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Vol 13(4): 405427 DOI 10.1177/1470357214541741

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 A

University 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 Pas,

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 Spanishnewspaper. 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 o immigrant, unaccompanied minors (children, youngpeople and adolescents) has been taking place over several years as part othe contemporary migratory phenomenon in Europe. Tese migrations mustbe ramed within the context o adult migration as well as receiving trans-national treatment. Te majority o immigrant minors arrive without theiramilies, which means they are in Europe without any help or legal represen-tation. Tus, it is necessary to analyse the situation o the countries where

minors come rom in order to understand this kind o migration. Te major-ity o them come rom Morocco, whose population has a quite young average

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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 withLorente y Rubn and Jimnez (2006: 7) that migration o minors in Moroccocannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon but as part o a complexsocial reality.

he decisions relating to how to represent the reality o immigration in

the press point to actors such as who communicates with whom and who hasthe power to represent the reality o immigration in a particular way (Ban,2002; Martnez Lirola, 2008a, 2010; Van Dijk, 2005, 2006, 2008). he presscommands power over a population because it can transmit acts in a speciicway that is appropriate to its objectives, such as selling newspapers or showingthat it is the majority group o the population that has power. People who donot have any real or constant contact with the Other (immigrants) will takethe image oered by the media as a rame o reerence. hereore the discourseo the media will be the one that will inorm and sustain these peoples imageo immigrants, making it limited and reduced (Alonso Belmonte et al., 2010).

Among the people coming rom other countries in search o a betteruture, minors are the most vulnerable group. hey are usually boys youngerthan 18, mostly rom poor amilies and, in many cases, they are illiterate. heact that they have a low social status implies that oten their amilies haveencouraged immigrant minors to leave their country and try to ind a betteruture. hey mainly leave their country in ishing boats (pateras) or in theback o a lorry, with various ambitions such as wanting to be independentand to ind work in Europe as quickly as possible so that they can earn somemoney and help their amilies in their country o origin. his type o immigra-

tion irst started in the mid 1990s (Lorente y Rubn and Jimnez, 2006: 10).In the press, there are predominantly two stereotypes o immigrant

minors without documentation: one is related to the magnitude/order o thephenomenon, i.e. there is an invasion taking place; and the other is relatedto their origin, i.e. they are street children who are dangerous and violent(Jimnez lvarez, 2003: 6). For this reason, our main research questions are:In what ways are immigrant minors portrayed in a sample o the Spanishpress? What are the more requent visual strategies used to depict immigrantminors as social actors?

In order to answer these questions, the aim o this research is to oer acritical analysis o the main visual elements involved in the representation oimmigrant minors in a sample o the Spanish press and the possible relation-ship between these elements and the reproduction o stereotypes and/or eth-nic and racial prejudices. More speciically, I will analyse in detail a selectiono our images concerning immigrant minors ound in the newspaper El Paspublished in 2011. In each o these texts, I will ocus on the image and, as aras the verbal element is concerned, I will analyse the discourses appearing inthe caption o 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

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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 oi 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 o ruling groups.Stereotyping involves reduction and simpliication o the main characteristicso the minority group (immigrant minors in this study) so that they are notrepresented as normal by the group in power. By normal the ruling groupsmean natural and inevitable, something that is expected according to their

own ideology and value system.his article is organized in the ollowing way: the next section isdevoted to the literature review and justiies the use o Critical DiscourseAnalysis (CDA) and visual grammar as the theoretical rameworks or analys-ing the selected texts; special attention will be paid to the use o euphemismand dysphemism or the representation o immigrant minors. Section 3 dealswith the data and general methodology. hen, the main results are presented,paying attention to the visual characteristics o the texts analysed. Section 5concentrates on the discussion o the results obtained. Finally, the article endsby presenting some conclusions arising rom 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 intexts in order to point out how discourses are created, also with what purposeand to what extent those choices shape readers opinions and ideology, andcontribute to maintaining unequal social relationships (or example, those inwhich 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 inrelationships between the immigrant groups and the social reality in whichthey are ramed (Crespo and Martnez Lirola, 2012; Hidalgo enorio, 2011;Wodak and Meyer, 2009).

