The Hungarian Route to the European Union: A Corpus-Assisted Study
Elena Valvason
University of Pavia
On 12th April 2003, 83.6% of Hungarians voted in support of Hungary joining the European Union. This decisive result followed a massive parliamentary discussion about the issue and guaranteed Hungary access to the EU. But what was the attitude of Hungarian MPs towards the European Union? And how was Hungarian identity shaped in discourses about EU membership? In this talk I will present the preliminary results of a corpus-assisted study of Hungarian parliamentary speeches delivered between 1998 and 2003. After a brief historical introduction I will first outline the methodological approach I adopted to sketch attitudes and identities by means of collocation analysis. I will then describe the data I employed, namely the self-collected HUNPOL corpus. Finally, using the GraphColl software, I will show how semantic and discourse prosody can highlight the Hungarian politicians' stance regarding the European Union and the status they posit for themselves in a (possibly) new political dimension.