The overflow requires containment: analysis of "wave" as a migratory metaphor of pathetic category

Abstract

The current investigation sets an objective around a common component: three headlines that use the term wave as a metaphor to make reference of the migratory movement in the Mexican-U.S. borders. According to the chosen corpus, the main linguistic approaches to take into consideration will be the pragmatic-semantic work of Chamizo (1998), whose proposal encompasses the lexical and contextual study, combined with the Appraisal Theory of Martin and White (2005), specifically with the attitude category, to decode the meaning underlying in grammatical constructions like: «El covid y la ola de migrantes desbordan a refugios e iglesias en la frontera» [Covid-19 and the immigrants wave overflow shelters and churches across the border]. In this way, it will be possible to show how pathetic metaphors oriented into the most emotional spectrum can, directly or not, persuade and manipulate the reader.