Storied Ironies of the Wall

Themis Kaniklidou

Hellenic American University

1. Introduction

During the decade of 1980-1990 when globalization dominated public

discourse, it was also associated with the promise of “borderless worlds” (Ó Tuthill

139). The decade was a time when the idea of a world without borders was courted

by technological innovation and dovetailed with the prophecy of cyberspace and

the affluent expectation of an unobstructed exchange of capital flow. Political

borders looked like an anachronistic, melancholic, and even ‘romanticized’ artifact

of the past, like an unnecessary barrier that should be lifted in favor of an optimism

of transition to a new era. This was a rather short-lived landscape, however. In

recent years, there has been a rebirth of border studies (Paasi 2305) and a

reaffirmation of the risks that come together with lifting borders. This rebirth is

partially attributed to the emergence of narratives that run counter to globalization,

or emancipation that does not necessarily coalesce with the story of unobstructed

mobility. These anti-globalization discourses often come to reinforce the

ossification of ‘Us’ vs ‘Them’ constructions, of polar and binary identities. They

are, essentially, antithetical counter-stories like securitization, which reaffirmed the

interest in identity and identity construction and made borders again en vogue, as it

is borders that constitute the symbolic and physical limits that negotiate these

identities. Ironically, while globalization was ‘un-doing’ borders, it also helped ‘re-

do’ them by swinging the pendulum to the other side, towards its competing

narrative: securitization. The latter, being mostly a post-9/11 reality, foregrounds

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threat and risk (Beck 10), does not flatten exaggeration of fear, and argues that

modern society is characterized by the risk(s) around us and the reactions to it.

Waever creates an even stronger link between securitization and discourse,

claiming that the former is an illocutionary speech act in the sense that as soon as

something is framed as a ‘security issue’ it becomes one (13). Securitization,

therefore, favors a hardening of borders and a retreat of mobility in contrast to its

opposite narrative, globalization, which emphasizes mobility and openness and

augurs a society without borders. Examples included below illustrate that, in

relation to borders and border-crossings press seems to favor frames that often

match the narrative of securitization, augmenting threat, re-bordering and fencing.

In academia, borders and border studies have been recently gaining increased

attention by scholars who acknowledge their contribution in “conceptualizing

social space and its workings” (Kolossov & Scott 1). Borders therefore, form an

interesting domain of inquiry as, on one side, they produce a differentiated

occupancy of space and binary, polarized concepts of inside/outside,

inclusion/exclusion, we/them. On the other side, borders are also “an invitation to

passing, transgression and unfamiliarity” (Sohn 4). It is in this way that they also

form an invitation to frame one’s identity in relation both to the Self and the Other.

The split nature of borders is key for this paper and offers the background for

examining border language and tapping into the discursive construction(s) of walls

and fences, which are understood here as the objects or artifacts through which

borders are reflected.

But academia is not the only domain where walls and borders dominate;

mainstream media, print and web, abound in references about walls and fences.

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These references allow borders to enjoy a wider appeal and live more and more in

the public discourse; in this paper, I argue that on both sides of the Atlantic this is

manifested in the ubiquitous proliferation of references to borders in printed and

online media and, as Wodak has documented (2014), in the political statements of

world leaders. Over the past two years in Europe, new walls have proliferated,

physical but also symbolic (Scott 83) — physical inasmuch they relate to razor-wire

fences, and symbolic to the extent that they are couched on gatekeeping practices

(Shoemaker 1) which engage people in a rhetoric of inclusion or exclusion in a

discourse, that is, who is eligible to ‘check in’ a new country and who is not. In

2015 alone, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and Bulgaria came out in strong defense of

building fences against the flows of immigrants. Greece, amidst its own sovereign

debt crisis, has been struggling at its northern and sea borders. Norway has taken up

the construction of a steel fence on the border with Russia while France puts its

efforts in the construction of the Great Wall of Calais. On the other side of the

Atlantic, the rhetoric about the Mexico Wall got particularly fierce as part of the

election campaign of then President-elect Donald Trump.

