In:At the Crossroads of Historical and Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by Anna Rogos-Hebda and Heli Tissari
[Figurative Thought and Language 21] 2026
► pp. 178–199
“And who by fire, who by water…”
On the “good” refugees and “bad” (economic) migrants in early American magazines
Published online: 29 January 2026
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.21.08rog
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.21.08rog
Abstract
In their paper on the use of the categories “refugee” and “migrant” in migration discourse, Crawley and Skleparis (2018) speak of the inadequacy of clear-cut labels in
describing complex multifaceted phenomena, even though such categories dominate the anti-immigration populist
narrative. In the media coverage of the 2015 European migration crisis the (immigrant) Other was typically construed
as a criminal (terrorist) or part of a moving mass (water). The present study
examines the “magazine” section of the coha corpus in search of possible antecedents of the (now current)
dichotomous categorization into refugees and “fake” migrants in historical American English. Rooted in a conviction
that historical linguistics and cognitive linguistics can benefit from drawing on each other’s insights, the analysis
expands Crawley and Skleparis’ (2018) findings by incorporating the
diachronic and quantitative dimensions.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.At the crossroads of cognitive linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis
- 3.Data and methodology
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1Qualitative analysis
- 4.2Quantitative analysis
- 5.Conclusions
Notes References
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