Introduction

In the last decade, migrants in irregular transit through Mexico have faced a toughening of immigration control policy as well as a rise in abuses and aggressions against them. Academics and civil society organizations have provided evidence about this situation and consider the actions taken by the government to be inadequate (see, for example, ^{CNDH, 2009}; ^{WOLA, 2014}; ^{Casillas, 2016}; ^{Yee Quintero & Torre Cantalapiedra, 2016}).

Given the state of vulnerability experienced by transit migrants in Mexico, most of whom are from Central America, the Mexican press have published discourses favorable to migrants in their publications. On the one hand, they have granted media access to the voices of migrant defenders,² whose discourses: i) denounce the bad treatment that migrants experience in transit through Mexico, making the phenomenon visible and sensitizing public opinion; ii) demand measures and actions by the State in order to reverse the situation; in particular, they promote policies in favor of respecting the rights of migrants who transit through the country and guaranteeing their personal safety. On the other hand, several Mexican newspapers have employed discourses in favor of the interests of migrants in their opinion texts -editorial and opinion articles- and have produced reports and news about the dramatic situation of migrants in transit through Mexican territory.

Despite the well-established importance of discourse in the configuration of knowledge that people have on migration issues (^{Retis, 2004}; ^{Casero Ripollés, 2007}), these discourses favorable to migrants in the Mexican press have not yet been analyzed, nor has there been an exploration of the key aspects in understanding the role of favorable discourse in the social construction of the media’s approach to migration, such as their use of metaphors. Within Mexico -a country of emigration, transit migration, immigration, and return migration- research about journalistic discourses regarding migration is incipient (see, for example, ^{Hennebry et al., 2017}; ^{Torre Cantalapiedra, 2018}).

On the contrary, in the countries receiving large numbers of migrants -the so-called “First World” countries- there is a vast literature on journalistic discourses regarding migration. According to several investigations done in the context of rich countries, the tendency of the media has been to generate discourses unfavorable to immigration and immigrants -particularly by referring to migrants as “undocumented” or “illegal”. Frequently journalistic texts privilege the voices of state actors who tend to consider immigration as a problem, negatively qualifying the phenomenon to justify their exclusionary and persecutory immigration policies (^{Martín Rojo & van Dijk, 1997}; ^{Casero Ripollés, 2007}).

It is not surprising that most of the research on metaphors in journalistic discourses on migration has focused on texts that represent migration in a negative way (see, for example, ^{Santa Anna, 1999}, ²⁰⁰⁷; ^{O’Brien, 2003}; ^{Cisneros, 2008}), whereas a smaller number of works have analyzed the metaphors in journalistic discourses that represent migration in a positive way (see, for example, ^{Piñero Piñero & Moore, 2014}; ^{Piñero Piñero et al. 2014}).

Metaphors are relevant in discourses because they fulfill several functions that go beyond maintaining a certain literary style or achieving aesthetic beauty. In this sense, it is worth mentioning the usefulness of metaphors in supporting arguments (^{González García, 1998}; ^{Lakoff, 1999}; ^{Santibáñez, 2009}; ^{Piñero Piñero et al. 2014}) and appealing to emotions via discourse (^{Mio, 1997}; ^{O’Brien, 2003}; ^{Charteris-Black, 2006}); metaphors contribute to the persuasive effect of such discourses -making readers both believe and act in accordance with the discursive tones they are presented with-.

The objective of this paper is to analyze metaphors in journalistic discourses that are favorable to migrants in irregular transit through Mexico, as well as their persuasive function. In this way we seek to explore several novel aspects in the literature on metaphors and migration: first, by dealing with the discourses regarding transit migrants in the national press of the country through which they travel (most of the them did not consider the option to settle in Mexico); second, by addressing the discourses regarding migrants in irregular transit proceeding mainly from Central America countries with which Mexico has a special historical and cultural linkage -particularly Guatemala (^{Torre Cantalapiedra y Schiavon, 2016})-, in other words, migrants who do not consider themselves as belonging to a distant form of otherness, as Muslims in Europe, or the Latino population in the United States.

