Politicization of Immigration and Language Use in Political Elites: A Study of Spanish Parliamentary Speeches

Abstract

This study uses natural language processing (NLP) tools to analyze how politicians recreate the stereotype of immigrants in the Spanish Parliament. An interdisciplinary approach from computational linguistics and social psychology has been used to construct a variety of indices about content and linguistic styles. The analysis of 2,516 parliamentary interventions about immigration delivered between 1996 and 2016 by representatives of the two political parties that alternated in power during that period (conservative Popular Party and Spanish Socialist Party) shows that both the rhetorical strategy to present immigrants as “victims” or as a “threat” and the language style that politicians use reveal an interaction between the ideology of the party and the party's political position in government or in the opposition. Results also suggest some changes over time in the polarization and politicization of the debate about immigration.