Chicana & Chicano Studies

Numbering more than 300,000, "Asian Latinos" are a large but overlooked segment of the Asian American and Latino populations of the United States. Drawing from data generated from the 5 percent Public Use Microdata Samples of the 2000 U.S. Census, this article provides a preliminary quantitative analysis of the Asian Latino community. In particular, it examines the demographic characteristics of population size, geographic distribution, national origin, gender, age, citizenship, and educational attainment. In addition, it examines several policy implications related to Asian Latino coalition building and undocumented immigrant advocacy.

"This article analyzes a set of anti-immigrant jokes with which Jay Leno entertained his national television audience in 2006, when the U.S. public was focused on unprecedented demonstrations urging justice for immigrants. Leno adroitly mocks immigrants and their cause to give his audience emotional release by distancing them from immigrants. It is argued that political comedy can be an insidious discursive practice that reduces its audience’s critical judgment as it signifies social boundaries. It should be carefully scrutinized because, with a few laughs, Leno can steer sentiment about public policy and instantiate divisiveness for an audience of 6 million who, in the words of Leno’s official website, “are drifting off to dreamland.”

Keywords: Humor, political comedy, late-night television, immigrant rights marches."

"Juan in a 100" is a set of 3 studies designed in concentric circles to home in on the character and consequence of network evening news reporting on the nation’s fastest growing and largest ethnic-minority group. In spite of recent inroads, the network evening news programs remain the nation's most important and authoritative daily accounting of America's unfolding reality. Thus remains important to study this vital source of information about Latinos.

I first study the distribution of news stories topics, comparing the total 12,000 individual stories that four networks broadcast in 2004 to the subset of those stories (totaling 118) that pertain to Latinos. The fact that less than one-percent of network news stories deal with Latinos as subjects of the story, led to the word-play of the book title. The 1:100 ratio and topic distribution has not changed in the past 15 years. Because there is no discernable change in the network patterns, a study of the 2004 broadcast year will remain relevant in the foreseeable future.

The second study focuses on content. I select 46 stories that encompass the range of news types (from briefs to features) as well as the major Latino news topics that the networks offer viewers. I conduct deep semiotic readings on each of them to provide an in-depth examination of the content of network news about Latinos that are broadcast to the American viewing public. The breadth and depth of this second study allow me to illustrate the techniques that the networks use to render their authoritative portrait of today's Latinos. The picture is not pretty. It is incomplete and often flawed.

In the final study, I move from description to explanation. I map out an explicit procedure by which news consumers build their understandings out of the multimodal stimuli of television news stories. This poses two challenges: how to incorporate into one interpretive framework different modes of lower-order semiotic sign (visual, non-spoken audio, graphic, spoken, etc.), as well as dealing with higher-order semantics. For the first challenge, I start with recent cognitive science scholarship (Lakoff, Fauconnier). To deal with the second, I enlist the aid of venerable humanist theories (Foucault, Calvin McGee, Barthes, Hayden White, Northrup Frye) that offer insight into the nature of complex higher-order meanings. I exemplify my model with immigration news stories that I described in earlier chapters. Thus I combine humanist theory and cognitive science to explain how American news viewers can construct their (albeit limited) understanding of Latinos from the news stories they watch.""

In 2010, the governor of Arizona signed a controversial immigration bill (SB 1070) that led to a news media frenzy, copycat bills in twenty-two states, and a U.S. Supreme Court battle that put Arizona at the cross-hairs of the immigration debate. Arizona Firestorm brings together well-respected experts from across the political spectrum to examine and contextualize the political, economic, historical, and legal issues prompted by this and other anti-Latino and anti-immigrant legislation and state actions. It also addresses the news media’s role in shaping immigration discourse in Arizona and across the globe. Arizona is a case study of the roots and impact of the 21st century immigration challenge. Arizona Firestorm will be of interest to scholars and students in communication, public policy, state politics, federalism, and anyone interested in immigration policy or Latino politics.

"Latinos constitute the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority in the United States, yet less than 1 percent of network news coverage deals with Latinos as the focus of a story. Out of that 1 percent, even fewer stories are positive in either content or tone. Author of the acclaimed Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse, Otto Santa Ana has completed a comprehensive analysis of this situation, blending quantitative research with semiotic readings and ultimately applying cognitive science and humanist theory to explain the repercussions of this marginal, negative coverage.

Santa Ana's choice of network evening news as the foundation for Juan in a Hundred is significant because that medium is currently the single most authoritative and influential source of opinion-generating content. In his 2004 research, Santa Ana calculated that among approximately 12,000 stories airing across four networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC), only 118 dealt with Latinos, a ratio that has remained stagnant over the past fifteen years. Examining the content of the stories, from briefs to features, reveals that Latino-tagged events are apparently only broadcast when national politics or human calamity are involved, and even then, the Latino issue is often tangential to a news story as a whole. On global events involving Latin America, U.S. networks often remain silent while BBC correspondents prepare fully developed, humanizing coverage.

