THE RHETORIC OF THE FEAR OF THE STRANGER IN THE POLISH PRESS DISCOURSE

Abstract

Up to so-called "migration crisis" a figure of immigrant-foreign comparatively rarely appeared in Polish press discourse. From 2015 the immigration problem became one of the most frequently raised issues in public debates. The discourse was polarized strongly, which was an indicator of the increasing political divisions. The aim of the article is to show how immigrants were represented in the most influential Polish press releases, how the rhetoric of fear was created, what argumentative strategies were applied in order to escalate the fear. Qualitative and quantitative research methods have been applied to the analysis of news articles and analytical tools offered by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).