Moreover, CDA examines the linguistic potential, i.e. the dierent pos-sibilities that are present in systems o language and the particular choicesmade rom that potential in order to accomplish a particular communicativeend, as Martin and Rose (2007: 1) make clear:

treating discourse as more than words in clauses; we want to ocus

on meaning beyond the clause, on semantic resources that lead us romone clause to another as a text unolds. And it also means that we treatdiscourse as more than an incidental maniestation o social activity;

we want to ocus on the social as it is constructed through texts, on theconstitutive role o meanings in social lie.

Among the dierent approaches that CDA subsumes or the socialanalysis o discourse, we ollow the one proposed by Van Dijk (1993, 2009)due to his interest in the discursive reproduction o power and social inequali-

ties. Van Dijk has studied racism in the press or many years and has paidspecial attention to the ways in which immigrants are seen as a problem or



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meanings against immigrants. For example, Van Leeuwen and Jaworski (2002)concentrate on the discourses o war photography. Richardson and Wodak(2009a) compare recent election materials produced by Austrian and Britishright-wing parties with explicit xenophobic agendas in order to observe themain strategies used to construct ear o immigrants. Richardson and Wodak

(2009b) trace the histories o discourses supporting jobs or natives in theUK and Austria using the discoursehistorical approach (DHA) to critical dis-course studies.

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

In general, studies dealing with the visual and linguistic representationo immigrants in the Spanish press point out that immigrants are representedas dierent rom the main group o the population as regards race, appear-ance, culture, language and origin (Ban, 2007; Martnez Lirola, 2006, 2010;Van Dijk, 2003, 2005). his is one o the strategies used by the press in orderto restrict the arrival o immigrants in Spain. Consequently, it is the Spanishpopulation that is the group with power and immigrants are represented asinerior and dependent on the main group. In this sense, the negative visualrepresentation contributes to persuading readers to have a negative image oimmigrants (Blair, 2004; Moore et al., 2012; Reisigl and Wodak, 2000; Wodak

and Reisigl, 2001).However, there are ewer studies o immigrant minors in the Spanish

press and the main ones concentrate on the problems caused by Latin Americangangs o young people (see Patio Santos and Martn Rojo, 2007; Retis andGarca, 2010; Soriano et al., 2008) or on the problems associated with the cen-tres or minors (Ardvol Abreu, 2009; Lorente y Rubn and Jimnez, 2006).

In addition, there are a ew discursive studies that concentrate on thelinguistic representation o 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 o the visual rep-resentation o immigrant minors has been neglected, thus the ocus in thepresent article on such visual representation.

In our current society, multimedia elements predominate so that themajority o texts surrounding us are multimodal, i.e. texts that combine twoor more modes o communication: in the case o 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 o news. here are many studies thatpay attention to multimodality and the role o visuals in the construction o



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

Following Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 177), the authors o thevisual grammar that will be the theoretical ramework o this article, there

are three main types o composition in multimodal texts: (a)inormationvalue: the place in which elements are located, or example, rom let to right,top to bottom or rom the centre to the margins, can add a speciic value; (b)salience: the dierent elements o a composition that are designed to catchthe readers attention, or example, appearing in the irst or second place, thesize o an element, colour contrast or sharpness; and (c) raming: the pres-ence or absence o rames that connect or disconnect elements o meaning interms o whether they go or do not go together in the making o meanings.

2.1 The use of euphemism and dysphemism for the repre-

sentation of immigrants

Serious newspapers carry out a process o social legitimization throughoutthe different linguistic and visual choices. Euphemism (i.e. the semantic orormal process by means o which the taboo is stripped o its most explicit orobscene overtones) and dysphemism (i.e. the process whereby the most pejo-rative traits o the taboo are highlighted with an offensive aim to the addresseeor to the concept itsel) are very useul devices at journalists disposal or por-traying immigrants.

Moreover, these devices help reinorce values and social codes con-cerning immigration. Euphemism and dysphemism can be considered asantithetical resources o referent manipulation in the social use o languagebecause they are powerul tools that allow us to point out social and ideologi-cal control o the social issue under study, in this case, immigration. Referentmanipulation implies the process whereby the language user presents thetaboo concept in a particular way, either sotening its less acceptable aspectsor, on the contrary, intensiying them (or a ull description o this process, seeCrespo Fernndez, 2007).