For the achievement of the proposed objective, this paper is divided into four sections: first, the metaphor is analyzed as a persuasive mechanism. For this, the proposals of two authors who studied the relationship between metaphor and persuasion in political discourses are highlighted (^{Mio, 1997}; ^{Charteris-Black, 2006}) -we emphasize the role of emotions- and the findings are discussed with respect to emotions in discourses surrounding migration. Secondly, we present the theoretical perspective adopted in this work, the conceptual metaphor proposed by ^{Lakoff & Johnson (2001)} and examine some of the works that have followed this line of analysis in order to explore the metaphors on migration in the US press. Thirdly, a brief description is offered, regarding the corpus of opinion and news texts selected from El Universal and Reforma from the year 2014. Fourth, based on the selected texts, we include a qualitative analysis of the conceptual metaphors used in discourses in favor of Central American migrants in irregular transit through Mexican territory, giving an account of the emotions to which their appeal is made.

Metaphors and persuasion: emotions in migration discourses

The discourses on Central American migration in irregular transit through Mexico, as in other countries, can be organized around the dichotomy: proposals in favor of and proposals against migration and/or migrants. The social actors that are positioned in each of these extremes seek the adhesion of readers to their respective points of view. In this sense, metaphors function as a privileged mechanism in achieving this purpose.

^{Mio (1997)} classifies the findings of the literature on metaphor as a persuasive device in the field of politics in three major categories: 1) metaphors can simplify and make political events more comprehensible; 2) Metaphors can resonate with the underlying symbolic representations of their receptors; 3) Metaphors can promote emotions or bridge the gap between logical and emotional persuasion.

Regarding this last aspect, ^{Mio (1997)} points out that: i) metaphors in politics are designed to promote emotions, to appeal to latent cognitive structures, and are not meant to be analytical or logical; ii) Stone (1988) maintains that since metaphors involve solutions to problems they also imply an advocacy for certain positions. “If you refer to governmental regulation as a consumer protection, you are advocating a continuance of these regulations” (^{Mio, 1997, p.123}); iii) Political metaphors allow combining the rational with the irrational, the logical with the emotional.

In a work on political discourses regarding migration, ^{Charteris-Black (2006)} recovers analytical elements of a previous work of his authorship in which he links the cognitive and emotional rhetorical potential of the metaphor with the classical concepts of logos (reasoned argument), pathos (appealing to emotions) and ethos (establishing the ethical credentials of the speaker); he argues that all are related to the primary rhetorical purpose of achieving legitimacy and identifies the following roles for the metaphor: communicating political arguments, communicating ideology through the political myth, increasing emotional impact and establishing the ethical integrity of the speaker. According to the author, these roles overlap and perform simultaneously so that metaphors are very attractive to politicians.

The proposals of both authors have several features in common: i) metaphors fulfill several functions in political discourses; ii) they separate the rational plane from the plane of emotions; and iii) they emphasize the appeal to emotions as an essential component in their respective frameworks. In this paper we focus on the ability of metaphors to promote emotions, realizing that they can be used in both pro-migrant and anti-immigrant discourses.

Research on journalistic discourses regarding migration has analyzed the appeal to emotions that is made in journalistic texts, when they are favorable and unfavorable to migrants. According to Rizo (2001),³ cited in ^{Retis (2004)}, the media represent migration in two ways: on the one hand, fear is induced, showing migrants as a threat, on the other, it tends towards showing the more dramatic aspects, which induces a reaction of compassion and mercy in the receptor. Following Rizo (2001), ^{Retis (2004)} considers that discourses on Latin American migrants in the Spanish press promote fear of the Colombian population and compassion for the Ecuadorian population.⁴

Migration research focused on metaphors and on political and journalistic discourses has also revealed the capacity they have to generate emotions for or against migrants. Given that anti-immigrant discourses were the most frequent and used many disqualifying metaphors of migration, they have been analyzed abundantly. ^{Charteris-Black (2006)} points out that there is a rhetorical link in the discourse of the British right between the concepts of disaster and container - as metaphors for immigration and Great Britain, respectively- and the emotional domain, and, therefore, they have an influence on the generation of powerful emotions such as fear and the desire for protection. ^{O’Brien (2003)} finds that the metaphors used to denigrate migrants in the migration debates of the early twentieth century -by dehumanizing or portraying them as a threat- reinforce the conscious and unconscious fears of citizens.

On the contrary, ^{Piñero Piñero and Moore (2014)} analyze the metaphors used in the discourses of migrant activists who, in their discourses of solidarity with immigrants, appeal to emotions in favor of migrants and conceptualize the immigrant through the use of metaphors that portray them as people who are in a situation of helplessness and that require support and understanding.

