Let's Stop The Enemy! A Critical Discourse Analytical (CDA) Case-Study of the Rhetoric of a State-Conducted Survey in Hungary, April 2017 (original) (raw)

In April 2017, the Hungarian government launched a national consultation entitled 'Let's stop Brussels!' focusing on topical issues such as Brussels' prohibition of reductions in household utility charges; illegal immigration; foreign attempts to influence the domestic political scene; Brussels' attacks on tax reductions and job creation programmes in Hungary. The ruling party's intention of conducting the consultation was to gain alleged public support for the government's implementation of measures the EU has been concerned about. The present paper investigates the extent of the presence of manipulation in the rhetoric of the questionnaire of the consultation sent to Hungarian eligible voters by using van Dijk's (2006) triangulated Critical Discourse Analytical (CDA) approach. Van Dijk's three-layered approach to the investigation of manipulation in discourse is an integrated theory that establishes links between three different dimensions of manipulation: society, cognition and discourse. The findings of the study show that in all the three dimensions various rhetorical tools of manipulation were applied in the text of the national consultation.