In this sense, images are very powerul in the creation o meaning

in multimodal texts and they are a crucial tool i manipulation is intended.hereore, images can be manipulated in order to create visual dysphemismsin dierent ways (Crespo and Martnez Lirola, 2012): or example, the use osmall images and presenting them in non-prominent positions on the page(mainly on the let, which is the place o given inormation and thereore lessimportant); presenting a dark background or not showing a clear contrastbetween the background o the image and the immigrants represented; show-ing immigrants aces blurred; representing immigrants looking down and notinteracting with the reader; not raming the visual texts concerning immi-

grants properly, so that they are not highlighted, etc.



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Consequently, images can be considered to be visual arguments(Richardson and Wodak, 2009a, 2009b) because they present standpointsrelated to immigrants and evoke certain eelings. In this sense, we agree withBlair (2004: 50) in the ollowing statement:

Visual arguments constitute the species o visual persuasion in whichthe visual elements overlie, accentuate, render vivid and immediate,

and otherwise elevate in orceulness a reason or set o reasons ormodiying a belie, an attitude or ones conduct.

3 . D A T A , A I M A N D M E T H O D O L O G Y

Te corpus o examples consists o all the pieces o news related to immigrantminors that have appeared in the virtual edition o one o the most importantSpanish newspapers, namely El Pas, rom 1 January to 31 December 2011.

El Paswas first published in 1974 and since then it has been regarded as aserious lef-wing quality newspaper. It sold around 370,080 newspapers lastyear and is the non-sport-related newspaper with the maximum circulationin Spain.

he corpus o examples consists o 47 pieces o news. Due to the limi-tations o this article, this analysis will concentrate on our visuals in whichimmigrant minors are represented and on the linguistic characteristics oundin the headings and captions; these our examples typiy what was ound in thewider corpus o examples. he selected texts are representative o the negativeway in which immigrant minors are portrayed, as the analysis will show.

he 47 pieces o news in this analysis present immigrants in conjunctionwith certain, usually negatively presented acts observed in the topics oundin the majority o news tems in 2011: the arrival o immigrants, in general,and immigrant minors in particular; gangs; reception centres; bone x-rays todetermine the age o immigrants; the hijab(Islamic veil), etc. Moreover, goodjournalistic codes o practices are not ollowed because some pieces o news(34%) reer to the most common country o origin o immigrant minors, i.e.Morocco. However, none o the 47 pieces o news oer testimonies rom theseminors, even though it is common to ind the voices o the Social Security

Forces (46%), politicians (25%), NGOs (10%), university proessors, judges,heads o school, ordinary citizens, etc. (24%).

A total o 27 percent o the 47 texts relating to immigrant minors inEl Pasare multimodal, i.e. text accompanied by illustrations, and the rest arewritten pieces o news only. he visuals o immigrant minors compiled orthis study show racism and discrimination against them through visual dis-course. Consequently, the visuals in which these minors are depicted stand asindependent arguments because they create a particular image o immigrantminors: they are problematic and poor, consequently the visual argument

relating to them is that immigrant minors are a burden or Spanish society. In



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this sense, the dierent visuals ound in the corpus are used to construct earo or pity or immigrant minors.

hereore, the main aim o this article is to analyse the principal visualelements used by journalists in order to represent the image o immigrantminors in multimodal texts, i.e. those using more than one mode o meaning-

making, verbal and non-verbal. o this end, the principles o CDA and visualgrammar are applied to the analysis o immigrant minors as social actors indiscourse. In other words, attention will be ocused on visual elements usedby journalists to represent immigrant minors in El Pasin order to ind outwhether discourse reproduces social domination. CDA and visual grammarhelp to de-mystiy ideologies and power through systematic investigation othe data. In this way, language is seen as social practice and the social contexto language used is crucial.

In regard to the method o analysis, Van Leeuwens (2008) character-ization o social actors is used in the analysis in order to observe how immi-grant minors are portrayed, the consequences o each o the visual character-istics and their contribution to the dysphemistic representation o immigrantminors. When considering the representation o social actors, the dierentparticipants in pieces o news can be reerred to as individuals or as groups. Asstated by Machin and Van Leeuwen (2005: 132): Which o these two optionsis chosen can make a signiicant dierence to the way events are represented.