The relationship that is being forged between the EU and US in relation to the press

rhetoric on borders is that of an intimate tyranny, a strange familiarity that keeps

their ties in close proximity, manifested or reflected in the storylines about the

Mexico Wall, about border-crossing by immigrants, and about fencing in various

countries in the EU in the aftermath of an unprecedented refugee crisis. The main

argument put forward in this paper is that walls and border-making have emerged

as a discursive process that often transcends local boundaries and borders and tends

to create an all-around, ubiquitous narrative, one which can be understood to have

global currency. By telling stories about borders and walls, news organizations

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contribute to the fossilization of different discourses. If the story promotes border-

opening and alleviation of boundaries, then it is conducive to a discourse of

globalization. On the contrary, if the construction talks about border closing, then

the discourse promoted is that of securitization.

2. Theoretical Framework

In this paper I analyze news-media language to interrogate the rhetorical construction

of walls and borders; in doing so, it delineates certain points of departure associated to

news discourse. It first argues that news language is institutional inasmuch it betokens

an embeddedness of language in a specific format, textual space, and socioeconomic

habitat that accommodates it. Secondly, it argues that news discourse is social; in the

words of Blommaert: “[t]here is no such thing as 'non-social' language. Any utterance

produced by people will be, for instance, an instance of oral speech, spoken with a

particular accented, gendered, and reflective of age and social position, tied to a

particular situation or domain, and produced in a certain stylistically or generically

identifiable format” (10-11). In relation to the institutional dimension, press language

is very much courted by the “politics of fear” (Wodak 33), which means that the press

prioritizes dramatized language which invokes threat and fear in concrete or abstract

ways.

At the same time, this paper is theoretically grounded on narrative analysis as this

develops within the “social representation paradigm” (Baker 6; Somers 592; Harding

43) and on framing to understand exactly how language creates or reflects a narrative.

The need to co-utilize and combine these theoretical frameworks lies on the fact that

that narrative theory cannot be used primarily to analyze language at microlevel or

‘thin’ level. It can only be used to associate language use with the representation it

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enacts and the narrative it promotes. On the other hand, framing and metaphor theory

(Hart 91; Lakoff and Johnson 10) can offer a sound tool for explaining this microlevel

and addressing how language works. I agree here, therefore, with scholars (Fairclough

53, Fiss & Hirsh 30) who talk about discourses and their function to produce frames

that people use as sense-making mechanisms.

When looking at the macro-level, the narrative canvass of ontological, public,

conceptual, and master narratives is used. At the macro-level, narratives can be

classified in the following categories:

Ontological: These narratives, according to Baker’s (35) and Harding’s (67)

taxonomy are formed through personal stories we tell ourselves over time and which

shape our identity. These stories may be first-person accounts narrating a personal

story. In this paper, I understand ontological narratives are biographical stories of

refugees narrated en route to passing borders. These stories ultimately belong to one

individual and are appropriated by news outlets

Public: These are stories that “are elaborated by and circulate among formations

larger than the individual” (Baker 33); public narratives then do not restrict

themselves to one individual and are interrelated to cultural and institutional

formations. In this corpus, public narratives are all the stories about borders and

fences that are circulating in the media.

Conceptual: These are “the concepts and explanations that we construct as social

researchers” (Somers 85). As Boéri notes, “[C]onceptual narratives shape the way in

which societal processes are understood and explained” (63). I understand conceptual

narratives using conceptual metaphor theory to understand how different

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conceptualizations and frames enacted by news discourse come to shape our

understanding about borders and border crossing.

Master: These are stories that persist over time and grow to become rigid and ossified

representations that occur and re-occur in varying degrees and different genres.

Somers and Gibson define master narratives as “narratives in which we are embedded

as contemporary actors in history” (61). I argue that in the past years, borders and

walls are becoming part and parcel of the master narratives of globalization and its

backlash narrative: securitization. It is in this way that borders are becoming the arena

where these master narratives are played out, written, and rewritten.

However, as Baker mentions, narrative suffers several inconsistencies and

methodological obstacles as a tool to conduct analysis as linguistic level (106).

Framing and metaphor theory can fill in that gap and help us understand exactly how

narratives are constructed. Framing is understood and used here are a tool for

deconstructing the narratives constructed in news. In this paper, frames are held as

“sole explanations that serve as unifying social devices by meaning some meanings

more salient than others” (Entman 53). Disassembling and then reassembling the

frames that make up the narratives is done based on the use of framing and conceptual

metaphor theory. Understanding discourse-produced meaning requires some type of

cognitive tool. That tool is metaphor. Although metaphor is ubiquitous, it has escaped

the serious focus of mainstream discourse analysis and particularly CDA (Chilton 20),

which looks to unravel the ideological and mystificatory overtones in language. What

is more, metaphor, as Hart (91) argues, can indeed be key tool in discourse-oriented

analysis, as the later has been concerned with ideological and mystificatory structures

of discourse, and metaphor is just such a structure (ibid). In this paper, walls and

borders are treated as episodes of the master narrative of securitization.

