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Rhetorical Analysis

Decent Essays

Water metaphors are often used in public policy discourse as a way to help audiences understand immigration. It is important that the diction used in immigration discourse be studied because word choice is responsible for the context and understanding of various subjects. If audiences don’t dive deeper into metaphorical analysis, they may accept ideas as they are presented, rather than forming their own opinions of controversial topics. In this paper, I will argue that the use of the “flood” metaphor is not appropriate in immigration discourse because it equates immigration to a natural disaster and implies that the United States government has no control over immigration policy. To accomplish this task, I will be analyzing three articles written …show more content…

They contextualize topics and give the audience a frame of reference for which to connect concepts. Scholars have been studying how metaphors are used in public policy discourse for many years. As the discussion of these topics has become more relevant, so has the literature surrounding this discourse. In 2013, Stephen Heidt published an article titled, “Presidential Rhetoric, Metaphor, and the Emergence of the Democracy Promotion Industry," in which he examined the use of various metaphors in relation to international politics and the need for democracy promotion abroad. Heidt argues that presidents are able to draw connections between public policy and broader American themes to better help audiences understand these concepts. At the same time, they are able to deflect contradicting ideas, compelling Americans to evaluate public policies by their comparisons rather than their true …show more content…

In January of 2018, the Trump administration announced that they would be ending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for 200,000 Salvadoran migrants. According to the Associated Press, the “flood of returning TPS recipients” could cause a lot of economic and political instability in their home countries (). It may seem like this an appropriate time to use the “flood” metaphor, because the return of TPS migrants could create a potential disaster, it’s inappropriate to pretend its out of the control of the people making these decisions. A flood is a natural disaster that cannot be prevented. They can be hard to predict and can cause damage that takes years to repair. But in truth, the flood of migrants that the article talks about is due to the United States governments decisions. While these people were only meant to be in the United States under a temporary status, our government is suddenly sending them back to their home countries, without offering the countries time to prepare for this sudden influx of citizens. Its inappropriate to pretend that we, as a country, have no control over this flood, when in reality it is one of the only disasters we could

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