In addition, when analysing the visual representation o social actors, itis also important to pay attention to social distance, social relation and socialinteraction in order to better understand how people are depicted in the pho-

tographs and to observe how interpersonal relationships are established (VanLeeuwen, 2008: 138).

he next section presents the analysis and results. he analysis ismainly qualitative, ollowing the tradition o CDA. However, it was necessaryto oer some quantitative data in this section in order to oer a preliminarycontext to the deeper study that concentrates on the main linguistic and visualaspects in Section 4. he analysis o the general characteristics described ear-lier is ollowed by an exhaustive analysis o our multimodal texts.

4 . R E S U L T S

Having reerred to some general characteristics o the 47 pieces o news inthe previous section, this section concentrates on the analysis o our visualswith their corresponding captions and headings. Te selected texts are repre-sentative o what is ound in the corpus and they have been chosen in orderto illustrate the main characteristics o the corpus through specific examples.

his section presents an analysis o the main discourse strategiesused to create an assumption o the criminality o minors represented in thepieces o news. he analysis will thus help to observe how immigrant minors

are portrayed in a negative way, contributing to discrimination, and the



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reinorcement o stereotypes and dierences by the newspapers readership,the majority group having power in contrast to the minority group, in thiscase, immigrant minors.

4.1 General analysis of visuals, captions and headings

Tis part o the analysis ocuses on the main visual characteristics ound inthe our images under analysis and the language used in the headings andcaptions. Te second part o the analysis concentrates on exploring the repre-sentation o social actors.

he our images under analysis, selected as being representative o the47 texts ound in El Pas, possess some o the most salient elements o themultimodal texts. As stated by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 201): saliencecan create a hierarchy o importance among elements, selecting some as moreimportant, more worthy o attention than others.

In regard to position on the page, the our dierent photographsappear on the right o the written text, which is considered the place or newinormation. All the photographs are medium sized, which can be considereddysphemistic because the size o the elements that create the multimodal textis one o the characteristics o its salience. Moreover, the whole piece o newssize varies, or example Figure 1 is quite small, which implies that this pieceo news is not highlighted in the newspaper. Figures 2 and 4 are read romright to let, whereas Figures 1 and 3 are read rom let to right as a result othe participants on the let in Figure 1 appearing clearer than the ones on theright, looking at the audience with their hands up as a way o catching theaudiences attention.

All the photographs are ramed, which implies that the elements in thephotograph belong together, but the rame is not very strong, as according toKress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 203): he stronger the raming o an element,the more it is presented as a separate unit o inormation.

In order to inish the analysis, it is important to reer to the lan-guage used in the captions and headings that accompany the visuals alreadyanalysed. Following Van Leeuwen (2008: 45), there are examples o appraise-ment, that is, social actors are appraised when they are reerred to in terms

which evaluate them as good or bad, loved or hated, admired or pitied. In thissense, we can say that interpersonally the immigrants represented in the textsunder 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 dierence between they and we, immigrants and white citizens.

he our images under analysis have been selected because they sharesome characteristics that contribute to representing immigrants in a negativeway, which is supported by the language used in the piece o news (due tothe limitations o this article, we will concentrate on the headings and cap-

tions). One o the main linguistic characteristics o the headings and captions



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

he heading o the text accompanying Figure 1 (this is the only imagewith no caption) is 23 minors on board. he number corresponds with the rep-

resentation o immigrants as a group in the image. he written text speciiesthat out o the 56 immigrants who have arrived in Spain, almost hal o them areminors and they seem to be rom Morocco. In the text, immigrants are reerredto as being without papers, which means that they do not have legal documentsand thereore their status is illegal. Using numbers to quantiy the number oimmigrant minors who arrive contributes to presenting them as an abstractgroup, they are assimilated and homogenized (Van Leeuwen, 2008: 37).

