Metaphors of Irregular Immigration in the Spanish Language Press in the United States

Abstract

This article analyzes the metaphors that conceptualize the phenomenon of irregular immigration in the Spanish language press in the United States. It takes examples from a corpus of opinion articles from publications that are known to sympathize ideologically and emotionally with the situation of irregular immigrants. Consequently, they provide us with an opposing vision to the one portrayed in the xenophobic discourse which has been more commonly studied up to now. Through the analysis of the selected source domains and the set of correspondences established, the political orientation of the metaphors is inferred, and it can be seen that together they make up a coherent conceptual structure which reveals the ideology of its users and the moral values of the story that is narrated.