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Spanish newspaperExploring visual dysphemisms in pieces of news related to immigrant minors in a

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v i s u a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n

Exploring visual dysphemisms in pieces of news related to immigrant minors in a

Spanish newspaper

M A R I A M A R T I N E z L I R O L AUniversity of Alicante, Spain and

University of South Africa (UNISA)

A b S T R A C T

This article describes the main visual characteristics used in different multi-modal pieces of news related to immigrant minors in the newspaper El País, which is one of the most important newspapers in Spain. The corpus of examples consists of all the pieces of news dealing with immigrant children published from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2011. For the framework of analysis, the study draws on visual grammar and critical discourse analysis. The study reveals that immigrant minors are represented dysphemistically in the multimodal texts analysed so that the most pejorative side of their reality is portrayed. The author thus aims to provide a visual analysis of the way in which immigrant minors are represented visually in a serious Spanish newspaper. In doing so, she aims to show visual ways of manipulation and reinforcing of stereotypes related to immigrants, in general, and immigrant minors in particular.

K E y W O R D S

immigration • newspapers • social actors • visual dysphemisms • visual grammar

1 . I N T R O D U C T I O N

Irregular immigration of immigrant, unaccompanied minors (children, young people and adolescents) has been taking place over several years as part of the contemporary migratory phenomenon in Europe. These migrations must be framed within the context of adult migration as well as receiving trans-national treatment. The majority of immigrant minors arrive without their families, which means they are in Europe without any help or legal represen-tation. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the situation of the countries where minors come from in order to understand this kind of migration. The major-ity of them come from Morocco, whose population has a quite young average

541741 VCJ0010.1177/1470357214541741Visual CommunicationMartinez Lirolaresearch-article2014

A R T I C L E

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406 V i s u a l C o m m u n i c a t i o n 1 3 ( 4 )

age, and a great majority live in the countryside. In this sense, we agree with Lorente y Rubén and Jiménez (2006: 7) that migration of minors in Morocco cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon but as part of a complex social reality.

The decisions relating to how to represent the reality of immigration in the press point to factors such as who communicates with whom and who has the power to represent the reality of immigration in a particular way (Bañón, 2002; Martínez Lirola, 2008a, 2010; Van Dijk, 2005, 2006, 2008). The press commands power over a population because it can transmit facts in a specific way that is appropriate to its objectives, such as selling newspapers or showing that it is the majority group of the population that has power. People who do not have any real or constant contact with the Other (immigrants) will take the image offered by the media as a frame of reference. Therefore the discourse of the media will be the one that will inform and sustain these people’s image of immigrants, making it limited and reduced (Alonso Belmonte et al., 2010).

Among the people coming from other countries in search of a better future, minors are the most vulnerable group. They are usually boys younger than 18, mostly from poor families and, in many cases, they are illiterate. The fact that they have a low social status implies that often their families have encouraged immigrant minors to leave their country and try to find a better future. They mainly leave their country in fishing boats (pateras) or in the back of a lorry, with various ambitions such as wanting to be independent and to find work in Europe as quickly as possible so that they can earn some money and help their families in their country of origin. This type of immigra-tion first started in the mid 1990s (Lorente y Rubén and Jiménez, 2006: 10).

In the press, there are predominantly two stereotypes of immigrant minors without documentation: one is related to the magnitude/order of the phenomenon, i.e. there is an invasion taking place; and the other is related to their origin, i.e. they are street children who are dangerous and violent (Jiménez Álvarez, 2003: 6). For this reason, our main research questions are: In what ways are immigrant minors portrayed in a sample of the Spanish press? What are the more frequent visual strategies used to depict immigrant minors as social actors?

In order to answer these questions, the aim of this research is to offer a critical analysis of the main visual elements involved in the representation of immigrant minors in a sample of the Spanish press and the possible relation-ship between these elements and the reproduction of stereotypes and/or eth-nic and racial prejudices. More specifically, I will analyse in detail a selection of four images concerning immigrant minors found in the newspaper El País published in 2011. In each of these texts, I will focus on the image and, as far as the verbal element is concerned, I will analyse the discourses appearing in the caption of the photograph as well as those in the headlines.

Multimodal resources can construct stereotypes as shown in the mul-timodal texts that will be analysed in this article – stereotypes that are quite



407L i r o l a : E x p l o r i n g v i s u a l d y s p h e m i s m s i n p i e c e s o f n e w s r e l a t e d t o

i m m i g r a n t m i n o r s i n a S p a n i s h n e w s p a p e r

important in the hegemonic struggle and are a common habit of ruling groups. Stereotyping involves reduction and simplification of the main characteristics of the minority group (immigrant minors in this study) so that they are not represented as ‘normal’ by the group in power. By ‘normal’ the ruling groups mean ‘natural and inevitable’, something that is expected according to their own ideology and value system.

This article is organized in the following way: the next section is devoted to the literature review and justifies the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and visual grammar as the theoretical frameworks for analys-ing the selected texts; special attention will be paid to the use of euphemism and dysphemism for the representation of immigrant minors. Section 3 deals with the data and general methodology. Then, the main results are presented, paying attention to the visual characteristics of the texts analysed. Section 5 concentrates on the discussion of the results obtained. Finally, the article ends by presenting some conclusions arising from the study.

2 . L I T E R A T U R E R E V I E W

CDA analyses the different choices or strategies used to create meaning in texts in order to point out how discourses are created, also with what purpose and to what extent those choices shape readers’ opinions and ideology, and contribute to maintaining unequal social relationships (for example, those in which the ruling group is the main group with power over minority immi-grant groups). Consequently, CDA allows us to examine those choices and to construct a link between language and the context in which it is used in relationships between the immigrant groups and the social reality in which they are framed (Crespo and Martínez Lirola, 2012; Hidalgo Tenorio, 2011; Wodak and Meyer, 2009).

Moreover, CDA examines the linguistic potential, i.e. the different pos-sibilities that are present in systems of language and the particular choices made from that potential in order to accomplish a particular communicative end, as Martin and Rose (2007: 1) make clear:

… treating discourse as more than words in clauses; we want to focus on meaning beyond the clause, on semantic resources that lead us from one clause to another as a text unfolds. And it also means that we treat discourse as more than an incidental manifestation of social activity; we want to focus on the social as it is constructed through texts, on the constitutive role of meanings in social life.

Among the different approaches that CDA subsumes for the social analysis of discourse, we follow the one proposed by Van Dijk (1993, 2009) due to his interest in the discursive reproduction of power and social inequali-ties. Van Dijk has studied racism in the press for many years and has paid special attention to the ways in which immigrants are seen as a problem or




as an invasion and their representation as such in the press. In this sense, our approach is critical because our intention is to unveil the negative representa-tion of immigrant minors.

Following Van Dijk (1993, 2005) we intend to show that the informa-tive action of the press contributes to the creation of images of discrimina-tion and exclusion of immigrants, which has an effect on the perception and behaviour of the autochtonous population towards them. According to Van Dijk (2009: 63): ‘scholars are typically interested in the way discourse (re)pro-duces social domination, that is, the power abuse of one group over others, and how dominated groups may discursively resist such abuse’ (emphasis in original).

In addition, Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework will be used in this anal-ysis because it pays attention to the representation of social actors in discourse from the linguistic and visual points of view. Consequently, this framework can be easily integrated within the CDA approach selected because it allows for the observation of how the immigrant minors that appear in the pieces of news selected are portrayed as social actors. Moreover, it allows us to observe the power of the journalists as members of the main group of Spanish soci-ety behind their representation. Both approaches allow for the unmasking of the discursive strategies that appear in the press as a sample of dominant dis-course.

International migration has intensified during the last two decades from the South to the North and from the East to the West. As a result, Europe has been receiving an increasing number of migrants from other countries, including immigrant minors (Triandafyllidou and Maroukis, 2012). Racism in Europe is on the rise and one of its characteristic features is hostility to migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. Society marginalizes these new ‘oth-ers’ represented as dependent and as victims (Delanty et al., 2011; Hervik, 2011).

In recent years, the image of immigrants in the press has been studied extensively using CDA as a framework (Alonso Belmonte et al., 2010; Bañón, 2002; Martínez Lirola, 2006, 2008a, 2008b; Richardson, 2004; Richardson and Wodak, 2009a, 2009b; Van Dijk, 2006, 2008; Wodak and Reisigl, 2001, among others). Generally, the visualization of migration and migrants is character-ized by portraying them as poor people, dependent on the main group or as people who invade other countries and therefore need help and use social services and resources (Martínez Lirola, 2013; Nohrstedt and Ottosen, 2005; Richardson and Wodak, 2009a, 2009b; Steinacher, 2012). The dichotomy we–they is highlighted by publishing negative news articles about them and positive ones of ourselves. ‘They’ are foreigners, defined by ‘race’, religion, or language and, therefore, it is made clear that they do not belong to the main group and that they will never belong.

Some recent studies have paid attention to the analysis of linguis-tics and visual discourse in order to observe racial linguistic and visual





meanings against immigrants. For example, Van Leeuwen and Jaworski (2002) concentrate on the discourses of war photography. Richardson and Wodak (2009a) compare recent election materials produced by Austrian and British right-wing parties with explicit xenophobic agendas in order to observe the main strategies used to construct fear of immigrants. Richardson and Wodak (2009b) trace the histories of discourses supporting ‘jobs for natives’ in the UK and Austria using the discourse–historical approach (DHA) to critical dis-course studies.

In addition, Baker et al. (2008) pay attention to the exclusion of immi-grants in media reporting in the UK press. Similarly, Richardson (2004) analyses British broadsheet newspapers in order to observe examples of rac-ism in pieces of news on Islam. Other studies concentrate specifically on the representation of refugees and asylum seekers, such as Gabrielatos and Baker (2008) and KhosraviNik (2009, 2010).

