Borders, Walls, and Boats : Discourses bout the "Migration Crisis"

Wodak, Ruth (2024) Borders, Walls, and Boats : Discourses bout the "Migration Crisis". In: Two Years Support for Ukrainian Artists :. Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna, pp. 193-201. ISBN 9783991530992

Abstract

Rhetoricians have traditionally emphasized the power of numbers (and lists) – as being rhetorical devices appealing to emotions such as fear (of “an invasion of illegal migrants”): scenarios of danger are systematically linked to crime statistics which then allow for the following argument: “if more (illegal) migrants/refugees enter our country, then crime rates will raise” . However, there is a caveat – usually, narratives trigger emotions better than abstract numbers; hence a context-dependent approach is certainly deemed necessary.