Cover not available
Article published In:
Public Debates on Immigration
Edited by Andreas Musolff
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5:2] 2017
► pp. 251–273

“We mustn’t fool ourselves”

‘Orbánian’ discourse in the political battle over the refugee crisis and European identity

| North Carolina State University, USA
| North Carolina State University, USA

The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies through fractal recursion. We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orbán’s RWP political persona or type.

Keywords: right-wing populism, immigration discourse, discourse of fear, refugee crisis, Orbán, European identity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Brief overview of political context and refugee crisis
  • 3.Literature review
    • 3.1Immigration discourses
    • 3.2Discourses of right-wing populism
  • 4.Theoretical framework
  • 5.Methodology
  • 6.Qualitative results on discourses of fear
    • 6.1Law and order
    • 6.2Cultural and religious othering
  • 7.Political identity discourses
    • 7.1Self-representation of RWP political identity: Appeal to the people
    • 7.2Political other-representation of the EU and ‘liberals’
  • 8.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.2.05bol
References

References

Agha, Asif
2005 “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1):38–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian
2006 “The Racialization of Language in British Political Discourse.” Critical Discourse Studies 3(1):61–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2007 “Sociolinguistic Scales.” Intercultural Pragmatics 4(1):1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolonyai, Agnes
2016 “ ‘Sorry for Our Prime Minister!’: The Semiotic Landscape of Power & Resistance in a Poster-War on Immigration.” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. Orlando, FL.Google Scholar
Boukala, Salomi
2016 “Rethinking Topos in the Discourse Historical Approach: Endoxon Seeking and Argumentation in Greek Media Discourses on ‘Islamist Terrorism.’” Discourse Studies 18(3):249–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary
2009 “From Stance to Style: Gender, Interaction, and Indexicality in Mexican Immigrant Youth Slang.” In Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by Alexandra Jaffe, 146–170. New York and London: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2006 “Britain as a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 Election Campaign.” Discourse & Society 17(5):563–581. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Certeau, Michel
1984 The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Delanty, Gerard, Paul Jones, and Ruth Wodak
2008 “Introduction: Migration, Discrimination and Belonging in Europe.” In Identity, Belonging and Migration, edited by Gerard Delanty, Paul Jones and Ruth Wodak, 1–18. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Fekete, Liz
2001 “The Emergence of Xeno-Racism.” Race & Class 43(2): 23–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine
1995 “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference.” Social Research 62(4):967–1001.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal
2000 “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul Kroskrity, 35–84. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Kovács, András
2013 “The Post-Communist Extreme Right: The Jobbik Party in Hungary.” In Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral, 223–233. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał
2013 “From Anti-Immigration and Nationalist Revisionism to Islamophobia: Continuities and Shifts in Recent Discourses and Patterns of Political Communication of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).” In Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral, 135–148. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Miles, Robert
1989 Racism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murer, Jeffrey Stevenson
2015 “The Rise of Jobbik, Populism, and the Symbolic Politics of Illiberalism in Contemporary Hungary.” The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs 21:79–102.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2015 “Dehumanizing Metaphors in UK Immigrant Debates in Press and Online Media.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1):41–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pelinka, Anton
2013 “Right-Wing Populism: Concept and Typology.” In Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral, 3–22. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Reisigl, Martin
2013 “Zur komminikativen Dimensions des Rechtpopulismus.” In Populismus. Herausforderung oder Gefahr für eine Demokratie?, edited by Sir Peter Ustinov Institut, Anton Pelinka and Brigitte Haller, 141-162. Vienna: New Academic Press.Google Scholar
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak
2001 Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetoric of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto
1999 “ ‘Like an Animal I was Treated’: Anti-Immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse & Society 10(2):191–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sivanandan, Ambalavaner
2001 “Poverty is the New Black.” Race & Class 43(2): 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stråth, Bo
2008 “Belonging and European Identity.” In Identity, Belonging and Migration, edited by Gerard Delanty, Paul Jones, and Ruth Wodak, 21–37. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2011 “ ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Inclusion and Exclusion – Discrimination via Discourse.” In Migration, Identity, and Belonging, edited by Gerard Delanty, Ruth Wodak, and Paul Jones, 54–77. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “ ‘Anything Goes!’ – The Haiderization of Europe.” In Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral, 23–37. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2015 The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: SAGE. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Salomi Boukala
2014 “Talking about Solidarity and Security in the Age of Crisis: The Revival of Nationalism and Protectionism in the European Union – A Discourse-Historical Approach.” In EU Foreign Policy through the Lens of Discourse Analysis: Making Sense of Diversity, edited by Caterina Carta, and Jean-Frederic Morin, 171–190. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Bernhard Forchtner
2014 “Embattled Vienna 1983/2010: Right-Wing Populism, Collective Memory and the Fictionisation of Politics.” Visual Communication 13(2):231–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun
1992 “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.” Discourse & Society 3(1):87–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000 “Ideologies, Racism, Discourse: Debates on Immigration and Ethnic Issues.” In Comparative Perspectives on Racism, edited by Jessica ter Wal and Maykel Verkuyten, 91–115. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo
2007 “Legitimation in Discourse and Communication.” Discourse and Communication 1(1):91–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Campolong, Kelsey
2022. Chapter 18. “These cameras won’t show the crowds”. In Conspiracy Theory Discourses [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 98], ► pp. 421 ff. DOI logo
Rashid, Lubna & Silvia Cepeda-García
2021. Self-Categorising and Othering in Migrant Integration: The Case of Entrepreneurs in Berlin. Sustainability 13:4 ► pp. 2145 ff. DOI logo
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
2020. “Hey BCC this is Australia and we speak and read English:” Monolingualism and othering in relation to linguistic diversity. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:5 ► pp. 577 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.