In general, studies dealing with the visual and linguistic representation of immigrants in the Spanish press point out that immigrants are represented as different from the main group of the population as regards race, appear-ance, culture, language and origin (Bañón, 2007; Martínez Lirola, 2006, 2010; Van Dijk, 2003, 2005). This is one of the strategies used by the press in order to restrict the arrival of immigrants in Spain. Consequently, it is the Spanish population that is the group with power and immigrants are represented as inferior and dependent on the main group. In this sense, the negative visual representation contributes to persuading readers to have a negative image of immigrants (Blair, 2004; Moore et al., 2012; Reisigl and Wodak, 2000; Wodak and Reisigl, 2001).

However, there are fewer studies of immigrant minors in the Spanish press and the main ones concentrate on the problems caused by Latin American gangs of young people (see Patiño Santos and Martín Rojo, 2007; Retis and García, 2010; Soriano et al., 2008) or on the problems associated with the cen-tres for minors (Ardévol Abreu, 2009; Lorente y Rubén and Jiménez, 2006).

In addition, there are a few discursive studies that concentrate on the linguistic representation of topics related to immigrant minors (Almeida, 2009; Berman, 2000; Cheong and Halverson, 2010; Faucher, 2009; Hester and Hester, 2010; Nippold and Scott, 2010). However, the study of the visual rep-resentation of immigrant minors has been neglected, thus the focus in the present article on such visual representation.

In our current society, multimedia elements predominate so that the majority of texts surrounding us are multimodal, i.e. texts that combine two or more modes of communication: in the case of the present study, the multi-media elements are the visual (photographs, diagrams, etc.) and the linguistic (language).

Our main concern in this study is with visual elements and the mes-sage they convey in the whole piece of news. There are many studies that pay attention to multimodality and the role of visuals in the construction of




meaning (Baldry and Thibault, 2006; Bateman, 2008; Jewitt and Kress, 2003; O’Halloran, 2004; O’Halloran and Smith, 2011; Ventola and Moya, 2009; Ventola et al., 2004, among others).

Following Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 177), the authors of the visual grammar that will be the theoretical framework of this article, there are three main types of composition in multimodal texts: (a)‘information value’: the place in which elements are located, for example, from left to right, top to bottom or from the centre to the margins, can add a specific value; (b) ‘salience’: the different elements of a composition that are designed to catch the readers’ attention, for example, appearing in the first or second place, the size of an element, colour contrast or sharpness; and (c) ‘framing’: the pres-ence or absence of frames that connect or disconnect elements of meaning in terms of whether they go or do not go together in the making of meanings.

2.1 The use of euphemism and dysphemism for the repre-sentation of immigrantsSerious newspapers carry out a process of social legitimization throughout the different linguistic and visual choices. Euphemism (i.e. the semantic or formal process by means of which the taboo is stripped of its most explicit or obscene overtones) and dysphemism (i.e. the process whereby the most pejo-rative traits of the taboo are highlighted with an offensive aim to the addressee or to the concept itself) are very useful devices at journalists’ disposal for por-traying immigrants.

Moreover, these devices help reinforce values and social codes con-cerning immigration. Euphemism and dysphemism can be considered as antithetical resources of referent manipulation in the social use of language because they are powerful tools that allow us to point out social and ideologi-cal control of the social issue under study, in this case, immigration. Referent manipulation implies the process whereby the language user presents the taboo concept in a particular way, either softening its less acceptable aspects or, on the contrary, intensifying them (for a full description of this process, see Crespo Fernández, 2007).

In this sense, images are very powerful in the creation of meaning in multimodal texts and they are a crucial tool if manipulation is intended. Therefore, images can be manipulated in order to create visual dysphemisms in different ways (Crespo and Martínez Lirola, 2012): for example, the use of small images and presenting them in non-prominent positions on the page (mainly on the left, which is the place of given information and therefore less important); presenting a dark background or not showing a clear contrast between the background of the image and the immigrants represented; show-ing immigrants’ faces blurred; representing immigrants looking down and not interacting with the reader; not framing the visual texts concerning immi-grants properly, so that they are not highlighted, etc.





Consequently, images can be considered to be visual arguments (Richardson and Wodak, 2009a, 2009b) because they present standpoints related to immigrants and evoke certain feelings. In this sense, we agree with Blair (2004: 50) in the following statement:

Visual arguments constitute the species of visual persuasion in which the visual elements overlie, accentuate, render vivid and immediate, and otherwise elevate in forcefulness a reason or set of reasons for modifying a belief, an attitude or one’s conduct.

3 . D A T A , A I M A N D M E T h O D O L O G y

The corpus of examples consists of all the pieces of news related to immigrant minors that have appeared in the virtual edition of one of the most important Spanish newspapers, namely El País, from 1 January to 31 December 2011. El País was first published in 1974 and since then it has been regarded as a serious left-wing quality newspaper. It sold around 370,080 newspapers last year and is the non-sport-related newspaper with the maximum circulation in Spain.

The corpus of examples consists of 47 pieces of news. Due to the limi-tations of this article, this analysis will concentrate on four visuals in which immigrant minors are represented and on the linguistic characteristics found in the headings and captions; these four examples typify what was found in the wider corpus of examples. The selected texts are representative of the negative way in which immigrant minors are portrayed, as the analysis will show.

The 47 pieces of news in this analysis present immigrants in conjunction with certain, usually negatively presented facts observed in the topics found in the majority of news ítems in 2011: the arrival of immigrants, in general, and immigrant minors in particular; gangs; reception centres; bone x-rays to determine the age of immigrants; the hijab (Islamic veil), etc. Moreover, good journalistic codes of practices are not followed because some pieces of news (34%) refer to the most common country of origin of immigrant minors, i.e. Morocco. However, none of the 47 pieces of news offer testimonies from these minors, even though it is common to find the voices of the Social Security Forces (46%), politicians (25%), NGOs (10%), university professors, judges, heads of school, ordinary citizens, etc. (24%).

A total of 27 percent of the 47 texts relating to immigrant minors in El País are multimodal, i.e. text accompanied by illustrations, and the rest are written pieces of news only. The visuals of immigrant minors compiled for this study show racism and discrimination against them through visual dis-course. Consequently, the visuals in which these minors are depicted stand as independent arguments because they create a particular image of immigrant minors: they are problematic and poor, consequently the visual argument relating to them is that immigrant minors are a burden for Spanish society. In




this sense, the different visuals found in the corpus are used to construct fear of or pity for immigrant minors.

Therefore, the main aim of this article is to analyse the principal visual elements used by journalists in order to represent the image of immigrant minors in multimodal texts, i.e. those using more than one mode of meaning-making, verbal and non-verbal. To this end, the principles of CDA and visual grammar are applied to the analysis of immigrant minors as social actors in discourse. In other words, attention will be focused on visual elements used by journalists to represent immigrant minors in El País in order to find out whether discourse reproduces social domination. CDA and visual grammar help to de-mystify ideologies and power through systematic investigation of the data. In this way, language is seen as social practice and the social context of language used is crucial.

In regard to the method of analysis, Van Leeuwen’s (2008) character-ization of social actors is used in the analysis in order to observe how immi-grant minors are portrayed, the consequences of each of the visual character-istics and their contribution to the dysphemistic representation of immigrant minors. When considering the representation of social actors, the different participants in pieces of news can be referred to as individuals or as groups. As stated by Machin and Van Leeuwen (2005: 132): ‘Which of these two options is chosen can make a significant difference to the way events are represented.’

In addition, when analysing the visual representation of social actors, it is also important to pay attention to social distance, social relation and social interaction in order to better understand how people are depicted in the pho-tographs and to observe how interpersonal relationships are established (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 138).

The next section presents the analysis and results. The analysis is mainly qualitative, following the tradition of CDA. However, it was necessary to offer some quantitative data in this section in order to offer a preliminary context to the deeper study that concentrates on the main linguistic and visual aspects in Section 4. The analysis of the general characteristics described ear-lier is followed by an exhaustive analysis of four multimodal texts.

4 . R E S U L T S

Having referred to some general characteristics of the 47 pieces of news in the previous section, this section concentrates on the analysis of four visuals with their corresponding captions and headings. The selected texts are repre-sentative of what is found in the corpus and they have been chosen in order to illustrate the main characteristics of the corpus through specific examples.

This section presents an analysis of the main discourse strategies used to create an assumption of the criminality of minors represented in the pieces of news. The analysis will thus help to observe how immigrant minors are portrayed in a negative way, contributing to discrimination, and the





reinforcement of stereotypes and differences by the newspaper’s readership, the majority group having power in contrast to the minority group, in this case, immigrant minors.

4.1 General analysis of visuals, captions and headingsThis part of the analysis focuses on the main visual characteristics found in the four images under analysis and the language used in the headings and captions. The second part of the analysis concentrates on exploring the repre-sentation of social actors.

The four images under analysis, selected as being representative of the 47 texts found in El País, possess some of the most salient elements of the multimodal texts. As stated by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 201): ‘salience can create a hierarchy of importance among elements, selecting some as more important, more worthy of attention than others.’

In regard to position on the page, the four different photographs appear on the right of the written text, which is considered the place for new information. All the photographs are medium sized, which can be considered dysphemistic because the size of the elements that create the multimodal text is one of the characteristics of its salience. Moreover, the whole piece of news size varies, for example Figure 1 is quite small, which implies that this piece of news is not highlighted in the newspaper. Figures 2 and 4 are read from right to left, whereas Figures 1 and 3 are read from left to right as a result of the participants on the left in Figure 1 appearing clearer than the ones on the right, looking at the audience with their hands up as a way of catching the audience’s attention.

