What is it about?
This study explores how political leaders use fear to shape public opinion about immigration. Focusing on nearly 500,000 words from Donald Trump’s tweets, it shows how Hispanic and Latinx immigrants were repeatedly described as threats to national security and the economy. Using advanced tools from critical discourse analysis, the study uncovers how Trump’s language created a sense of crisis—what scholars call a “moral panic”—to justify strict immigration policies. It also reveals how this fear-based messaging supports a wider right-wing populist strategy by blaming immigrants and political opponents for social problems. The research shows how words do more than reflect ideas—they can actively build insecurity and make exclusion seem necessary. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of how political language constructs public fears and shapes real-world policies.
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Why is it important?
This study is important because it shows how language can be used as a tool to divide, exclude, and control. While the focus is on immigration, the findings speak to a broader issue: how political speech shapes who is seen as part of society—and who is pushed to the margins. In a time when public trust, social cohesion, and shared frameworks for public life are under strain, understanding how words are used to make some groups feel unsafe or unwanted is crucial. This research invites readers to think more critically about how language can both reflect and reinforce power, fear, and exclusion.
Perspectives
To me, (in)security is not simply about protection or threat. It is a deeply embodied feeling—a sense of being anchored or adrift in the world. Yet this feeling does not arise in a vacuum. It is continuously produced through language: in the metaphors we absorb, the binaries we inherit, and the silences we overlook. This article is part of my ongoing effort to examine how language makes people feel safe or unsafe, included or excluded. What concerns me most is how easily fear becomes normalized—how certain phrases, repeated often enough, can reshape what we believe is dangerous, and whom we believe must be kept out. In a time when many feel uncertain about their place in society, I believe that attending to how language constructs these emotional landscapes is not just a matter of discourse. It is about reclaiming agency over what we are taught to fear, and what we come to accept as safety—and this, to me, is not merely an academic task, but a social responsibility.
Yue Zhang
University of Malaya
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Moral panic and (in)security, Journal of Language and Politics, August 2024, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/jlp.22096.zha.
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