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3. Methodology and Corpus

Data is retrieved from a corpus of 22 news articles culled from American, French, and

Greek news publications (online editions and printed). The overall word count of the

corpus amounts to 20,876 words. Articles have been culled from sources such as the

German Die Zeit, Die Welt, the Greek newspaper I Kathimerini, the French La

Tribune de Genève and Le Figaro, and the American Huffington Post. This paper

meets the needs for authentic texts in the sense that the gathered texts fall under the

category of "real 'live' language that consists of genuine communication between

people" (Baker 175).

Methodologically, to arrive at conclusions, this paper keeps these two streams—i.e.

‘thick’ or marco-level and ‘thin’ or micro-level—engaged in a constant dialogue with

each other. Framing and as metaphor theory are used to analyze language at the

microlevel (‘thin’) and look at the lexical, intrasentential, and textual features of

discourse lifted out of print or online media, which is then cross-linked to the macro-

level (‘thick’) that is interpreted as narrative. Both levels are utilized as they equally

contribute to gaining a critical understanding of language use, one that links linguistic

choice to its output and effects (Kaniklidou 96, 82). This approach clearly highlights

the connections of this paper with the programmatic aims of Critical Discourse

Analysis (CDA), which has been one of the tools with a long tradition in the analysis

of news discourse and has been frequently pulled in to link ideology and language to

their outlets, such as media. In this sense, CDA claims that language is not simply “a

transparent medium of communication about the objective world, but a constantly

operative part of the social process” (Malkmkjaer 89). CDA-driven analysis has

therefore been unabashedly calling for a deep understanding of the intricate

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relationships among discourse, ideology, and media. Although this paper is aligned

with the insights that CDA has provided, it decides to foreground narrative analysis.

4. Findings

Preliminary findings show that borders are framed not only as territorial units but also

as symbolic ones. The varied—and often competing—meanings that are endowed

through language onto borders suggest that the latter are made and re-made

discursively. The linguistic patterns used often de-link borders from their territorial

boundaries reveal also their accelerated social significance. This significance is

manifested in the pronounced ability to use language and discourse for what Vollmer

calls “moralization of bordering” (7) claiming that how borders are constructed frame

particular groups ‘in’ and others ‘ out’ of a particular spatial territory. The corpus

yielded results regarding a) narrative particularization by renegotiating the spatial

embeddedness and “discourse highjacking” (Hatim & Mason 131) or appropriation of

another speaker’s intertextual space; b) wide use of water metaphors used to narrate

refugees and borders; and c) constructing borders as ethical gatekeepers and moral

indexes for inclusion or exclusion for cross-border mobility. Examples presented

below compose a qualitative sample of my corpus findings that speak for the presence

of symmetries in the discursive template used by EU and US media when

constructing borders.

4.1. Narrative particularization

Particularizing is a feature of narrativity that connects the ‘thick’ (or general, macro

narrative) to the ‘thin’-level (micro) or local context in which it happens. By

embedding a story in a local, spatially defined context, it is particularized. The

opposite can also happen: narratives can be de-particularized, dis-embedded from, or

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otherwise lifted out of their particular context; it can also happen when narratives are

framed in such a way that plotting involves other participants, they are not necessarily

directly linked to immediate ones. In this sense, borders are dissociated from their

immediate territorial context, from their primary space domain, and they become

entangled with other participants. This makes borders immediately relevant to a

spatial and historical context not immediately related to their original. In the case of

borders and walls, particularization happens in two ways: a) via intersecting the

local/national with the supranational level, and b) by discourse highjacking where

political actors appropriate each other’s discourses.

Notice the following headline that appeared in the daily broadsheet newspaper Die

Presse and in which two levels intersect: the local, national (Austria) and the

supranational one (EU). It thus dis-locates the story from its immediate local context

and dis-embeds it from its direct geography. Particularizing takes place by talking

about Austria building an EU-compliant fence. The tension undertones are lying, of

course, between the national entity Austria and then the supranational entity the EU,

and there is often a very fierce tension between the two levels about what national

states can do with borders and what the EU wants them to do. Also, the headline listed

below particularizes, borders and barriers without clearly talking about a wall or fence

but implying this by the reference to migrants walking around it.

