About the Book

"... awash under a brown tide ..."
"... the relentless flow of immigrants ..."
"... like waves on a beach, these human flows are remaking the face of America ..."

Since 1993, metaphorical language such as this has permeated mainstream media reporting on the United States' growing Latino population. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Santa Ana argues that far from being mere figures of speech, such metaphors produce and sustain negative public perceptions of the Latino community and its place in American society, precluding the view that Latinos are vested with the same rights and privileges as other citizens.

Applying the insights of cognitive metaphor theory to an extensive natural language data set drawn from hundreds of articles in the Los Angeles Times and other media, Santa Ana reveals how metaphorical language portrays Latinos as invaders, outsiders, burdens, parasites, diseases, animals, and weeds. He convincingly demonstrates that three anti-Latino referenda passed in California because of such imagery, particularly the infamous anti-immigrant measure, Proposition 187. Santa Ana illustrates how Proposition 209 organizers broadcast compelling new metaphors about racism that persuaded an electorate who had previously supported affirmative action to ban it. He also shows how Proposition 227 supporters used antiquated metaphors for learning, school, and language to blame the Latino child's speech—rather than gross structural inequity—for his school's failure to educate him. Santa Ana concludes by calling for the creation of insurgent metaphors to contest oppressive U.S. public discourse about minority communities.

Otto Santa Ana is a founder and associate professor of the César Chávez Center for Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA. The front cover art is from La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra , a mural by Judith F. Baca of the Social and Public Art Resource Center .

Brown Tide Rising portrays the new image of the Latino community that has taken hold in the US public's imagination since 1990, resulting in crucial social and political consequences.

Four thousand metaphors appearing in a respected mainstream newspaper during the 1990s form the basis of this book. Such metaphors, with their connotations of a relentless flooding of Anglo-American society, are more than rhetorical embellishments. Cognitive science now theorizes that people understand their social world in terms of such metaphors. Brown Tide Rising makes the case that these new metaphors have reshaped the public's conception of Latinos. The change occurred at a time when a significant social reorientation took place, and momentous political decisions concerning Latinos were made. Three California referenda of the 1990s, Propositions 187, 209 and 227, are studied. Each referendum was designed to impose fundamental restrictions on thirty-one percent of the state's population, its latino community. Latino voters rejected each measure. Nevertheless the measures were ratified by the more numerous white electorate. Brown Tide Rising depicts how Latinos and Latino political issues are conceived in contemporary US public discourse, and what the perceived relation of Latinos is to the larger society and nation.

Brown Tide Rising is more than a description of the public discourse on Latinos. Because its analysis is conducted in terms of the independently-motivated cognitive theory of metaphor, Brown Tide Rising offers a principled explanation of why the electorate responds to Latino political issues as it does.

In addition to addressing a major issue in America's society, Brown Tide Rising informs social science because it is a full-scale empirical demonstration of the power of prose metaphor to constitute social constructs, and a critical appraisal of cognitive linguistic metaphor theory in the context of mass media and public discourse.

Brown Tide Rising brings together two powerful tools. First, a strong empirical method is used to catalog the contemporary record of public discourse of Americans toward Latinos. The public discourse promulgated in over 650 articles from an important print media source, the Los Angeles Times , (among other sources) is both comprehensively and systematically sampled for Latino topics over the last decade. However, this book is not an indictment of the Times . It is an exposition of our everyday discourse practices.

Second, the news print data interpretation is made in the light of cognitive science theory about how humans comprehend their social world. In brief, its claim is that people do not principally make sense of their surroundings in terms of linear thinking and logical syllogism. Rather this cogent theory, which has evolved into a full epistemological account over the last 15 years, gives imagery—and hence metaphor—the power to shape human thought. Basically, we think in terms of pictures, not code. We imagine more than we formulate. This claim is very interesting in itself, and Brown Tide Rising provides a clear and absorbing account. Brown Tide Rising is the first US book to apply contemporary cognitive metaphor theory to current political issues on the basis of an abundant, natural language data set.

Beyond the notion of Latino, other political concepts treated in Brown Tide Rising include immigration and nationhood, immigrant versus citizen (as discussed during the Proposition 187 referendum), race and racism (as argued during the affirmative action debates of Proposition 209), as well as schooling and learning, language and nation (as articulated during the anti-bilingual education Proposition 227 initiative). Armed with cognitive science theory, this exposition on public discourse metaphor is a window on the ways that Americans frame their domestic worldview, and on how their worldview enacts, sustains and legitimates social inequity.