The book concludes by demonstrating how this obscurity and misinformation perpetuate maligned perceptions about Latinos. Santa Ana's inspiring calls for reform are poised to change the face of network news in America.
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Abstract The contemporary framing in American public discourse on immigrants is examined through a data-driven metaphor analysis. The print media texts of the 1994 political debate and campaign in California over an anti-immigrant referendum, Proposition 187, is analyzed. An ongoing cataloguing of metaphors from hundreds of Los Angeles Times articles displays the discourse that reflects and informs California public opinion. The metaphors discerned includeIMMIGRANTS ARE ANIMALS'.

Language is a vital topic for clinical and other professionals (practitioners) who serve Mexican American children and their families. In this chapter, we will provide frameworks of understanding to avert avoidable communicative challenges that professionals confront when serving Mexican American families at home, in clinics, or in schools. In terms of language, Latino families are made up of recent immigrants and their non-English speaking children; extended families, some of whom only use Spanish, some who display ranges of bilingualism, and some who only speak English; and families who principally use non-standard ethnic English with a sprinkling of Spanish. We propose that the practitioner's goal should be to develop what we call communicative concordance, namely learning how to understand and be understood by Latino families. This does not simply mean being able to speak Spanish. As we will outline below, communicative concordance involves more and less than speaking in the dialects of the family.

I offer a new synthesis of a key feature of human nature: laughter and humor. Laughter and humor have been discussed by all the major figures in the Western philosophical tradition, and have been the subject of scores of humanist accounts across two millennia. Some of the most satisfying studies intricately describe unique expressions of laughter and humor in historically situated cultures, but some humanists dismiss philosophical and scientific accounts as useless. Meanwhile for 100 years social scientists have explored features of laughter and humor, as have biologists and cognitive scientists over the past 20 years, all seemingly indifferent to the considered discussions of humanists and philosophers.
        Still, today’s scholars pursue this topic with increasing insistence. For hundreds of millennia humans laughed together only in small circles of acquaintances. Today we ask: What are the consequences of technology that allows laughter to be instantly shared by millions of strangers? And: When commercial humor producers stimulate a child’s laughter for financial gain, what are the consequences for the child? Still, humor scholars coming from different epistemological realms rarely converse, even when they have lots to share. Scholarly practice today discourages consilience across these knowledge realms regarding topics involving human nature.
      Toward a partial remedy, I offer a detailed model of the origin of human laughter and humor based on a well-developed evolutionary narrative that begins before humans walked on Earth. The story goes that laughter and humor were established and ritualized among our forebears long before human language emerged. Thus I argue that human laughter and humor are not governed by linguistic principles, as almost all scholars presume, even when purely verbal humor sparks laughter today. This model warrants further exploration, since a non-language foundation addresses a number of old chestnuts about laughter. It is sufficiently supple to encompass the illuminating subtleties of the best historical accounts, integrates philosophy’s previously rival explanations, and captures many of the observations of social science and more recently findings of the biological and cognitive sciences.
This model distinguishes the types of laughter found across cultures, and automatically produces a seemingly natural classification of humor: from broad physical humor, through knock-knock jokes, to the wit of Erasmus and the satire of Swift and Carlin. It offers solutions to some perennial debates about humor, and addresses the issues generated by a range of disciplines: from history and philosophy through social psychology, and neuroscience. I hope to provide a demonstration that consilience can offer insight into our nature.
The book is designed in three sections: The first describes the perennial queries of the humanist and philosophical traditions. The second presents the model. In the third section I set the model into the larger sphere of ludic studies to explore the model’s implications for human creativity, agency and choice in a world increasingly dominated by media multinationals that commoditizes our laughter.
      I hope to finish this book manuscript in 2015-2016, when I am at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Research.

This is an empirical analysis informed by myth and film genre studies of contemporary US network television news stories about immigrants. In a comprehensive one-year review of news programs I determine that two story-types were the basis of all the news reports about apprehending immigrants. One story-type, the American Western, occurs when the border patrol agent is the news story protagonist. Its archetype is the cowboy. A US foundational myth is based on this story-type. The second story-type derives from a Sumerian goddess journey myth. These two millennia old story-types accounted for all the network evening news stories immigrant reports. Western news stories rearticulate nationalism while the Inanna news story contests the nation’s foundational myth. Thus, I demonstrate that journalists write about immigration to entertain and to indoctrinate, as much as to edify.

Chicano English displays a remarkable range of language contact phenomena. Speakers of this ethnic dialect enact their social practices with Chicano English, in conjunction with Chicano Spanish and in some cases other varieties of Spanish and English as well. In dynamic urban multicultural and binational settings, these social practices include surprisingly complex identities and roles (Mendoza-Denton 1997; Fought 2003). Sadly, the general public's awareness of Chicano English (ChcE) commonly involves stigma, a ...