In the text accompanying Figure 2, we ind the ollowing heading:Minors with margin o error (Menores con margen de error) and the captionto the illustration is Immigrants who have just arrived in enerie ater a smallboat has been intercepted (Inmigrantes recin llegados a enerife tras ser inter-ceptados en una patera). his piece o news reers to the unpleasant treatmentthat immigrants suer in order to be veriied as minors or adults. Sometimes,depending on the place where the bone x-rays are carried out, their age var-ies rom 13 to 19 years old, which has consequences or immigrants becausebeing older than 18 implies that they can be deported.

he text accompanying Figure 3 has the ollowing heading My veilcomes into the classroom (Mi velo s entra en clase); the caption to the illus-tration is Mohammed A. with his daughter in ront o the mosque in M-30

(Mohamed A. con su hija frente a la mezquita de la M-30). he heading makesclear that this piece o news deals with the conlict o a Muslim girl in that

Figure 1. 23 menores a bordo(23 minors on board), 6 January 2011. El Pas.



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she is not allowed to go to school wearing her veil. he girls ather, who acesthe audience in the image, is the one whose testimony appears in the piece onews, where he makes clear that the girl has to go to school. he girls opiniondoes not appear in the text, which is connected to the act that her ace is not

shown since it is her ather who is in control o the situation.

Figure 2. Menores con margen de error(minors with margin of error): Inmigrantes

recin llegados a Tenerife tras ser interceptados en una patera(Immigrants who have

just arrived in Tenerife after a small boat has been intercepted), El Pas, 29 September

2011. El Pas.

Figure 3. Mi velo s 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 Pas, 19 October 2011. El Pas.



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he heading to the accompanying text to Figure 4 is Andaluca detectsMoroccan children in a situation o alse lack o protection (Andaluca detectacasos de nios marroques en falso desamparo) and the illustration captionis Minors in a reception centre run by the city authorities o Andaluca

(Menores de un centro tutelado por la Junta de Andaluca). Here we observethat the piece o news deals with immigrant minors in Andalucia, which is oneo the Spanish regions receiving more immigrants. Again, as happens in thetext accompanying Figure 1, the nationality is mentioned, which contributesto highlighting that Morocco is the country rom which the majority o immi-grant minors come. he piece o news criticizes the act that some o thesechildren have amilies in their country o origin and thereore they should notbe living in reception centres.

his analysis demonstrates that, in general, news articles concentrate

on the vulnerability o immigrant minors (Barbosa, 2006; Jimnez lvarez,2003). News articles on immigrant minors in Spain have oregrounded theollowing topics in the last ew years: on the one hand, many pieces o news onimmigrant minors make reerence to the arrival o minors rom Morocco (seeFigures 1 and 4, ant their accompanying texts) (Lorente y Rubn and Jimnez,2006; Ourkia and Mulero Garca, 2010). hese items o news concentrate onthe act that minors arrive in Spain and end up begging in the streets or wait-ing to be deported in a centre or minors. he pieces o news do not mentionthe reasons why they emigrate and they do not investigate their situation intheir countries o origin. In act, they are merely associated with the problemsthey cause to Spanish society because they need help and support rom thesocial services.

Figure 4. Andaluca detecta casos de nios marroques en falso desamparo(Andaluca

detects Moroccan children in a situation of false lack of protection). Menores de un

centro tutelado por la Junta de Andaluca(Minors in a reception centre run by the city

authorities of Andaluca), El Pas, 27 October 2011. El Pas.



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On the other hand, there are some items o news about Latin Americangangs o young people and the problems they create in Spanish society orabout minors under judicial control (Patio Santos and Martn Rojo, 2007;Rodrguez Wangemert et al., 2010; Soriano Gatica and Peres-Neto, 2008).hese pieces o news portray the immigrant minors represented as criminals

and, thereore, they threaten the security o the main group o the population.As a consequence, negative stereotypes are highlighted, making readers eelinsecure and threatened (Burguet, 2008; Nash, 2005). In very ew cases, someitems o news concentrate on the social situation o the children o immigrants(Garca Borrego, 2003).

Moreover, the majority o the news items reer to girls caught in thepolemic situation o wearing a veil to go to school (see Figure 3). his is acontroversial topic used in order to establish dierences between dierentreligions. Furthermore, this topic is also used to talk about women being dis-criminated against in some cultures.

