Empathy and alterity in G.W. Bush's representation of immigrants

In 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, and in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the wide American public was oblivious of the metamorphosis which immigration policy was initiating. The scarce reference to immigrants and immigration made by President G.W. Bush in his speeches, in sharp contrast with the ambitious reform of the immigration law undertook by his team, are approached in the light of complex political, institutional and cultural conjunctures, past and present. This book offers a corpus-driven analysis of 1,456 presidential speeches given between 2001 and 2009. It identifies and discusses those linguistic features which conduce to the discursive 'othering' of immigrants and ponders on the possibility that, in the future, the shift towards empathy at discourse level may allow consequential change to take place in the actual lives of the immigrants.