Migrants and conceptual metaphors

Researchers have extensively analyzed journalistic discourses regarding migration and migrants through the perspective of the conceptual metaphor (^{Santa Ana, 1999}, ²⁰⁰⁷; ^{Piñero Piñero & Moore, 2014}; ^{Piñero Piñero et al. 2014}). The theory of conceptual metaphor (proposed in the seminal work ^{Lakoff & Johnson, 2001}, and developed in several subsequent works, for example, ^{Kövecses, 2010}) defines the (conceptual) metaphor as the understanding of a conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain, called target domain and source domain, respectively. The conceptual metaphor highlights the existence of a correspondence between conceptual elements constitutive of the domain of origin and destination.

An example of a present conceptual metaphor in migration discourses is IMMIGRATION IS A NATURAL DISASTER.⁵ It is noted that a conceptual metaphor, as in the example, does not appear in language as such, but conceptually underlies all metaphorical linguistic expressions⁶ used to talk about the destination domain. For example, “We were surprised by the migratory tsunami”⁷ or “Faced with this migratory avalanche, Germany feels besieged.”

Given the abundant literature on conceptual metaphors in the field of migration, collecting and analyzing all of them would exceed the limited space of this article. For the purposes of this work, it will suffice to recover just some of the metaphors proposed and analyzed in the works focused on the contemporary press of the United States, so that they serve as a reference for our analysis.

^{Santa Ana (2007)} analyzes metaphors about IMMIGRATION and IMMIGRANTS in Los Angeles press around the time of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187⁸ in California. In his analysis, he finds that the source domain that prevails for immigration is: DANGEROUS WATERS, and for the Immigrant: ANIMAL. As the author points out, these metaphors dehumanize the migrant, hiding his condition as a human being and reducing him to the category of animal, respectively.

^{Piñero Piñero and Moore (2014)}, among others, give an account of the conceptual metaphors regarding the EXISTENCE OF THE IRREGULAR IMMIGRANT and the HOST COUNTRY. Regarding the EXISTENCE OF IRREGULAR IMMIGRANT, source domains are recalled: NIGHTMARE, RISKY ACTIVITY and CHESSBOARD, which according to the authors, stress the anguish, the suffering, the danger and the difficulty that characterize the lives of immigrants in the United States and promote solidarity with them. As for the HOST COUNTRY, migrant activists will recall various source domains with which the United States is usually characterized, but this time with the intention of denying them: SOLUTION, HOST and DREAM. The authors point out conceptual metaphors that not only seek to export realities of the domain of origin, but also, attitudes, beliefs and emotions with respect to those same realities. ^{Piñero Piñero and Moore (2014)} highlight the fact that the metaphors of those who defend and support immigrants in the United States constitute a discourse of resistance, which questions the dominant discourse of the detractors of immigrants.

Description of the corpus of journalistic texts

The corpus of journalistic texts used in this work was made up of opinion texts, informative texts and informative texts with interpretation, in the newspapers with the highest national circulation: El Universal and Reforma. The year 2014 was chosen to carry out the research of both newspapers because in that year the rise in the migration of children and adolescents led to a considerable increase in the number of news pieces referring to Central American migration in clandestine transit compared to previous years (^{Torre Cantalapiedra, 2018}).

For the selection of the opinion texts, all pages of both newspapers dedicated to opinion were reviewed in all copies published in 2014, a total of 63 texts (47 from El Universal and 16 from Reforma). The selection of informative texts -news, testimonies, interviews and reportage- and informative with interpretation -chronicles and reports with interpretation-was done in the same way, with all pages of the Nation and States sections, totaling 281 texts (124 from El Universal and 157 from Reforma).⁹

Metaphors abound in the opinion texts, which seek readers’ adherence to certain proposals; metaphors are at the service of the authors of these texts to help in this task of persuasion. In this sense, the election of 2014 allowed for a greater abundance of opinion articles and editorials, especially during the months of June and July.

In informative texts and in informative texts with interpretation, due to the question of objectivity -“information in the strict sense does not include the journalist’s personal opinions, let alone value judgments” (^{Grijelmo, 2014, p.29}, own translation) - and the need for a clear, concise and direct style of journalistic texts in the daily press, few novel metaphors are used. They mainly appear when the speech of others is specifically mentioned in the reports. On the contrary, some dead metaphors, those that have been lexicalized and their use is widespread, are used repeatedly. This is the case of the expressions “wave” and “American dream” in the analyzed texts.