Studies o the situation o these kinds o minors in other countries suchas 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 oras people who could become the criminals o the uture.

o summarize, the press normally mentions immigrant minors whenthere is a situation o conlict or vulnerability, and readers (who do not nor-mally have contact with them) assume that the arrival o these minors leadsto conlict and problems. his section has demonstrated that, in general, the

news articles analysed show negative topics that contribute to the wetheydichotomy. he texts analysed are representative o the way in which immi-grant minors are portrayed in Spain in a current situation o economic crisisthat does not contribute to integration.

4.2 Analysis of participants: exploring the relationship of

the representation of social actors and social distance

Tis section concentrates on the way in which the immigrants represented inFigures 1 to 4 are portrayed and on the importance o the analysis o social

distance or creating a dysphemistic image o immigrants.One o the main characteristics o 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), theyare collectivized and assimilated and thereore their identity as individualsis avoided. he idea o indetermination is thus present because immigrantsare represented as unspeciied, anonymous individuals (p. 39). In this sense,Figure 3 is dierent because we observe only two participants, the girl wear-ing the veil and her ather, who are treated as individuals. In this image, the

act that the ather is looking at the audience while holding his daughter who



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

Presenting immigrant minors as a group implies that they are not wor-thy o personalized representation or attention. Moreover, in the representa-tion o social actors in Figures 1, 2 and 3, it is also clear that we only see the

top halves o all the immigrants represented. his means that social actors arenot represented as a whole, since their bodies are only partially represented. Inaddition, using long shots as in Figures 1 and 4 contributes to backgroundingthe individuality o the actors and to distancing the people represented romthe viewer.

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

hirdly, when paying attention to social interaction, the crucial actoris whether the represented people look at viewers or not. As already stated,none o the participants in Figures 2 and 4 look directly at viewers. hereorethere is no interaction: although they are observed, there is no dialogue andno explicit demand, and this contributes to presenting immigrants as objects,

a strategy described by Van Leeuwen (2008: 141) as the strategy o objectiv-ization, representing people as objects or our scrutiny, rather than as sub-jects addressing the viewer with their gaze and symbolically engaging with theviewer in this way.

Immigrant minors appear backgrounded in all the photographs ana-lysed in dierent ways: in Figure 1 they appear behind the railings o theboat they are arriving on and thereore their bodies appear ar away rom theviewer. his is a clear example o visual dysphemism because immigrants arerepresented behind a physical barrier separating them rom readers, symbol-

izing and reinorcing the dierences between the world o immigrants and theworld o the main group, in this case Spanish society. Moreover, this image is anexample o detachment because the viewer is distanced rom the immigrantsrepresented, who are angled away rom the readers view. In addition, the aceso the immigrant minors represented cannot be distinguished; or example,they are blurred in Figure 1, which is also dysphemistic. Photographing themat a distance contributes to their social exclusion.

In Figure 2, the represented participants are looking down and cover-ing their aces, which precludes any interaction with the audience. Moreover,

in this image, it is implied that the reader has a stronger work ethic than theimmigrants who are static, doing nothing and trying to hide, indicating that



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they are inerior. Figure 2 shows three levels oreground, midground andbackground but all the participants represented share the same character-istics. hey do not show their aces, which suggests that they are ashamed otheir social situation and situates them as excluded rom the main group osociety, i.e. the group with power.

In Figure 3, the protagonist o the piece o news, the girl wearing theveil, is represented by her back view and being held by her ather. In this sense,it is signiicant that the ather looks directly at the audience, which contributesto presenting him as vulnerable and in need o help and support. Presentinga participant with her back to viewers implies that she is inerior because sheis not taking an active part in her lie. his girl is represented thereore as notinteracting with the audience, which is a clear example o visual dysphemism.his is also a way o placing the world o immigration beyond the experienceo local peoples 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 oplacing them outside most peoples experiences. his would contribute to theimmigrants social exclusion, in the sense that their problems are not ours.Following the principle o inormation value already mentioned in section 2(Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 177), an image placed on the right is moreimportant and that is why there are more immigrant minors in this positionin this text, i.e. they are oregrounded.

