I recently learned about a fascinating tool, called the ngram viewer, recently unveiled by Google labs. It’s an enormous searchable database of books that are available to the public in digitized form. The material includes books published from the 1400’s to 2008 (Google promises to continue expand the database of searchable items). While most of the materials included are English language publications, there are a few publications in other languages such as German and French available too. The ngram viewer offers users the opportunity to search 5.2 million digitized books and millions of words and to graph the flow of words in printed matter over time. In other words, it allows you to visualize trends including when a word first appears in print, when it drops from popularity, and the ebbs and flows of use in published material. One interesting aspect of this huge database is that it allows a search that distinguishes between books published in English and available in the US vis-à-vis English language publications available in Britain.
You might wonder how does this tie in with our research on asylum seekers? Among our findings is that, as a category, asylum seekers in the US seem to be less visible than in the UK. I was curious to see if this trend is reflected in published materials, so I searched the ngram database. I entered the following categories: ‘asylum seeker’, ‘undocumented migrant’, and ‘illegal immigrant’ into the database and searched for their use in British English and American English publications from 1970 to 2008. The graphs below show what I found:
Frequency of terms describing 'migrants' in American English publications
It’s interesting to see that usage of the term ‘illegal immigrant’ (the green line) far outweighs use of ‘asylum seekers’ (the blue line) among American English publications. It’s also interesting to note the dramatic upsurge in use of the term ‘asylum seeker’ (shown in the chart below as a blue line) since 2001 in materials published in Britain.
Frequency of terms referring to 'migrants' in British English publications
While I realize that the nature of published materials and asylum advocacy differs and that categories used in print and in ‘on-the-ground’ advocacy are distinct, I think it is fair to say that there is traffic between them. With this in mind, I’m left wondering how public exposure and familiar usage of categories such as ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘undocumented migrant’ in printed matter, popular culture, and political forums influences the way advocacy organizations view themselves, their work, and the individuals they work with.
What are your thoughts or experiences on this issue? Why not weigh in on this question, send us your comments and experiences related to language and popular discourses that surrounds asylum seekers by posting a comment here or by contacting us directly.
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