All the photographs are framed, which implies that the elements in the photograph belong together, but the frame is not very strong, as according to Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 203): ‘The stronger the framing of an element, the more it is presented as a separate unit of information.’

In order to finish the analysis, it is important to refer to the lan-guage used in the captions and headings that accompany the visuals already analysed. Following Van Leeuwen (2008: 45), there are examples of appraise-ment, that is, ‘social actors are appraised when they are referred to in terms which evaluate them as good or bad, loved or hated, admired or pitied.’ In this sense, we can say that interpersonally the immigrants represented in the texts under analysis are appraised since they are represented in a consistently nega-tive way and their presence in Spanish society is understood as negative, mark-ing a clear difference between ‘they’ and ‘we’, immigrants and white citizens.

The four images under analysis have been selected because they share some characteristics that contribute to representing immigrants in a negative way, which is supported by the language used in the piece of news (due to the limitations of this article, we will concentrate on the headings and cap-tions). One of the main linguistic characteristics of the headings and captions




analysed is that, linguistically, immigrant minors are named as ‘collectiviza-tion’, because the journalists use nouns denoting a group of people (minors, immigrants and Moroccan children), as the following analysis will make clear.

The heading of the text accompanying Figure 1 (this is the only image with no caption) is ‘23 minors on board’. The number corresponds with the rep-resentation of immigrants as a group in the image. The written text specifies that out of the 56 immigrants who have arrived in Spain, almost half of them are minors and they seem to be from Morocco. In the text, immigrants are referred to as being ‘without papers’, which means that they do not have legal documents and therefore their status is illegal. Using numbers to quantify the number of immigrant minors who arrive contributes to presenting them as an abstract group, they are assimilated and homogenized (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 37).

In the text accompanying Figure 2, we find the following heading: ‘Minors with margin of error’ (Menores con margen de error) and the caption to the illustration is ‘Immigrants who have just arrived in Tenerife after a small boat has been intercepted’ (Inmigrantes recién llegados a Tenerife tras ser inter-ceptados en una patera). This piece of news refers to the unpleasant treatment that immigrants suffer in order to be verified as minors or adults. Sometimes, depending on the place where the bone x-rays are carried out, their age var-ies from 13 to 19 years old, which has consequences for immigrants because being older than 18 implies that they can be deported.

The text accompanying Figure 3 has the following heading ‘My veil comes into the classroom’ (Mi velo sí entra en clase); the caption to the illus-tration is ‘Mohammed A. with his daughter in front of the mosque in M-30’ (Mohamed A. con su hija frente a la mezquita de la M-30). The heading makes clear that this piece of news deals with the conflict of a Muslim girl in that

Figure 1. ‘23 menores a bordo (23 minors on board)’, 6 January 2011. © El País.





she is not allowed to go to school wearing her veil. The girl’s father, who faces the audience in the image, is the one whose testimony appears in the piece of news, where he makes clear that the girl has to go to school. The girl’s opinion does not appear in the text, which is connected to the fact that her face is not shown since it is her father who is in control of the situation.

Figure 2. Menores con margen de error (minors with margin of error): ‘Inmigrantes recién llegados a Tenerife tras ser interceptados en una patera (Immigrants who have just arrived in Tenerife after a small boat has been intercepted)’, El País, 29 September 2011. © El País.

Figure 3. Mi velo sí entra en clase (My veil comes into the classroom). ‘Mohamed A. con su hija frente a la mezquita de la M-30 (Mohammed A. with his daughter in front of the mosque in M-30)’, El País, 19 October 2011. © El País.




The heading to the accompanying text to Figure 4 is ‘Andalucía detects Moroccan children in a situation of false lack of protection’ (Andalucía detecta casos de niños marroquíes en falso desamparo) and the illustration caption is ‘Minors in a reception centre run by the city authorities of Andalucía’ (Menores de un centro tutelado por la Junta de Andalucía). Here we observe that the piece of news deals with immigrant minors in Andalucia, which is one of the Spanish regions receiving more immigrants. Again, as happens in the text accompanying Figure 1, the nationality is mentioned, which contributes to highlighting that Morocco is the country from which the majority of immi-grant minors come. The piece of news criticizes the fact that some of these children have families in their country of origin and therefore they should not be living in reception centres.

This analysis demonstrates that, in general, news articles concentrate on the vulnerability of immigrant minors (Barbosa, 2006; Jiménez Álvarez, 2003). News articles on immigrant minors in Spain have foregrounded the following topics in the last few years: on the one hand, many pieces of news on immigrant minors make reference to the arrival of minors from Morocco (see Figures 1 and 4, ant their accompanying texts) (Lorente y Rubén and Jiménez, 2006; Ourkia and Mulero García, 2010). These items of news concentrate on the fact that minors arrive in Spain and end up begging in the streets or wait-ing to be deported in a centre for minors. The pieces of news do not mention the reasons why they emigrate and they do not investigate their situation in their countries of origin. In fact, they are merely associated with the problems they cause to Spanish society because they need help and support from the social services.