As a candidate, the 45th president's speech and behavior was unlike that of other national politicians. He discharged a daily deluge of petty insults, and vile, xenophobic, misogynistic, and racist speech. His demeanor was vulgar, not presidential, and yet he won. I offer an explanation why his behavior contributed to his victory. I also describe his only seemingly erratic language, and offer a warning about the rhetorical power of his speech. During the 2016 campaign for president, the winner gave voice to citizens who harbor resentment toward women and citizens of color who have won a hard-fought place in US society. He articulated the nativist fears about a demographically changing citizenry that stirred up both racist sentiments, and gave expression to aggrieved citizens who have become less competitive in the global marketplace. He stoked the anxiety of Americans who felt that today's young people would grow up less well-off than their parents. To Americans who presumed their superiority to the rest of the world, of course he did not speak about globalization. Instead he pointed to immigrants and "crooked" politicians who had gotten "bad deals" in multilateral trade agreements. And he accused President Obama of "losing the war on terrorism," assuring Americans that with him at the helm, they would no longer have to live in fear, because he would "quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS." These claims were not much different from those of other illiberal politicians, but his speeches were. He did not speak in measured terms. He demeaned women, assailed Muslims, launched petty assaults against his rivals, and demonized the Press. His global politics were not the standard pieties, but were attacks on traditional US allies while speaking glowingly about the autocrat of Russia. He epitomized the Ugly American.

I provide a Bakhtin-based explanation of why the US electorate allowed a "Lord of Misrule" to become our 45th president. I also provide a list of the rhetorical devises that Trump uses, and explain why these worked. I warn the readers what the nation needs to do to protect itself from its mistake.

Este es un análisis narrativo empírico de las noticias contemporáneas de televisión de la red estadounidense sobre inmigrantes. El análisis está fundamentado en los estudios los mitos y los géneros cinematográficos. El principal argumento es que en el año 2004, los ABC, NBC, CBS y CNN redactaron todos sus reportes sobre inmigrantes que cruzaban la frontera entre EEUU y México usando sólo dos de lo que Northrup Frye llamó tipos de cuentos (story-types), cada uno asociado con su arquetipo.

El primer tipo de cuento ocurre cuando el protagonista del reporte de la noticia es agente de la patrulla fronteriza. Como ‘Vaquero Norteamericano’, él confrenta a los inmigrantes noautorizados en los EEUU. En el reporte basado en este tipo de cuento articula el mito nacional fundacional de los EEUU.

El segundo tipo de cuento es el ‘Viajero Femenino’. Los participantes del Congreso quizá estaran más familiarizados con este tipo de cuento con la Dorotea del Mago de Oz (Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz). El tipo de cuento contemporaneo se deriva de un mito de 5000 años de edad. Entre las leyendas sumarias de la diosa audaz sumaria, Inanna, es su descenso en el inframundo (netherworld). Ella emprende el viaje a pesar de la verdad cósmica, que sólo los muertos pueden viajar allí. Su viaje, en última instancia, la mata. En su resurrección, Inanna no gana un empirio nuevo o poderes, sino profundo conocimiento de sí mismo. Hay paralelos entre este mito de viajero y las representaciones sobre el viaje de inmigrantes en noticias estadounidenses. Los imigrantes también rinde autonomía y libertad para llegar a los EEUU.

En mi estudio, estos dos tipos de cuentos son presentes en todas las noticias de la noche de la red de 2004 acerca de las aprensiones de la inmigración. Funcionan en tándem: mientras las noticias occidentales (un género altamente convencionalizado) sirven al nacionalismo; los reportes con tipo de cuento de Inanna en última instancia, contestan el mito fundacional de los EEUU. La afirmación final es que las noticias de la noche de la red sobre la inmigración usan el tipo de historia del arquetipo para entretener, tanto como edificar. Los periodistas, al igual que los guionistas de películas, a menudo emplean un arquetipo de vaquero como una diversión heroica de nuestro mundo complejo y vidas banales.

SUMMARY: On the basis of a scientific study of over 300 speeches and 5000 tweets, we offer a report on Trump's public discourse about immigrants. The plotline of his immigration discourse is the classic america as fortress trope. Trump asserts that Fortress America is under attack; many of its cities and towns have been overrun by ruthless aggressors. Trump characterizes Mexico as the enemy that sent unauthorized immigrants as invaders. Trump represents himself as the hero, and Hillary Clinton represents the corrupt and sniveling politicians that let the nation come to this state of affairs. In this preliminary1 report we exemplify the major metaphors Trump uses to articulate his narrative. We find code-words that he uses to make his narrative more forceful and misleading: he associates MS-13, the notorious gang, with all Latino gangs and even all young Latinos who wear certain urban gear as a fashion statement. He extends the term criminal alien, namely immigrants who commit felonious crimes, to all unauthorized immigrants. He also refers by name to about twelve Americans who were the victims of major crimes, as representative of the imminent danger to all Americans and their family that immigrants pose. Finally, he expresses utter disdain toward US-born children of Latino immigrants, saying their increase should be halted, that they are not " our children, " and that they are not entitled to US citizenship. LINGUISTIC FINDINGS Metonymy and Metaphor: All speakers use metaphor and metonymy to convey the intended message.