英语单词大师：Not the Actor

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: what to call people who are in the United States without following immigration laws.

RS: Sometimes they are called "undocumented immigrants" or "undocumented workers" or "illegal aliens." The most common term by far, though, at least as reflected in the news media, is "illegal immigrants." Yet in the debate over immigration policy, linguist¹ Otto Santa Ana at the University of California, Los Angeles, sees it as a biased² political term.

AA: Which may help explain why Professor Santa Ana has found a small increase since 2004 in the use of more-neutral terms in newspapers. He traces this to a speech by President Bush in January of 2004 during his re-election campaign.

OTTO SANTA ANA: "I believe that he opened up and made legitimate³, for once, the characterization of immigrants as family members, as people, as God-fearing, hard-working individuals trying to make a living. Until that time no one with the president's power ever referred to immigrants as people.

"And so although that is understood, it is articulated each and every time that we say 'immigrants without papers,' 'people who are working here without legal documents' or other sorts of circumlocutions, to not focus the illegality on the immigrant.

"And, in fact, in Congress right now, what the senators and representatives are discussing is the official status of those people. So by using the term 'illegal immigrant' solely⁴, what the journalists do is articulate a partisan⁵ perspective."RS: In fact, Professor Santa Ana calls the term illegal immigrant a "vigilante term."OTTO SANTA ANA: "You know, for one thing news editors already exclude the notion of 'illegal' as a noun. In the early '90s, people were very comfortable with saying 'Oh, those illegals.' But that was already understood to be pejorative⁶. In a very negative way, it characterized people as primarily criminals. But they have broken a civil law that's equivalent in some sense -- in very many senses -- to jaywalking, but we don't call jaywalkers 'illegal pedestrians⁷.'"AA: "You're talking about the act of being within the United States ... "OTTO SANTA ANA: "Is currently a civil infraction⁸ of the law. It is technically⁹ illegal. But the term illegal immigrant -- if you say the people who are here without legal papers, that's a more appropriate characterization."RS: "So what I'm hearing you say is that since 2004 you're seeing in the media other words next to immigrant: undocumented, without papers ... "OTTO SANTA ANA: "Right."RS: " ... without legal papers."OTTO SANTA ANA: "Exactly."RS: "And so those phrases are ... "OTTO SANTA ANA: "They provide an alternative way of viewing the immigrants. We'd never say, for example, that the people who are hiring immigrants who don't have papers 'criminal bosses' or 'illicit¹⁰ businesses. If we did, then one could argue that illegal immigrant is perfectly¹¹ neutral.

"But we are not characterizing, we are not focusing on the characterization of the status of the immigrant in the totality. We're focusing on that individual and calling that person a criminal up front."RS: "Among themselves, what do immigrants call their situation?"OTTO SANTA ANA: "Well, they use all sorts of terms. They will say 'indocumentado' ... "RS: "Undocumented."OTTO SANTA ANA: "They will say 'illegal.'"RS: "Illegal. They'll say illegal?"OTTO SANTA ANA: "Yes, yes. They'll also say 'sin papel,' without papers, and all sorts of other terminology¹². The range -- it's not like a standard term that's being used, but what I want to focus our attention on is journalistic language."AA: "What about on the macro level? What would -- is there an alternative to the term illegal immigration? Or is that OK to use that term, do you think? I mean, if you were a news editor or a headline writer and you had to use the term, like to put in a headline, what term would you use?"OTTO SANTA ANA: "I'd avoid any adjective."AA: "You'd just refer to immigration."OTTO SANTA ANA: "Immigration."RS: Linguist Otto Santa Ana is an associate professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA and author of several books. And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected].

RS: And you can read and listen to all our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

1 linguist   

n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者

参考例句：

• I used to be a linguist till I become a writer.过去我是个语言学家，后来成了作家。
• Professor Cui has a high reputation as a linguist.崔教授作为语言学家名声很高。

2 biased   

a.有偏见的

参考例句：

• a school biased towards music and art 一所偏重音乐和艺术的学校
• The Methods: They employed were heavily biased in the gentry's favour. 他们采用的方法严重偏袒中上阶级。

3 legitimate   

adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法

参考例句：

• Sickness is a legitimate reason for asking for leave.生病是请假的一个正当的理由。
• That's a perfectly legitimate fear.怀有这种恐惧完全在情理之中。

4 solely   

adv.仅仅，唯一地

参考例句：

• Success should not be measured solely by educational achievement.成功与否不应只用学业成绩来衡量。
• The town depends almost solely on the tourist trade.这座城市几乎完全靠旅游业维持。

5 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

6 pejorative   

adj.贬低的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• In the context of ethnic tourism,commercialization often has a pejorative connotation.摘要在民族旅游语境中，商品化经常带有贬义色彩。
• But news organizations also should make every effort to keep the discussion civil and to discourage the dissemination of falsehoods or pejorat

7 pedestrians   

n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Several pedestrians had come to grief on the icy pavement. 几个行人在结冰的人行道上滑倒了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Pedestrians keep to the sidewalk [footpath]! 行人走便道。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

8 infraction   

n.违反；违法

参考例句：

• He was criticized for his infraction of the discipline.他因违反纪律而受到了批评。
• Parking at the bus stop is illegal,Motorists committing this infraction are heavily fined.在公交站停车是违法的，触犯此条的司机将受重罚。

9 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

10 illicit   

adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He had an illicit association with Jane.他和简曾有过不正当关系。
• Seizures of illicit drugs have increased by 30% this year.今年违禁药品的扣押增长了30%。

11 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

12 terminology   

n.术语；专有名词

参考例句：

• He particularly criticized the terminology in the document.他特别批评了文件中使用的术语。
• The article uses rather specialized musical terminology.这篇文章用了相当专业的音乐术语。