Given the above, the objectives of the present research are also twofold: a theoretical one and an empirical one. The theoretical objective is to develop a theory-based model, called the Political Bias Screener, which is based on solid theoretical text linguistic foundations and is capable of featuring as a valid and reliable analytical tool for capturing and analysing ideology and political bias in argumentative newspaper articles and their translations. This calls for the identification and application of an analytical tool capable of describing and explaining relevant features of argumentative political texts including genre-related macro- and microlevels of text as well as context-related textual features. In other words, the analytical tool should be capable of explaining how conveying political messages takes place through mass media.

The other objective of this research is an empirical one: to provide a first testing of the Political Bias Screener with the help of a corpus of two Hungarian newspaper articles and their several translations into English for the empirical validation of the Screener. In other words, this other objective consists in examining if the Screener is applicable to political texts, and to assess whether it is capable of generating valid and reliable data on a population of texts by way of providing preliminary data. Such testing is to confirm the validity and reliability of the Political Bias Screener and to demonstrate the procedures of analysis.

It must be noted at this point that several Hungarian experts have been dealing with argumentative types of text. Árvay (2003 and 2004) examined how manipulation and persuasion are realised in Hungarian advertisements. Árvay and Tankó (2004) compared the rhetorical structure of Hungarian and English argumentative texts. Tankó (2005) developed a rhetorical move structure model of the argumentative essay to describe the argumentation of formal essays written in English. Károly (2002) surveyed lexical repetition in argumentative EFL essays, and later compared the rhetorical move structure of English argumentative academic discourse produced by expert and EFL students (Károly 2006). Tankó and Tamási (2008), on the other hand, examined the nature and types of thesis statements in argumentative essays. In the above academic context, the current research, however, is unique in its approach to argumentative texts: so far no attempt, either Hungarian or other, has been made to connect the analysis of argumentative texts with Translation Studies, text linguistics and political mass communication within one theoretical model relying on the most current findings of these three research fields. Besides, so far, Translation Studies has not developed one single analytical tool that is capable of the following: it can screen multiple and interacting levels of political texts for political manipulation, and can offer a comprehensive and contextual analysis of such manipulation. Given this, the Political Bias Screener has been specifically developed for the analysis and description of argumentative newspaper articles and their translations.

The application of some of the theories used in the current undertaking are also novel: Hoey’s (2001) Problem-Solution Model will be applied to argumentative texts within Translation Studies and Tirkkonen-Condit’s (1985) Macrostructure Model will be used to establish the gists and the political messages of the source and target texts. Van Dijk’s (1993, 1997, 2001, 2003) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model called the Discourse–Society Interface will be connected with Translation Studies, and a translation-centred adaptation of the Interface called the Translation-centred Discourse–Society Interface Model will be proposed.

Another novelty of the current undertaking is the development and introduction of one of the components of the Political Bias Screener called the Translation-centred Political Mass Communication Model. As the source and target texts (newspaper articles) exist in a political mass communication context, the Political Bias Screener will yield political science and mass communication related implications based on Mazzoleni’s (2002) bias and political reality-related theories.