Figure 4. Andalucía detecta casos de niños marroquíes en falso desamparo (Andalucía detects Moroccan children in a situation of false lack of protection). ‘Menores de un centro tutelado por la Junta de Andalucía (Minors in a reception centre run by the city authorities of Andalucía)’, El País, 27 October 2011. © El País.





On the other hand, there are some items of news about Latin American gangs of young people and the problems they create in Spanish society or about minors under judicial control (Patiño Santos and Martín Rojo, 2007; Rodríguez Wangüemert et al., 2010; Soriano Gatica and Peres-Neto, 2008). These pieces of news portray the immigrant minors represented as criminals and, therefore, they threaten the security of the main group of the population. As a consequence, negative stereotypes are highlighted, making readers feel insecure and threatened (Burguet, 2008; Nash, 2005). In very few cases, some items of news concentrate on the social situation of the children of immigrants (García Borrego, 2003).

Moreover, the majority of the news items refer to girls caught in the polemic situation of wearing a veil to go to school (see Figure 3). This is a controversial topic used in order to establish differences between different religions. Furthermore, this topic is also used to talk about women being dis-criminated against in some cultures.

Studies of the situation of these kinds of minors in other countries such as Colombia, France or Canada discuss the same topics (Amador Baquino, 2009; Berman, 2000; Cheong and Halverson, 2010; Conway and Potter, 2009: Faucher, 2009) since immigrant minors are represented as people in need or as people who could become the criminals of the future.

To summarize, the press normally mentions immigrant minors when there is a situation of conflict or vulnerability, and readers (who do not nor-mally have contact with them) assume that the arrival of these minors leads to conflict and problems. This section has demonstrated that, in general, the news articles analysed show negative topics that contribute to the we–they dichotomy. The texts analysed are representative of the way in which immi-grant minors are portrayed in Spain in a current situation of economic crisis that does not contribute to integration.

4.2 Analysis of participants: exploring the relationship of the representation of social actors and social distanceThis section concentrates on the way in which the immigrants represented in Figures 1 to 4 are portrayed and on the importance of the analysis of social distance for creating a dysphemistic image of immigrants.

One of the main characteristics of the texts analysed is that immigrants are never represented on their own, that is, as individuals (Van Leuween, 2008: 37), but rather as a group; that is, according to Van Leeuwen (2008: 38), they are collectivized and assimilated and therefore their identity as individuals is avoided. The idea of indetermination is thus present because immigrants are represented as unspecified, anonymous individuals (p. 39). In this sense, Figure 3 is different because we observe only two participants, the girl wear-ing the veil and her father, who are treated as individuals. In this image, the fact that the father is looking at the audience while holding his daughter who




has her back to the camera clearly demonstrates that he is the participant with power since he is the one interacting with the viewers.

Presenting immigrant minors as a group implies that they are not wor-thy of personalized representation or attention. Moreover, in the representa-tion of social actors in Figures 1, 2 and 3, it is also clear that we only see the top halves of all the immigrants represented. This means that social actors are not represented as a whole, since their bodies are only partially represented. In addition, using long shots as in Figures 1 and 4 contributes to backgrounding the individuality of the actors and to distancing the people represented from the viewer.

Firstly, as far as social distance is concerned, the images analysed con-struct a distance between the people represented and the reader due to the visual dysphemisms described in the previous paragraphs. Secondly, in regard to the social interaction between the depicted people and the viewer, we are invited to sympathise and cooperate with the immigrant minors; for example, in Figure 1 the three immigrants on the left look at us (there are other immi-grants who look down or look to their left) as does the father in Figure 3. When subjects look directly at the camera, readers are invited to be involved in the action.

Thirdly, when paying attention to social interaction, the crucial factor is whether the represented people look at viewers or not. As already stated, none of the participants in Figures 2 and 4 look directly at viewers. Therefore there is no interaction: although they are observed, there is no dialogue and no explicit demand, and this contributes to presenting immigrants as objects, a strategy described by Van Leeuwen (2008: 141) as ‘the strategy of objectiv-ization, representing people as objects for our scrutiny, rather than as sub-jects addressing the viewer with their gaze and symbolically engaging with the viewer in this way’.

Immigrant minors appear backgrounded in all the photographs ana-lysed in different ways: in Figure 1 they appear behind the railings of the boat they are arriving on and therefore their bodies appear far away from the viewer. This is a clear example of visual dysphemism because immigrants are represented behind a physical barrier separating them from readers, symbol-izing and reinforcing the differences between the world of immigrants and the world of the main group, in this case Spanish society. Moreover, this image is an example of detachment because the viewer is distanced from the immigrants represented, who are angled away from the reader’s view. In addition, the faces of the immigrant minors represented cannot be distinguished; for example, they are blurred in Figure 1, which is also dysphemistic. Photographing them at a distance contributes to their social exclusion.

