Latinos and Media Project

BIO

Otto Santa Ana received his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He received both his M.A. and B.A. at University of Arizona. His first book presents a devastating message about  the representations of Latinos in newspapers. In Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse, Santa Ana reviews the newspaper coverage of California's 1994 Proposition 187 campaign (restricting public services for undocumented immigrants), Proposition 209 (eliminating affirmative action) and Proposition 227 (ending bilingual education). He finds an alarming trend in the Los Angeles Times' coverage of these issues: the newspaper's metaphorical language reinforces stereotypes of Latinos and Latino issues. Filled with empirical evidence and supplemented by poised, professorial commentary, Brown Tide Rising asserts that "the major metaphors characterizing immigration and immigrant in contemporary public discourse were, respectively, DANGEROUS WATERS and IMMIGRANTS AS ANIMALS... Other metaphors that also were seen with some frequency included the IMMIGRANT AS SOLDIER, AS WEED, and AS DISEASE metaphors." Santa Ana reasons that the California electorate responded in accordance with this negative language when it voted for each of these three referenda.

The American Political Science Association awarded Brown Tide Rising Best Book of 2002 on Ethnic and Racial Political Ideology. The APSA selection committee stated: "In evaluating works in this category, our committee reviewed over 60 books and found [Santa Ana's] research to be a compelling examination of political discourse surrounding Latinos in California."


Latino-Related Research in Progress and Publications

Santa Ana has added semiotic analysis to his text analysis of mass media news. He is currently analyzing the representation of Latinos on the television network news programming. The books' tentative title is Televisioning Latinos.