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“illegal aliens” and “opportunity”: myth‐making in congressional testimony
Author(s) -
CHOCK PHYLLIS PEASE
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1991.18.2.02a00050
Subject(s) - mythology , ideology , rhetorical question , context (archaeology) , irony , sociology , immigration , law , rhetoric , political science , politics , history , literature , philosophy , art , archaeology , classics , linguistics
Congressional hearings are scenes for actions more diverse than either a judicial or an information‐gathering model would suggest. Hearings are settings in which ideologies are put to work in talk, both as practical activity and as ritual performance. In testimony in 1975 in a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee's hearings on immigration reform, speakers drew rhetorically upon particular American mythic themes to affirm an egalitarian ideology in a context of institutional and cultural uncertainty. Myths of opportunity were used to reify “illegal aliens” in order to deny difference, inequality, and history. The rhetorical displacement of myth by the use of irony opened the debate to new terms but failed to dislodge the myth‐making process.