Source: Journalist’s Resource

“Illegal” — the label used by many to describe immigrants who lack official documents — is more and more frequently being swapped out for terms like “undocumented” or “unauthorized.” In April 2013, the Associated Press pledged to purge “illegal” in its style book, reserving the term only as a descriptor for actions, not people. Of course, that is not the only controversial term in this debate over language and immigration. There are battles over the use of “amnesty” versus “a path to citizenship,” as well as over “anchor babies” versus “birthright.” (According to the 14th Amendment, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”)

These linguistic and framing fights continue as Congress prepares for another potential push on immigration reform, and as patterns of opinioncontinue to fluctuate. The Pew Research Centerprovides perspective on certain patterns in press coverage. For example, the “use of ‘illegal alien,’ a term considered insensitive by many, reached its low point in 2013, dropping to 5% of terms used. It had consistently been in double digits in the other periods studied, peaking at 21% in 2007.”

But how much impact does word choice really have on perceptions of immigrants and related policies? To assess this, researchers Jennifer Merolla of Claremont Graduate University and S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Chris Haynes of the University of California-Riverside examine two data sources — a sample of news content, and a survey of citizen attitudes — and analyze two different dimensions offraming strategy: “policy frames as trying to move public opinion along the dimension of relative rights (i.e., what these persons are entitled to), andimmigrant frames as seeking to move opinion primarily along the dimension of autonomous rights (i.e., trying to change public perception of who they fundamentally are).”

Their study, “‘Illegal,’ ‘Undocumented,’ ‘Unauthorized’: Equivalency Frames, Issue Frames and Public Opinion on Immigration,” published in Perspectives on Politics, finds that word choice has a different effect depending on the type of frame. The researchers use the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) as a platform for research; they systematically interchanged the words “illegal,” “undocumented,” “unauthorized” in questions on immigrant rights and asked respondents how they felt toward immigrants. They also analyzed articles “in mainstream and conservative daily newspapers in New York and Washington, D.C. (the New York Times and Washington Post on the mainstream side, and the New York Post and Washington Times on the conservative side), from 2007 through 2011.” Further, they examined content on three major cable news networks, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, over the same period.

To read about their findings, visit Journalist’s Resource.