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The Discourse by the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) from 2007 to 2015: What Austerity Inflection After the Financial Crisis?

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Institutionality

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse ((PSDS))

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the institutionality of the discourse of the European Central Bank (ECB) from 2007 to 2015. Assuming that the discourse of the ECB has particular importance in political and economic decisions, and may have inflected after the 2008 financial crisis, we analyze how austerity discourses were represented in speeches by the ECB’s executive board. Beginning in 2010–2011, the ECB, then under president Jean-Claude Trichet, propagated a discourse which validates itself as well as aimed to prescribe “new” standards of conduct for governments and economic actors; standards which previously were not enacted in a similar fashion. We analyze this new inflection in discourse by using a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative sociodiscursive analyses. Our study shows that the ECB stands out as one of the “specific government apparatus” of austerity, in that it aims to impose moral, monetary and budgetary standards on states.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See “End of the G7 meeting in Iqaluit (Canada)”, Le Quotidien du peuple en ligne, 02/08/2010. Online: http://french.peopledaily.com.cn/International/6890492.html.

  2. 2.

    One MD speech in 2012 in PDF format cannot be used for the quantitative study. The numerical data that compose the body of our research are as follows: 51 speeches, totaling 166,435 tokens with an average of 3,263 words per speech (including one very short speech by the only woman on the executive board: Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell).

  3. 3.

    The word “endettement” in French conveys the notion of accumulating debts.

  4. 4.

    Calculation of lexical distance: Labbé’s method developed further by Xual Luong (Brunet 2000, 3–12).

  5. 5.

    According to the arboreal metaphor used by Hyperbase. Counterclockwise, starting from 2011 (t11), the nodes and years are distributed as follows: 2011–2007; 2010; 2015–2014; 2013; 2012–2009–2008.

  6. 6.

    Legend: “Rang” refers to the numerical classification of a keyword (from most to least used); “Z-score” corresponds to the value of “over- or underrepresentation” (hypergeometric distribution measure); “Keyword” refers to the type (for example, “bank” and “banks” are considered as two different types).

  7. 7.

    A function proposed by Hyperbase based on the calculation of a probability distribution (hypergeometric distribution, Brunet 2000, 3–12).

  8. 8.

    These figures can be viewed online at th.guilbert.recherches at the following address: http://graphesetfigures.monsite-orange.fr.

  9. 9.

    We use “intradiscourse” and “intertextuality” rather than “dialogism”, because these terms more accurately describe what we observe: “intradiscourse”, since there is both internal cohesion and an “oversight” of ideology; “intertextuality” by re-using identical terms or phrases that have previously been stated.

  10. 10.

    The full statement was repeated twice in this speech and then once on March 28, 2011, in front of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in Paris.

  11. 11.

    Unfortunately, the corpus from 2010 is limited to two speeches, one of which does not allow us to measure the importance of a possible change that year.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Luca Greco and Josiane Boutet, editor in chief and co-editor in chief of the French journal Langage et Société, respectively, for their kind permission to republish a revised and translated version of this text. We also wish to thank Lydia Fenner for the quality of her translation work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France

    Thierry Guilbert

  2. ENS Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Frédéric Lebaron

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  1. Thierry Guilbert
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  2. Frédéric Lebaron
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Correspondence to Thierry Guilbert .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Affairs, University of the Bundeswehr, Munich, Germany

    Yannik Porsché

  2. Faculty of Communication and Mass Media, British University in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

    Ronny Scholz

  3. Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Jaspal Naveel Singh

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Guilbert, T., Lebaron, F. (2022). The Discourse by the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) from 2007 to 2015: What Austerity Inflection After the Financial Crisis?. In: Porsché, Y., Scholz, R., Singh, J.N. (eds) Institutionality. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96969-1_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96969-1_19

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-96968-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-96969-1

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