In Figure 2, the represented participants are looking down and cover-ing their faces, which precludes any interaction with the audience. Moreover, in this image, it is implied that the reader has a stronger work ethic than the immigrants who are static, doing nothing and trying to hide, indicating that





they are inferior. Figure 2 shows three levels – foreground, midground and background – but all the participants represented share the same character-istics. They do not show their faces, which suggests that they are ashamed of their social situation and situates them as excluded from the main group of society, i.e. the group with power.

In Figure 3, the protagonist of the piece of news, the girl wearing the veil, is represented by her back view and being held by her father. In this sense, it is significant that the father looks directly at the audience, which contributes to presenting him as vulnerable and in need of help and support. Presenting a participant with her back to viewers implies that she is inferior because she is not taking an active part in her life. This girl is represented therefore as not interacting with the audience, which is a clear example of visual dysphemism. This is also a way of placing the world of immigration beyond the experience of local people’s daily lives.

Finally, all the immigrant minors represented in Figure 4 are also pre-sented with their backs to the audience, which can be interpreted as a way of placing them outside most people’s experiences. This would contribute to the immigrants’ social exclusion, in the sense that ‘their problems are not ours’. Following the principle of information value already mentioned in section 2 (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 177), an image placed on the right is more important and that is why there are more immigrant minors in this position in this text, i.e. they are foregrounded.

On the one hand, Figures 2 and 4 are clear examples of offer visuals because there is no direct contact between the participants and the viewer and therefore the viewer is positioned as an observer. On the other hand, Figures 1 and 3 are a mixture of a demand and an offer visual because some immi-grants in Figure 1 demand an answer from the viewer not only by looking at them but also by raising their arms, i.e. by a gesture. The man represented in Figure 3 looks directly at the audience and therefore he demands an answer. Consequently, these participants demand that the viewer enter into some kind of imaginary relation with them (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 118). In the case of Figure 1, the immigrants raising their hands are seeking help from the viewers.

5 . D I S C U S S I O N : T O W A R D S T h E D E C O N S T R U C T I O N O F S O C I A L A C T O R S A N D V I S U A L D y S P h E M I S M S

The analysis in the previous section shows how the pieces of news related to minors do not allow the reader to understand the situation in which they live in their countries of origin or when they arrive in Spain, nor the circum-stances that made them migrate, because the majority of the pieces of news merely concentrate on problems caused by immigrant children (the fact of arriving, the bone x-rays, the problems associated with wearing a veil, whether or not they are minors and should return to their countries of origin, etc.).




The majority of the pieces of news in the newspaper El País just point out that immigrants arrive and that they are looked after and request help from the government and NGOs; this suggests that they are a burden on Spanish society.

The images examined in this article reproduce the ideology of the jour-nalists who have created the news items and of the newspaper under analysis. The media, in general, and this newspaper, in particular, have power in soci-ety, their voices are legitimate and they belong to an elite group; therefore the items of news they transmit are given credibility. The texts analysed concen-trate on negative facts about immigration, in general, and immigrant minors, in particular, which promotes the perception of people who arrive from other countries as a ‘people-problem’ that needs help, support, etc.

The analysis carried out in the previous section allows us to observe that there is always a relationship between texts and the society or culture in which they are framed. In other words, the image of immigrants, especially of immigrant minors, that is portrayed in the press does not increase the pos-sibilities of reducing the differences between the main group and immigrants, or of approaching the arrival of immigrants, in general, and of minors, in par-ticular, as something positive. The press offers what the general public expects to read, but also helps construct that expectation. Hence, from the texts ana-lysed, we can predict the context in which they are going to be consumed – a context that establishes great differences between the main group of society and the people arriving from other cultures.

The last statement implies that the interpretation of texts has to be structured, not only taking into consideration what the text says but also the specific rules of interpretation of each context (Van Leeuwen, 2005: 83). This relationship is so close that, whenever there are changes in a particular society or culture, these changes are also reflected in texts.

The analysis has shown that in this article we are mainly concerned with visual manipulation, and in this sense, following Van Leeuwen (2000: 333 ff) and his concept of visual racism, we use the term ‘visual dysphemism’ to refer to the cases in which images show the pejorative side of a social real-ity or group of people (see section 2.1). In the case of our analysis, the visuals contribute to the idea that immigrants are different from us and are a bur-den on society. Therefore, the different social actors depicted in our analysis appear to be represented dysphemistically in order to contribute to their social exclusion; they are presented as the ‘others’, i.e. those who are not like us, the main group of the population. They are a threat for our culture and a burden for our society; see, for example, the immigrant minors represented in the text accompanying Figure 1 asking for help and showing that they are in a vulnerable situation. In this way, visual discourse justifies the social exclusion of immigrant minors.

