Metaphors in politics

Recently, I read "Immigration as Dangerous Waters" by Otto Santa Ana, which was a part of "What's language got to do with it?" by Keith Walters and Michal Brody. As I read it, I thought to myself, "Huh, this is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to write about in my blog," so here I am.

Otto writes about the metaphors used in speeches and debates over immigration. According to Otto's data, 58.2% of immigration metaphors were "immigration as dangerous waters," and 23.2% were "immigration as war."

If you're thinking, "huh?" I'll give you a couple examples and you should get the idea. For immigration as dangerous waters. This example mostly equates immigration to flooding (e.g., a flood of immigrants, a tidal wave of immigrants, an unrelenting tide of immigrants, etc.), and even directly parallels the effects of Hurricane Katrina to the potential effects of immigration. For immigration as war. This is a more humorous example; if you want more serious ones, it wouldn't be too hard to find them. In any case, the cartoon makes the metaphor obvious: immigrants are "invading" our country, and we need to "defend our borders" or "secure our borders."

This way of speaking about immigration is pretty common; so much so that many of us hardly even recognize that this is a metaphor. The language is ingrained into us so that we think of this as a natural way to talk about immigration. But speech can often influence how we view a topic. What are the consequences of viewing immigration as dangerous waters or as a war?

If we view immigraiton as dangerous waters, according to Otto Santa Ana, we dehumanize and collectivize immigrants into a large conglomeration of inorganic matter (water). We lose sight of what we are actually dealing with; the lives of real human people, real individuals. This way of speaking about immigrants also denies them any kind of real value; a tidal wave can't perform cheap labor or participate in capitalism or increase the US GDP. Instead, dangerous waters are harmful and destructive; they wash things away. In the case of immigration, these "dangerous waters" might be washing away anglo-American dominance or jobs or culture.

If we view immigration as war, we take it one step further; immigrants aren't particles of inorganic matter which do harm but are essentially neutral (since inorganic matter doesn't have feelings...). Instead, immigrants become "the enemy." I think it's pretty clear what the effects of labeling a group "the enemy" are.

Notice that the two dominant examples of immigration metaphors are mostly anti-immigration. There may be many reasons for this, but one of the most prominent ones I think it that the anti-immigration stance is largely conservative or Republican, and the Republican party has much stronger rhetoric than the Democratic party.

There are many metaphors that I notice now that I wouldn't have noticed before, since they are so deeply embeded in our language. For example, health care as war (fighting disease, war on cancer, war on AIDS, breakthroughs in medicine, invasive procedures, defensive medicine, brave patients, etc.)

What other metaphors have you noticed in politics?