1. Austria Österreich verkündet EU-konforme Grenz 'Barriere ... dass Migranten

einfach rumlaufen kenning — Die Presse, October 10, 2016

TRS: Austria Announces EU-Compliant Border ‘Barrier’… That Migrants

Can Just Walk Around

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The second example shows how particularization can happen with discourse

highjacking (Hatim & Mason ibid). Discourse highjacking happens usually when

political actors borrow each other’s discourse and use it for their own rhetorical and

persuasive agendas. In the example below this is precisely what happens with the

discourses of Donald Trump and Marie Lepen.

2. Donald Trump: I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than

me, believe me—and I will build them very inexpensively, I will build a great,

great wall on our southern border and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.

Mark my words. —candidacy announcement speech, June 16, 2015

Marie Le Pen: De toute évidence, l’Algérie est notre Mexique à nous: Je vais

construire un mur entre nous et l'Algérie et cette dernière va le financer. —

Huffington Post, February 14, 2017

TRS: Certainly, Algeria is our Mexico. I will build a wall between us and

Algeria and the latter will pay for it.

Narrative particularization here takes place with the use of discourse highjacking. By

mimicking and appropriating the discourse of Donald Trump, Marie Lepen is

reproducing a narrative for a new context, with different specificities, both political

and spatial. Centering everything in their discourses around the key topic of security

expressed through wall building allows an often unmatched symmetry in their

discourses. Both utterances are fear invoking, and contribute to the construction of a

securitized society.

4.2. Water metaphors

Pulling in metaphor as a tool to analyze how borders are constructed also speaks for

the communication orientation of this paper. As House and Loenhoff mention,

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“[C]ommunication studies is concerned with the symbolic coordination of action in

all empirically observable forms of its realization” (97). Metaphors are a primarily

symbolic vehicle for organizing a reality, and at the same time they contribute to the

critical orientation of language. According to Chilton, metaphors “can contribute to a

situation where they privilege one understanding of reality over others” (74).

Metaphors function cognitively as input/output framing devices through which we can

perceive reality by associating it with a cognitively separate frame. Particularly in the

press, metaphors compete for more exposure and contribute to sense making as they

are cognitively processed by readers who then decide how to interpret reality.

Metaphor is a powerful framing device, therefore, one that can guide reader

perception and shape variant cognitive representations. At the same time, metaphors

can have a powerful persuasive force and for that reason seem to be a popular device

appropriated by newspapers and cut across other communication genres.

The articles analyzed used water metaphors to present immigration flows trying to

cross borders or fences. In the following example (3) the French Tribune de Genève

talks about the Greek islands being “flooded” with immigrants. The Greek Press

makes reference to a new emergent concept—“border islands“ 1 —while the US press

conceptualizes airports as the new land borders2. In both cases, language creates new

imaginary borders, or as Newman documents, contributes to a renegotiation of

borders known as B/ordering (Newman 13).

1
Refugee Numbers on Increase
Border Islands of the Aegean –
(http://greece.greekreporter.com/2016/10/04/refugee-numbers-increase-on-border-islands-of-the-
aegean/#sthash.BJlEMtZz.dpuf
2
Donald Trump has built a wall. It’s in Washington Dulles International airport (Vox February 2nd,
2017)

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The metaphor of a flood is frequently employed and activate a frame of unpredictable

or excessive wave of water which invokes fear. Also, the language used to describe

the mass influx of people often describes the properties of water—a further

dehumanization of people on the move. Described as a 'flow', 'flood' or a 'tsunami' of

people, such terms invoke an image of movement that cannot be stopped and will

cause damage over a large area.

3. Les îles grecques touristiques sont débordées par l’afflux de migrants —

Tribune de Genève, June 11, 2015

TRS: The Greek touristic islands are flooded with migrants.

Equally, the British press frequently accommodates references to tsunamis. Daily

Mail talks about a tsunami that threatens Europe. The function that the metaphor of

tsunami serves is to paint a picture of an imminent exogenous, unpredictable, and

extraordinary threat ready to cause damage. This metaphor therefore calls forth an

emotion of fear directly emanating from fear of the unknown.