On the one hand, Figures 2 and 4 are clear examples o oer visualsbecause there is no direct contact between the participants and the viewer and

thereore the viewer is positioned as an observer. On the other hand, Figures1 and 3 are a mixture o a demand and an oer visual because some immi-grants in Figure 1 demand an answer rom the viewer not only by looking atthem but also by raising their arms, i.e. by a gesture. he man represented inFigure 3 looks directly at the audience and thereore he demands an answer.Consequently, these participants demand that the viewer enter into some kindo imaginary relation with them (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 118). In thecase o Figure 1, the immigrants raising their hands are seeking help rom theviewers.

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

Te analysis in the previous section shows how the pieces o news relatedto minors do not allow the reader to understand the situation in which theylive in their countries o origin or when they arrive in Spain, nor the circum-stances that made them migrate, because the majority o the pieces o newsmerely concentrate on problems caused by immigrant children (the act oarriving, the bone x-rays, the problems associated with wearing a veil, whether

or not they are minors and should return to their countries o origin, etc.).



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Te majority o the pieces o news in the newspaper El Pas just point outthat immigrants arrive and that they are looked afer and request help romthe government and NGOs; this suggests that they are a burden on Spanishsociety.

he images examined in this article reproduce the ideology o the jour-

nalists who have created the news items and o the newspaper under analysis.he media, in general, and this newspaper, in particular, have power in soci-ety, their voices are legitimate and they belong to an elite group; thereore theitems o news they transmit are given credibility. he texts analysed concen-trate on negative acts about immigration, in general, and immigrant minors,in particular, which promotes the perception o people who arrive rom othercountries as a people-problem that needs help, support, etc.

he analysis carried out in the previous section allows us to observethat there is always a relationship between texts and the society or culture inwhich they are ramed. In other words, the image o immigrants, especially oimmigrant minors, that is portrayed in the press does not increase the pos-sibilities o reducing the dierences between the main group and immigrants,or o approaching the arrival o immigrants, in general, and o minors, in par-ticular, as something positive. he press oers what the general public expectsto read, but also helps construct that expectation. Hence, rom the texts ana-lysed, we can predict the context in which they are going to be consumed acontext that establishes great dierences between the main group o societyand the people arriving rom other cultures.

he last statement implies that the interpretation o texts has to be

structured, not only taking into consideration what the text says but also thespeciic rules o interpretation o each context (Van Leeuwen, 2005: 83). hisrelationship is so close that, whenever there are changes in a particular societyor culture, these changes are also relected in texts.

he analysis has shown that in this article we are mainly concernedwith visual manipulation, and in this sense, ollowing Van Leeuwen (2000:333 ) and his concept o visual racism, we use the term visual dysphemismto reer to the cases in which images show the pejorative side o a social real-ity or group o people (see section 2.1). In the case o our analysis, the visuals

contribute to the idea that immigrants are dierent rom us and are a bur-den on society. hereore, the dierent social actors depicted in our analysisappear to be represented dysphemistically in order to contribute to their socialexclusion; they are presented as the others, i.e. those who are not like us, themain group o the population. hey are a threat or our culture and a burdenor our society; see, or example, the immigrant minors represented in thetext accompanying Figure 1 asking or help and showing that they are in avulnerable situation. In this way, visual discourse justiies the social exclusiono immigrant minors.

he way that the participants in Figures 2, 3 and 4 are portrayed, look-ing away rom the camera, is a dysphemismbecause not showing peoples aces



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indicates that they are ashamed o their social situation. In this sense, Figure 2is especially signiicant because the immigrants represented are blurred, theylook down and cover their aces, which gives power to the audience. his maylead the reader to deduce that immigrants eel ashamed o their situation: theyeel inerior to the main group and that is the reason why they are not looking

at the reader. Moreover, the act that the girl in Figure 3 is shown being held byher ather is also dysphemistic. his is connected with the written text, wherethe athers opinion is represented but not hers.

he dierent visual dysphemisms analysed in the previous paragraphsdo little to contribute to a positive view o immigrants. Moreover, it is sig-niicant that there are no people rom the main group (Spanish society) inany o the photographs as a way o establishing a clear dierence betweenthe world o immigrants and the world o the Spanish population, betweenthey and we, showing that their problems are not our problems, and there-ore no positive characteristics o immigrants are highlighted by presentingthem excluded rom the main group, as Van Leeuwen (2008: 28) makes clear:Representations include or exclude social actors to suit their interests andpurposes in relation to the readers or whom they are intended.

