surprising was what art icles the
search engine selected. Instead of first
including those art icles of the m ost
popular U.S . news publicat ions, the
results would mostly include 'perspective'
or 'opinion' editorials that are often little
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more than biased rants inr espo nseto
another previously published art icle . This
could easi ly skew the results ofthe
general evaluation
of
trends over t ime.
The transformation intoam o r e
posit ive discourse surrounding
the
immigration debateis not ab u r d en t h a tis
i m po sed u po nthegenera l public , ratherit
is
the
discursive form ations that are
d ev el o ped atthe govern men tal level that
will need
to be
changed before
the
dominant negative discourse wi l l evolve
intoamore p osit ive perspective (Burke,
1966) .
Public engagement is completely
reliant ontheansw ers that are given
through poli t ica l metaphors
and
proverbOs that surround civic problems
(M .
W.
S m i t h
Waugh, 2OO8). Public
att i tudesareorganizationally established
through symbolic act ion, and becauseof
this
are
usually sluggish
to
change unless
thereisalegislative body that oversees
the publics mind (M.
W.
Smith
W a u g h ,
2OO8). F u r t h er m o r e ,the perpetual
r eg ener a t i o n
of
negative imm igration
discourse, and the scapegoating strategies
that are associated withit,simply serves
to val idate
and
magn ify the feel ings
of
aggression that are commonly presented
t h r o u g h o u t t h e A m e r i c a n p o pu l a c e .
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