4. Immigration Tsunami threatens to sweep Europe — Daily Mail, September 2,

2015

The presence of the tsunami metaphor in news discourse is evidence of the nature-

culture dualism (Johns xi) that reflects that nature cannot be forcefully divorced from

society and the socio-economic processes that sustain it (Pielke & Pielke 78). In

example five (5), the German newspaper Die Welt talks about a tsunami of refugees

who are, nonetheless, stuck in Greece. Interestingly enough, the conceptual frame

enacted by this metaphor is one that promotes contrast-creating discourse,

illuminating by the cognitive implications enacted by the reference to “tsunami”

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(associated to massive flow of water) versus that of “stuck,” which marks the

impossibility of movement and mobility.

5 TSUNAMI AN NORDGRENZE Tausende Flüchtlinge sitzen in

Griechenland fest — Die Welt, February 27, 2016

TRS: Tsunami at northern border. Thousands of refugees stuck in Greece

The pervasiveness of figurative language and particularly water metaphors in

describing border-crossing has been a clear discursive symmetry in the discursive

template constructing the EU and US borders. Water metaphors facilitated the

construction of securitization as they contribute to fear evoking. They were equally

present and marked in the US press and political discourse in general. President-elect

Donald Trump referred to the flooding of borders with illegal immigrants (example 6)

while Huffington Post (example 7) and Fox News (example 8) talk about the “flood”

of refugees and “tsunami,” respectively.

6. America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal

immigrants who are flooding across our borders. We simply can’t absorb them

— Donald Trump, July 2016

7. Why the Flood of Refugees Will Not Stop Whatever Happens in Syria —

Huffington post, April 4, 2016.

8. Immigration crisis: Official: A tsunami of people crossing the border — Fox

News, July 3, 2015

What the use of metaphors across the EU and US shows is that there are surface-level

manifestations that operate as input-effect mechanisms. An input frame instantiated

with the choice of words such as flood or tsunami is linked to an output frame—an

underlying conceptual metaphor which in turn links up to one of the two narratives.

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Water metaphors offer a transparent frame for affecting how we conceptualize

refugees and border-crossing. Table 1 below presents the frequencies of the repertoire

of water metaphor frames used. Although some quantitative misalignments exist,

particularly in the French press, in conjunction to the use of the metaphor of flood,

still all sources participate in the reproduction of water metaphors.

Water frame Flood of Tsunami of Waves of people

Newspaper Immigrants people

Greek Press (I Kathimerini 45 11 34

and To Vima)

German Press (Die Press, 20 23 11

Die Zeit, Welt)

French Press (La tribune 3 14 19

de Genève 7 Le Figaro)

US Press (Huffington Post, 20 27 8

Washington Post)

Table 1: Water metaphors and framing in the press

4.3. Borders and walls and moralization

The third identified symmetry relates to how borders are legitimized, how moral

evaluation of borders is played out and, in that sense, how language reveals who

“makes it in” and through the borders and who “is out” thus contributing to a

perpetuating narrative of deservingness (Vollmer 7). All this is manifested in

language used to describe refugees attempting to cross borders and, as Rheindorf &

Wodak mention, the “so-called refugee crisis presents a field of discursive struggle

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over meanings in politics” (1). It is in this context that various legitimization

strategies are used, in the form of public narratives that are circulating in the press to

moralize or de-moralize border crossing. This process of legitimization relates to

politics of inclusion and exclusion which are evidenced in political and media

messages. This type of “mediatized politics” (Rheindorf & Wodak, ibid) is played out

via the use of language while the use of terminology and discourse can prove very

instrumental in legitimizing or delegitimizing actors in the whole process. Especially

in news and news collection processes, much has been discussed by scholars who

investigate gatekeeping as a process “by which the billions of messages that are

available in the world get cut down and transformed into the hundreds of messages

that reach a given person on a given day” (Shoemaker 1). It is in this way that the

media can exercise some control of the messages that circulate and prioritize some

news over others. In the same fashion, the media include language that moralize or

demoralize refugees and immigrants. This is something evidenced in data on both

sides of the Atlantic. In my data sample, this moralization takes place through specific

selection of lexical items, also known as framing by labelling (Baker 130). Examples

9-11 below illustrate the powerful language used by German, Greek, and French

newspapers. In all examples, lexical choices enact a moral evaluation of the so call

“good” immigrants, those who are wanted and welcomed to cross borders, in

comparison to those who are considered outgroup entities that should be excluded and

cannot “check in” to the new territory. In example nine (9) retrieved from Die Press,

moralization is activated by using guten Migraten (TRS: good Migrants) who are

welcomed in Austria.

