BYU Law Review
Abstract
Words communicate more than their ordinary dictionary meaning. Words tell us about individuals' and communities' conscious and subconscious perceptions. The words we use are evidence of how we think, which, in turn, ultimately determines what we do. In this paper, I examine and compare the usage of the words "immigrant," "alien," and "citizen" to make observations on the nature of membership and belonging in the United States. While it is perhaps intuitive that these words carry very different connotations, here I use corpus linguistics to explore those connotations. I rely on the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a database of natural spoken and written American English from a variety of sources, including newspapers, television programs, literary magazines, and movie scripts, to examine these terms' usage. By comparing the words most exclusively and closely associated with "immigrant," "alien," and "citizen," I highlight the connotations of these terms in modern American usage. Ultimately, I conclude that current usage of these terms suggests a hierarchical and status-based narrative of membership in which "aliens are criminals and outsiders," "immigrants are weak and vulnerable," and "citizens are noble and contributing." This narrative, I argue, contributes to a stratified notion of membership that engenders discriminatory perceptions of and facilitates the denial of rights to noncitizens.
Rights
ยฉ 2014 Brigham Young University Law Review
Recommended Citation
D. Carolina Nรบรฑez, ๐๐ข๐ณ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฅ๐ด: ๐๐ญ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ด, ๐๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ช๐จ๐ณ๐ข๐ฏ๐ต๐ด, ๐๐ช๐ต๐ช๐ป๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ด, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐จ๐ถ๐ข๐จ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐๐น๐ค๐ญ๐ถ๐ด๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ, 2013 BYU L. Rแดแด . 1517.