Analysis of the pro-migrant metaphors in discourses in favor of central american migrants in transit

What happens with metaphors about transit migration?

Texts of migration activists refer mostly to Central American transit migrants -people- and not so much to Central American transit migration -the migratory flow in the abstract. In this sense, being in favor of the rights of migrants in transit and guaranteeing their personal safety does not necessarily mean being in favor of not restricting migration in transit.

Water metaphors are those that predominate in the journalistic texts analyzed to refer to migration in transit. The word “wave” is used metaphorically to refer to the crisis of migrant children; while other, more devastating movements of water appear on rare occasions, see, for example, avalanche, flood, tide or tsunami.

“No es un oleaje natural; es un tsunami que nos ha sorprendido. No estábamos preparados ni México, ni Guatemala ni Estados Unidos. Es horrible. Nos tiene saturados”, admite [José Mariano] Castillo [Embajador de Honduras en México] (^{Garduño, 2014, July 4}).

[It is not a natural swell; It is a tsunami that has surprised us. We were not prepared neither Mexico, nor Guatemala nor the United States. It is awful. It has us saturated”, admits [José Mariano] Castillo [Ambassador of Honduras in Mexico].

The use of these terms referring to dangerous waters in the analyzed texts, in principle, was not so much a way to understand this crisis of migrant minors in terms of catastrophe or threat to States -in contrast to discourses in the past and recent US press-, but a way of subtracting responsibility from the authorities justifying the impossibility of preventing the phenomenon or achieving its control.

One of the most prominent discourses in the Mexican press considers that the necessary conditions of development in the countries of origin should be achieved so that emigration is not the “only way out” for a large part of its citizens. The following sentence synthesizes the content of these discourses:

“la clave para solucionar esta y todas las crisis migratorias no está en hacer la vida difícil en el país de destino sino en hacer la vida posible en el país de origen, mucho más tratándose de niños” (^{Krauze, 2014, July 14})

[“the key to solving this and all migratory crises is not to make life difficult in the destination country but to make life possible in the country of origin, much more in the case of children” ].

A similar position was presented from the academic sphere by the philosopher ^{Thomas W. Pogge (2010)} who argues that political efforts should focus on eradicating poverty in developing countries rather than increasing the number of poor and oppressed people admitted in rich societies.

Final thoughts

In the framework of the so-called crisis of the migrant minors of 2014, the analyzed opinion texts and information texts from the newspapers El Universal and Reforma have provided significant coverage of the discourses regarding the denunciation of the aggressions and abuses that are committed against the migrants in transit through Mexico, as well as discourses in favor of unconditional respect for the rights of migrants. In these discourses, especially in opinion texts, metaphors have been used to achieve the adherence of the reader to certain positions.

The pro-migrant metaphors in the analyzed texts seek, as one of their primary functions, to increase the appeal to emotions -such as compassion, disgust and shame- in discourses in favor of migrants; and in so doing they resort to source domains such as NIGHTMARES, WAR, HELL and TREATMENT TO ANIMALS.

Metaphors in favor of migrants support discourses that combat dehumanizing anti-immigrant representations produced, to a large extent, by metaphors against migrants. In this way, the metaphors of the conceptual domain of the treatment of animals face metaphors that consider migrants as animals.

When anti-immigrant metaphors appear in texts favorable to migrants, it is usually because they are going to be scrutinized in a critical or ironic way. For example, in the following case, irony is utilized when referencing two of the most classic metaphors present in the journalistic discourses of the American press, especially the one most opposed to immigrants, IMMIGRANTS AS ANIMALS and IMMIGRATION AS AN INVASION:

“… familias enteras en Texas se han manifestado para que esa plaga no se aproxime a ellos, y el gobernador Perry incluso ha llamado a la Guardia Nacional, el Ejército del país más poderoso del mundo, a luchar contra esta amenaza, esta legión de niños indeseables, niños silenciados, niños invisibles” (Volpi, 2014, July 27).

[ “... entire families in Texas have protested so that this plague does not get near them, and Governor Perry has even called the National Guard, the Army of the most powerful country in the world, to fight against this threat, this legion of undesirable children, silenced children, invisible children].

In this work metaphors have been explored from the point of view of their emission; future research should address how they are effective to persuade readers through the appeal to emotions.