The way that the participants in Figures 2, 3 and 4 are portrayed, look-ing away from the camera, is a dysphemism because not showing people’s faces





indicates that they are ashamed of their social situation. In this sense, Figure 2 is especially significant because the immigrants represented are blurred, they look down and cover their faces, which gives power to the audience. This may lead the reader to deduce that immigrants feel ashamed of their situation: they feel inferior to the main group and that is the reason why they are not looking at the reader. Moreover, the fact that the girl in Figure 3 is shown being held by her father is also dysphemistic. This is connected with the written text, where the father’s opinion is represented but not hers.

The different visual dysphemisms analysed in the previous paragraphs do little to contribute to a positive view of immigrants. Moreover, it is sig-nificant that there are no people from the main group (Spanish society) in any of the photographs as a way of establishing a clear difference between the world of immigrants and the world of the Spanish population, between ‘they’ and ‘we’, showing that their problems are not our problems, and there-fore no positive characteristics of immigrants are highlighted by presenting them excluded from the main group, as Van Leeuwen (2008: 28) makes clear: ‘Representations include or exclude social actors to suit their interests and purposes in relation to the readers for whom they are intended.’

As far as the roles that social actors are given to play in representations (p. 32), there is no doubt that immigrants are represented as ‘patients’ (goals), i.e. as people to whom the action is done, and therefore it is understood that people from the main group are the ‘agents’ (actors). All the minor immigrants in the multimodal texts appear idle, which is associated with the idea of them being a burden on society because they need the help of NGOs and social welfare. Consequently, there is no reference to the immigrants’ function in society, i.e. to their occupation or role (p. 42); on the contrary, they seem to be identified with doing nothing, being unproductive for society and identified ‘not in terms of what they do, but in terms of what they, more or less permanently, or unavoid-ably are’. This idea of social exclusion is reinforced with the visual dysphemisms already commented upon (avoiding eye contact, shown in back view, etc.)

To sum up, the analysis presented in the previous section points out the main visual strategies for presenting people as others, as different from us ([p. 141): immigrants are presented as strangers, separate from people from the main group (strategy of distanciation); they are also represented as infe-rior, poorer and with less power (strategy of disempowerment); and finally, they are represented as objects, as the majority do not engage with the viewer (strategy of objectivization).

6 . C O N C L U S I O N S

The different visuals analysed in this article make readers perceive the image of immigrants as negative. The discourse of the press shows immigrant minors who have no documents, as people who are in need of Spanish social resources and as potential future delinquents; it seems that minors whose situation is




irregular are necessarily delinquents or beggars due to the way in which they are portrayed in the news items; they are linked to problems, to living in recep-tion centres, to being idle, etc. In other words, there are no pieces of news that report positive facts related to immigrant minors and the visuals found in the texts analysed do not portray them in a positive way.

In this sense, discourse helps to encourage fear of people from other cultures and to perpetuate the traditional stereotypes of people who belong to a different culture, which perpetuates the opposing we–they relation. Stereotypes and prejudices can be increased or promoted through the mes-sages transmitted by the press and, unfortunately, in contemporary times they are increasingly prevalent (Retis and García, 2010: 145).

The pressure of deadlines and the speed with which journalists work mean that they often do not take full consideration of the consequences of their linguistic or visual choices in items on immigration, but rather rely on their habitual prejudices. This pressure seems to be the justification for prob-lems with the journalistic treatment of minorities in general, and of immi-grant minors in particular, leading to their perception as problematic and threatening, due to the frequent representation associated with certain forms of deviant social behaviour such as violence, problems in centres for minors, crimes, unacceptable cultural differences, and so on.

The different choices found in the texts: image size, colours, the dif-ferent ways in which elements are placed in multimodal texts (top or bottom, right or left), etc. have an effect on the construction of meanings and, conse-quently, they have an effect on the way we read a piece of news because there is normally an hierarchical relationship between elements. Consequently, we need to be active citizens in our society and develop a critical perspective when we read texts that use different modes to express meaning.

It is necessary to vindicate the role of the press to make visible the situ-ations in which there is a violation of the basic rights of minors. This implies the need to call to the attention of the Spanish government as well as the gov-ernment of the countries where minors come from, especially Morocco in this case, the need to implement the necessary means to respect the rights of minors in their public policies, taking into consideration international regula-tions and Children’s Rights (Convención de los Derechos de la Infancia).

F U N D I N G

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, com-mercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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b I O G R A P h I C A L N O T E

MARIA MARTINEZ LIROLA is Professor of the Department of English at the University of Alicante, Spain, and Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Her main areas of research are Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. She has published more than 80 papers and 7 books, such as Main Processes of Thematization and Postponement in English (Peter Lang, 2009). She has been a visiting scholar in different uni-versities such as: University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada 2014), Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada, 2012), University of South Africa, UNISA (Pretoria, South Africa, 2012), University of Anahuac Mayad (Mérida, Mexico, 2008), University of Kwazulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 2006) and Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia, 2005). She has presented papers in international congresses all over the world.Address: Departamento de Filología inglesa, University of Alicante, Carretera de San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, 03690, Spain. [email: [email protected]]



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