As ar 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 thereore it is understood that peoplerom the main group are the agents (actors). All the minor immigrants in themultimodal texts appear idle, which is associated with the idea o them beinga burden on society because they need the help o NGOs and social welare.

Consequently, there is no reerence to the immigrants unction in society, i.e. totheir occupation or role (p. 42); on the contrary, they seem to be identiied withdoing nothing, being unproductive or society and identiied not in terms owhat they do, but in terms o what they, more or less permanently, or unavoid-ably are. his idea o social exclusion is reinorced with the visual dysphemismsalready commented upon (avoiding eye contact, shown in back view, etc.)

o sum up, the analysis presented in the previous section points outthe main visual strategies or presenting people as others, as dierent rom us([p. 141): immigrants are presented as strangers, separate rom people rom

the main group (strategy o distanciation); they are also represented as ine-rior, poorer and with less power (strategy o disempowerment); and inally,they are represented as objects, as the majority do not engage with the viewer(strategy o objectivization).

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

Te different visuals analysed in this article make readers perceive the imageo immigrants as negative. Te discourse o the press shows immigrant minorswho have no documents, as people who are in need o Spanish social resources

and as potential uture delinquents; it seems that minors whose situation is



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irregular are necessarily delinquents or beggars due to the way in which theyare 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 o news thatreport positive acts related to immigrant minors and the visuals ound in thetexts analysed do not portray them in a positive way.

In this sense, discourse helps to encourage ear o people rom othercultures and to perpetuate the traditional stereotypes o people who belongto a dierent culture, which perpetuates the opposing wethey relation.Stereotypes and prejudices can be increased or promoted through the mes-sages transmitted by the press and, unortunately, in contemporary times theyare increasingly prevalent (Retis and Garca, 2010: 145).

he pressure o deadlines and the speed with which journalists workmean that they oten do not take ull consideration o the consequences otheir linguistic or visual choices in items on immigration, but rather rely ontheir habitual prejudices. his pressure seems to be the justiication or prob-lems with the journalistic treatment o minorities in general, and o immi-grant minors in particular, leading to their perception as problematic andthreatening, due to the requent representation associated with certain ormso deviant social behaviour such as violence, problems in centres or minors,crimes, unacceptable cultural dierences, and so on.

he dierent choices ound in the texts: image size, colours, the di-erent ways in which elements are placed in multimodal texts (top or bottom,right or let), etc. have an eect on the construction o meanings and, conse-quently, they have an eect on the way we read a piece o news because there

is normally an hierarchical relationship between elements. Consequently, weneed to be active citizens in our society and develop a critical perspectivewhen we read texts that use dierent modes to express meaning.

It is necessary to vindicate the role o the press to make visible the situ-ations in which there is a violation o the basic rights o minors. his impliesthe need to call to the attention o the Spanish government as well as the gov-ernment o the countries where minors come rom, especially Morocco inthis case, the need to implement the necessary means to respect the rights ominors in their public policies, taking into consideration international regula-

tions and Childrens Rights (Convencin de los Derechos de la Infancia).

F U N D I N G

Tis research received no specific grant rom any unding agency in the public, com-mercial or not-or-profit sectors.

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B I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E

MARIA MARINEZ LIROLA is Proessor o the Department o English at

the University o Alicante, Spain, and Research Fellow in the Department oLinguistics and Modern Languages at the University o South Arica (UNISA).Her main areas o research are Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic FunctionalLinguistics and Applied Linguistics. She has published more than 80 papersand 7 books, such as Main Processes of Tematization and Postponement inEnglish (Peter Lang, 2009). She has been a visiting scholar in different uni-versities such as: University o British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada 2014),Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada, 2012), University o South Arica,UNISA (Pretoria, South Arica, 2012), University o Anahuac Mayad (Mrida,

Mexico, 2008), University o Kwazulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg, South Arica,2006) and Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia, 2005). She has presentedpapers in international congresses all over the world.

Address: Departamento de Filologa inglesa, University o Alicante, Carreterade San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, 03690, Spain. [email: [email protected]]

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