Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Producing Discursive Change: From "Illegal Aliens" to "Unauthorized Immigration" in Library Catalogs
Date of Degree
9-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Program
Liberal Studies
Advisor
Mehdi Bozorgmehr
Subject Categories
Discourse and Text Linguistics | Library and Information Science | Politics and Social Change
Keywords
Critical Discourse Analysis; Knowledge Organization
Abstract
Recent debates on immigration policies have included a discursive contest over the representation of unauthorized immigrants, in both the news media and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a subject indexing system administered by the Library of Congress. Using a mixed methods approach from a critical discourse analysis perspective, I examine the responses of the news media and the Library of Congress to societal pressures for change, showing how the Library’s complex institutional position can constrain its responses. Those obstacles, when combined with the characteristics of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as a linguistic tool for information retrieval, mean that the LCSH can legitimize and reinforce established discourses. While the LCSH’s power is mitigated by the coexistence of many other systems of knowledge representation, the LCSH continue to be an influential system, and it is important to consider how and why some changes can be difficult to make in this classification system.
Recommended Citation
Cho, J. Silvia, "Producing Discursive Change: From "Illegal Aliens" to "Unauthorized Immigration" in Library Catalogs" (2016). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1559
Included in
Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons, Library and Information Science Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons