Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:3 (2022) ► pp.413–434

Migrants are not welcome

Metaphorical framing of fled people in Hungarian online media, 2015–2018

ORCID logo | Corvinus University of Budapest
ORCID logo | Centre for Social Sciences

Figurative framing, in the form of metaphorical expressions, is especially effective in carrying conceptual content on an issue and affecting public opinion. One topic that has been heavily debated in contemporary Hungarian media is migration. Framing starts with the label that journalists select to refer to fled people: bevándorló (“immigrant”), migráns (“migrant”) or menekült (“refugee”). Depending on the label, different associations emerge, resting upon differing (metaphorical) conceptualizations evoked by the labels. We analysed metaphorical compounds based on the keywords in a media corpus of approx. 15 million words. Our results indicate that while all three keywords evoke predominantly negative frames and evaluations that build on stock metaphorical conceptualizations of fled people as also identified in the international literature – such as flood, object, business, war and crime –, the distribution of these metaphors does vary, depending on a) the selected keyword; and b) the political agenda of the media source.

Keywords: framing, metaphor, migrant, Hungary, media, immigrant, asylum seeker, migration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The metaphorical framing of fled people
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Source domains occurring with the keywords
    • 4.2Distribution of source domains across time periods
    • 4.3The effect of political leaning on the use of keywords and source domains
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.20042.ben
References
Arcimaviciene, Liudmila, and Sercan Hamza Baglama
2018 “Migration, Metaphor and Myth in Media Representations: The Ideological Dichotomy of ‘Them’ and ‘Us’.” SAGE Open 8 (2): 1–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baider, F., and M. Kopytowska
2017 “Conceptualising the Other: Online Discourses on the Current Refugee Crisis in Cyprus and in Poland.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13 (2): 203–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul, and Tony McEnery
2005 “A Corpus-based Approach to Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in UN and Newspaper Texts.” Journal of Language & Politics 4 (2): 197–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michał Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak
2008 “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balabanova, Ekaterina, and Alex Balch
2020 “Norm Destruction, Norm Resilience: The Media and Refugee Protection in the UK and Hungary during Europe’s ‘Migrant Crisis’.” Journal of Language and Politics 19 (3): 413–435. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balch, Alex, and Ekaterina Balabanova
2016 “Ethics, Politics and Migration: Public Debates on the Free Movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–2013.” Politics 36 (1): 19–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bene, Márton, and Gabriella Szabó
2019 “Bonded by Interactions: Polarising Factors and Integrative Capacities of the News Media in Hungary.” Javnost – The Public 26 (3): 309–329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Samuel, Jessica ter Wal, Artur Lipiński, Małgorzata Fabiszak, and Michał Krzyżanowski
2013 “The Representation of Third-country Nationals in European News Discourse.” Journalism Practice 7 (3): 248–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bernáth, Gábor, and Vera Messing
2015 “Bedarálva. A menekültekkel kapcsolatos kormányzati kampány és a tőle független megszólalás terepei [Governmental anti-migrant narratives and the potentials of independent discourses].” Médiakutató 16 (4): 7–17.Google Scholar
Bocskor, Ákos
2018 “Anti-immigration Discourses in Hungary During the ‘Crisis’ Year: The Orbán Government’s ‘National Consultation’ Campaign. Sociology 52 (3): 551–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bos, Linda, Sophie Lecheler, Moniek Mewafi, and Rens Vliegenthart
2016 “It’s the Frame That Matters: Immigrant Integration and Media Framing Effects in the Netherlands.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 551: 97–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgers, Christian, Elly A. Konijn, and Gerard J. Steen
2016 “Figurative Framing: Shaping Public Discourse through Metaphor, Hyperbole, and Irony.” Communication Theory 261: 410–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L.
2001 Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cs. Nagy, Lajos
1995 “A szóalkotás módjai [Types of word-formation processes].” In A magyar nyelv könyve, ed. by Anna A. Jászó, 272–300. Budapest: Trezor.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2006 “Britain As a Container: Immigration Metaphors in the 2005 Election Campaign.” Discourse and Society 17 (6): 563–582. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cisneros, David J.
2008 “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of ‘Immigrant As Pollutant’ in Media Representations of Immigration.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11 (4): 569–602. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dervinytė, Inga
2009 “Conceptual Emigration and Immigration Metaphors in the Language of the Press: A Contrastive Analysis.” Kalbų studijos / Studies about Languages 141: 49–55.Google Scholar
Eberl, Jakob-Moritz, Christine E. Meltzer, Tobias Heidenreich, Beatrice Herrero, Nora Theorin, Fabienne Lind, Rosa Berganza, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Christian Schemer, and Jesper Strömbäck
2018 “The European Media Discourse on Immigration and Its Effects: A Literature Review.” Annals of the International Communication Association 42 (3): 207–223. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Egres, Dorottya
2018 “Symbolic and Realistic Threats – Frame Analysis of Political and Media Discourses about Refugees and Migrants.” Society and Economy 40 (3): 463–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
El Rafaie, Elisabeth
2001 “Metaphors We Discriminate By: Naturalized Themes in Austrian Newspaper Articles about Asylum Seekers.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (3): 352–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Mark, and Richard Wright
1998 “The Balkanization Metaphor in the Analysis of U.S. Immigration.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (4): 686–698. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Entman, Robert M.
1993 “Framing: Toward the Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farris, Emily M., and Heather Silber Mohamed, H.
2018 “Picturing Immigration: How the Media Criminalizes Immigrants.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 6 (4): 814–824. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fausey, Caitlin M., and Teeny Matlock
2011 “Can Grammar Win Elections? Grammar and Elections.” Political Psychology 32 (4): 563–574. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gamson, William A., and Kathryn E. Lasch
1983 “The Political Culture of Social Welfare Policy.” In Evaluating the Welfare State: Social and Political Perspectives, ed. by S. E. Spiro, and E. Yuchtman-Yaar, 397–415. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gitlin, Todd
1980 The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Ervin
1974/1986 Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Reprint. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Greussing, Esther, and Hajo G. Boomgaarden
2017 “Shifting the Refugee Narrative? An Automated Frame Analysis of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (11): 1749–1774. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Griebel, Tim, and Erik Vollmann
2019 “We Can (’t) Do This: A Corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Migration in Germany.” Journal of Language and Politics 18 (5): 671–697. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, Casey T., and Jeff Gruenewald, J.
2020 “News Media Trends in the Framing of Immigration and Crime, 1990–2013.” Social Problems 67 (3): 452–470.Google Scholar
Hart, Christopher
2021 “Animals vs. Armies: Resistance to Extreme Metaphors in Anti-immigration Discourse.” Journal of Language and Politics 20 (2): 226–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janky, Béla
2019 “Changing Connotations and the Evolution of the Effect of Wording Labelling Asylum Seekers in a Political Campaign.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 31 (4): 714–737. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kálmán, László
2015 “Honnan menekülnek, hova vándorolnak? [Where are they fleeing from and where are they migrating to?]” [URL] (accessed 10 June 2019).
Kenyeres, Attila Zoltán, and József Szabó
2016 “The Migration Crisis: Representation of a Border Conflict in Hungarian, German and Pan-European Television News Coverage.” Corvinus Journal of Sociology Policy 7 (1): 71–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiss, E.
2016 “ ‘The Hungarians Have Decided: They Do Not Want Illegal Migrants’: Media Representation of the Hungarian Governmental Anti-immigration Campaign.” Acta Humana – Emberi jogi közlemények 4 (6): 45–77.Google Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid
2017 “The Representation of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Immigrants in British Newspapers: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Language and Politics 9 (1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korkut, Umut, Andrea Terlizzi, and Dániel Gyollai
2020 “Migration Controls in Italy and Hungary: From Conditionalized to Domesticized Humanitarianism at the EU Borders.” Journal of Language and Politics 19 (3): 391–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotzur, Patrick F., Nora Forsbach, and Ulrich Wagner
2017 “Choose Your Words Wisely: Stereotypes, Emotions, and Action Tendencies Toward Fled People as a Function of the Group Label.” Social Psychology 48 (4): 226–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krennmayr, Tina
2013 “Top-down Versus Bottom-up Approaches to the Identification of Metaphor in Discourse.” metaphorik.de 241: 7–36.Google Scholar
Kryżanowski, Michał, Anna Triandafyllidou, and Ruth Wodak
2018 “The Mediatization and the Politicization of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe.” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies 16 (1–2): 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner
1989 More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McGlone, Michael S.
2007 “What is the Explanatory Value of a Conceptual Metaphor?” Language and Communication 27 (2): 109–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeil, Robert and Eric Kartsens
2018 “Hogyan tudósít a média a migrációról és a mobilitásról? [How does the media report on migration and mobility?]” Médiakutató 19 (3–4): 89–117.Google Scholar
Messing, Vera, and Bence Ságvári
2019 “Still Divided But More Open: Mapping European Attitudes Towards Migration Before and After the Migration Crisis.” Budapest: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung ([URL]).
Monroe, Burt, Michael Colaresi, and Kevin Quinn
2017 “Fightin’ Words: Lexical Feature Selection and Evaluation for Identifying the Content of Political Conflict.” Political Analysis 16 (4): 372–403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2016 Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Salahshour, Neda
2016 “Liquid Metaphors As Positive Evaluations: A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Migrants in a Daily New Zealand Newspaper.” Discourse, Context & Media 131: 73–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto
1999 “ ‘Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse and Society 10 (2): 191–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schemer, Christian
2012 “The Influence of News Media on Stereotypic Attitudes Toward Immigrants in a Political Campaign.” Journal of Communication 62 (5): 739–757. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén, and Jane Demmen
2018 “An Integrated Approach to Metaphor and Framing in Cognition, Discourse, and Practice, with an Application to Metaphors for Cancer.” Applied Linguistics 39 (5): 625–645.Google Scholar
Silge, Julia, Alex Hayes, and Tyler Schnoebelen
2020 tidylo: Weighted Tidy Log Odds Ratio. [URL]
Sik, Endre, and Bori Simonovits
2018 The First Results of the Content Analysis of the Media in the Course of Migration Crisis in Hungary. TÁRKI-CEASEVAL Working Paper No. 35.Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol
2006 “Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy.” In Corpus-based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy, ed. by A. Stefanowitsch and S. Th. Gries, 1–16. Berlin and New York: Mouton.Google Scholar
Szalai, András, and Gabriella Gőbl
2015 Securitizing Migration in Contemporary Hungary. CEU Center for EU Enlargement Studies Working Paper, Budapest.Google Scholar
Thibodeau, Paul H., Rose K. Hendricks, and Lera Boroditsky
2017 “How Linguistic Metaphor Scaffolds Reasoning.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 21 (11): 852–863. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tóth, Máté, Péter Csatár, and Krisztián Majoros
2018 “Metaphoric Representations of the Migration Crisis in Hungarian Online Newspapers: A First Approximation.” metaphorik.de 281: 169–199.Google Scholar
van Gorp, Baldwin
2005 “Where Is the Frame? Victims and Intruders in the Belgian Press Coverage of the Asylum Issue.” European Journal of Communication 20 (4), 484–507. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vicsek, Lilla, Roland Keszi, and Marcell Márkus
2008 “Representation of Refugees, Asylum-seekers and Refugee Affairs in Hungarian Dailies.” Journal of Identity and Migration Studies 2 (2): 87–107.Google Scholar
Viola, Lorella, and Andreas Musolff
(Eds.) 2019 Migration and Media: Discourses about Identities in Crisis. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar