THE LANGUAGE OF PROSPERITY AND CRISIS - A CASE-STUDY IN POLITICAL SEMANTICS

This article demonstrates how political metaphors in newspaper languag e function as a meter-reader of anxiety among the population in times with high unemployment rates. The theory of Helmut Gaus on ''Human beh aviour during long-term economic recessions'' was used as a hypothetic al reference frame. His hypothesis on the social-psychological effects of the economic conjuncture was tested in detail through investigatio ns on political metaphors in Flemish newspapers both for the 19th and 20th century. The relationship between political metaphors and unemplo yment rates has been operationalized by means of a ''linguistic uses a nd gratification's model''. Metaphorical variables as ''frequency'',: ''intensity'' and ''content'' are indicators of the metaphorical power of a text totalized by their product, the ''metaphorical coefficient' '. For the period 1965-1981, correlations between metaphorical variabl es and unemployment rate from 0,679 (content) over 0,870 (frequency) a nd 0,926 (intensity) to 0,932 (metaphorical coefficient). As Lasswell wrote, ''certain changes in style may indicate the gradual decline of democratic feeling, or reveal the ground swell of gathering crisis'' ( 1949, 38). The last part of his sentence states exactly what this case -study is about: the detection of the language ofcrisis, and at the co unterpart, the language of prosperity. This question is relevant for s ocial scientists as it both contributes to interpreting political tren ds and to learning more about the technique of effective public discou rse(2). The case-study consists of an operationalisation of the key-qu estion into a ''metaphorical uses and gratifications model'' which is followed by empirical results, is preceded by an introduction explaini ng why this piece of research is called ''a case study in political se mantics', and by two paragraphs describing the social-scientific and t he linguistic reference-frame that are combined in this approach.