9. Österreich und die “guten” Migranten — Die Presse, October 4th, 2016

TRS: Austria and the good Migrants

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Similarly, the Greek press refers to a Europe that should valorize those refuges who

work, moralizing employable refugees as worthy of entering the European financial

and labor market.

10. Η Ευρώπη πρέπει να θέλει τους πρόσφυγες που δουλεύουν — I

Kathimerini, March 3, 2016

ΤRS: Europe should really want the refugees who work

On the other hand, moral evaluation in the French La Tribute de Genève is played out

not over the immigrants who work but to over those who are educated.

11. Canada veut ouvrir les barrières aux immigrants éduqués- La Tribune de

Genève, February 6, 2016

TRS: Canada wants to open the borders to educated migrants

The US press equally valorizes the same frames and refers to the “good” immigrants

talking about deportations which may affect those immigrants who can work, are

educated, and could thus contribute to the US economy.

12. The Trump administration may be deporting ‘the good ones’. — The

Washington Post, April 20, 2017

The corpus yielded interesting results as to this third symmetry as evidenced in the

table below. All three moral evaluation filters that act as qualifiers for border

inclusion/exclusion and which have been persistently present in the corpus indicate

that there is a symmetry in the qualities that are prioritized for border-crossing. These

include the generalizing frame of “good” or “bad” immigrant, the “educated”

immigrant and the working immigrant. Table 2 below shows the frequencies of the

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frames that have been reported in the corpus in the articles from the Greek, German,

French, and US newspapers analyzed.

Frame Good/bad Educated Working

Newspaper immigrant immigrant immigrant

Greek Press (I Kathimerini 13 11 14

and To Vima)

German Press (Die Zeit) 11 14 25

French Press (La tribune 14 12 22

de Genève and Le Figaro)

US Press (Huffington Post 22 33 19

and Washington Post)

Table 2: Moralization frames in the EU and US press

9. Discussion

This paper calls for a deepening of reflection on the role of language in understanding

social realities, one of them being borders and border-making. It argues that social

reality is best conceived when also examined through the lens of language, as this

approach may contribute significantly to linking discourse with the large-scale social

and cultural impacts around us. It is along these lines that I analyze and interpret

borders through the lens of press language and trace some discursive similarities

between US and EU discourses. I argue that language is appropriated by the press in

such a way that forms part-and-parcel and clusters around two competing master

narratives, that of globalization and/or securitization. While the former dovetails the

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expectations of a spaceless society, of supraterritorial borderlessness, the latter offers

a new anatomy of space, more inward-looking and delineated by the configuration of

borders. Data investigated in this paper is more in alignment with the narrative of

securitization as most frames activated coalesce with an inflation of threat (Thrall &

Cramer 12), and fear and often the provocation of security panics or moral panics and

the exaggeration of threat politics.

Indeed, the corpus shows that the language used both by US and EU press amidst the

refugee crisis that peaked in 2015 and 2016 also seems to contribute to a reaffirmation

of the politics of fear, which as Altheide has documented is the “policy makers’

promotion and use of audience beliefs … about danger, risk and fear in order to

achieve certain goals” (15). So, the common images and conceptualizations of floods

and tsunamis of people moving across borders, although, prima facie, are telling a

story of increased mobility, at the same time become conceptual vehicles for

amplified fear that contribute to reaffirmation of borders and barriers and foster the

assent of the “neurotic citizen” (Isin 217). So, what do findings tell us about the

discursive template that connects the press narratives of borders in Europe and the US

symmetry of that in US? What do we learn from the frames that are used by the press

to construct the public narratives about borders and fences? The frames operate either

as moral evaluators or activators of cognitive conceptualizations (water metaphors),

or they function to de-particularize the story or narrative from its immediate context

and link it to other not readily available ones. These three shared discursive features

ossify the idea that media construct, and often perpetuate and normalize identities.

Doing borders and doing space, when viewed from the lens of press language, then,

has to be considered an “ongoing accomplishment” (Garfinkel 4), a process of

constructing “borderlands” (Rumford 323) performed also by the media and the press.

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So, when dealing with the question asked by Rumford, “who borders” (ibid) the

answer may also be that borders are also co-constructed by the press, by the unique

utterances of politicians or other stakeholders which are appropriated by the press and

contribute to a public spectacle.

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Works Cited

Alttheide, L. David. Terrorism and the Politics of Fear. Lanham, MD: Altamira

Press, 2006. Print.

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