Key word: Boat People 1. More boat people voluntarily returning home - Document - Gale In Context: Global Issues 2. Boat people protest repatriation - Document - Gale In Context: Global Issues 3. Anger flares in holding camps for boat people - Document - Gale In Context: Global Issues 4. identified patterns: ‘boat people’ is often paired up with negative words, such as ‘detain’, ‘outbreaks’, ‘anger’, etc. Making people make false association between these negative concepts with ‘boat people’.

Guiding questions:

What words, other than the key words, stand out? Why?

Words with strong emotion. For example, ‘tore down fences’, ‘dangerous’. These words stand out because people are naturally more sensitive to negative emotions and thus capture readers’ attention more easily.

What is the tone? How does it make you feel?

The tone of these articles are formal, but the diction makes me feel that the author is rather discrimitive towards the refugees, suggesting they are associated with violence. This association may be caused by implicit bias and cause this bias for readers.

How might different audiences interpret this language?

Different audiences may interpret this language based on their perspectives. For example, readers sympathetic to refugees might find the language unfair and perpetuating harmful stereotypes, while neutral readers may associate refugees with violence due to the emotional word choice. On the other hand, readers critical of refugees could see it as reinforcing their beliefs. This shows how the diction can influence readers differently depending on their biases.

Quick write: What was the most surprising thing you learned about language and power today?

Language has the power of conveying emotion. The power can be subtle, where the author hides his attitude in certain dictions; the power can also be quite obvious, where the author includes specific details to convey the emotion. Although some words refer to the same thing, they demonstrates different emotion and make association with different concepts. For example, the immigrants and boat people refer to people who leave their home country, but they have divergent meaning: immigrant is more neutral and even positive, making people think of remote workers, while boat people is negative, suggesting a sense of illegality.