Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 14:4 (2015) ► pp.599–625

The financial crisis as a heart attack

Discourse profiles of economists in the financial crisis

| | Johannes Kepler University, Linz |
| | Johannes Kepler University, Linz |
The article analyzes the role of economists in public discourse with regard to the financial crisis. Specifically, it focuses on the prevailing rhetorical strategies and the economic convictions of leading German-speaking economists as they appear in seven leading newspapers and magazines in the German-speaking area. Special attention is given to the prevailing rationales and explanations for the financial crisis as well as on the metaphors used for describing specific economic events in particular and the market economy in general. The results of this article show that while the financial crisis could have offered a possibility for a paradigm shift in economic thinking, there is not much evidence for such a shift among German-speaking economists. The observed stability of the dominant paradigm is attributed primarily to the very stable role of certain basic economic convictions, which are exposed through the use of specific metaphors as well as a characterization of the financial crisis as a series of extraordinary and exogenously given events. (e.g. “a tsunami” or “earthquake”)
Keywords: financial crisis, failure of economics, language of economists, metaphors in public discourse, discourse profiles of economists
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metaphors of Economists and Economists in the Media
  • 3.Methodological Framework and Research Design
  • 4.Course of the Public Discourse on the Financial Crisis
    • 4.13rd quarter of 2008: “The American Crisis will overthrow other dominoes – we have to be fast”
    • 4.24th quarter of 2008: State failure in regulation leads to a “tsunami” in Germany
    • 4.31st quarter of 2009: “Keynesian Moment?” Or the fear of the state?
    • 4.42nd quarter of 2009: Self-reflection about the influence of economists and their prognoses?
    • 4.53rd quarter of 2009: “The delicate little plant of economic activity” in the credit crunch
    • 4.64th quarter of 2009: “The living-beyond-one’s-means” in times of increasing unemployment
  • 5.Discussion: Real World Events, Thinking Styles and Metaphors
    • 5.1The financial crisis as a disease that infected the economy (disease)
    • 5.2The financial crisis as a natural disaster or a military attack (nature, military, mechanics)
    • 5.3The (financial) market as a sensitive actor (anthropomorphism)
    • 5.4Economic acting requires a specific morality (economic morality/responsibility)
    • 5.5The financial crisis as misfortune in the economic game (game)
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.14.4.06puh
References (68)
References
Acemoglu, Daron. 2009. “The Crisis of 2008: Structural Lessons For and From Economics.” CEPR Policy Insight 28 , January.
Ahmia, Tarik. 2008. “The Silence of Economists.” Indymedia, December 19, 2008. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).Google Scholar
Arlt, Hans-Jürgen, and Wolfgang Storz. 2010. “Wirtschaftsjournalismus in der Krise. Zum massenmedialen Umgang mit Finanzmarktpolitik“. Otto-Brenner-Stiftung. OBS Arbeitsheft 631.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using corpora in discourse analysis. London/New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul, Coastas Gabrielatos, Majid KhosraviNik, Michal Krzyzanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press”. Discourse & Society 191: 273-306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bofinger, Peter, and Gustav A. Horn. 2009. “Die Schuldenbremse gefährdet die gesamtwirtschaftliche Stabilität und die Zukunft unserer Kinder.“ URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).
Callon, Michel. 2005. “Why Virtualism Paves the Way to Political Impotence”. European Electronic Newsletter 6 (2): 3-20.Google Scholar
Carrick-Hagenbarth, Jessica, and Gerald Epstein. 2012. “Dangerous Interconnectedness: Economists’ Conflicts of Interest, Ideology and Financial Crisis.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 36 (1): 43-63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colander, David, Hans Föllmer, Armin Haas, Michael Goldberg, Katarina Juselius, Alan Kirman, Thomas Lux, and Brigitte Sloth. 2009. “The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics”. Discussion Paper 09–03. University of Copenhagen, Department of Economics. DOI logo
Dörre, Klaus. 2011. “Germany after the Crisis: Employment Miracle or Discriminating Precarity?” Speech at the conference Employment and the Crisis: Work, Migration, Unemployment on March 11, 2011, Dublin. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).
Engelen, Ewald, Ismail Erturk, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Adam Leaver, Michael Moran, Adriana Nilsson, and Karel Williams. 2011. After the Great Complacence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Gerald, and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth. 2010. “Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown: It’s Time to Set Ethical Standards for the Economics Profession.” Working Papers Series No 239, Political Research Institute University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
. 1992. “Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis”. Discourse & Society April 1992(3): 193-217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman, and Ruth Wodak. 1997. “Critical Discourse Analysis”. In Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction 21: 258-284. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Faulhaber, Gerald R., and William T. Baumol. 1988. “Economists as Innovators: Practical Products of Theoretical Research”. Journal of Economic Literature 26 (2): 577-600.Google Scholar
Fleck, Ludwik. 1980. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Christian. 2012. Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism. Paper presented at the Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research. October 18–20. 2012, Bilbao: University of the Basque Country.Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew. 2007. Washing the Brain. Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hau, Harald, and Marcel Thum. 2009. “Subprime Crisis and Board (In-)Competence: Private vs. Public Banks in Germany.” CESifo Working Paper Series 2640. CESifo Group Munich.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 1993. “The Economy as an Organism – not a Machine.” Futures 251: 392-403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Imhof, Kurt. 2009. “’Watchdogs oder Lemminge’. Analyse der Berichterstattung der Schweizer Medien zur Finanzkrise.“ Zürich. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).
Jäger, Siegfried. 2004. Kritische Diskursanalyse. Eine Einführung. Münster: Unrast.Google Scholar
Jäkel, Olaf. 1997. Metaphern in abstrakten Diskurs-Domänen. Eine kognitiv-linguistische Untersuchung anhand der Bereiche Geistestätigkeit, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.Google Scholar
Kirby, John T. 1997. “Aristotle on Metaphor”. The American Journal of Philology 118 (4): 517-554. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2010. Metaphor. A practical Introduction. Oxford: University of Oxford Press.Google Scholar
Kubon-Gilke, Gisela. 1996. “Institutional Economics and the Evolutionary Metaphor”. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 1521: 723-738.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University Press Chicago.Google Scholar
Kutter, Amelie. 2013. “Totgesagte leben länger. Die Fortschreibung ökonomischer Ordnung in Krisenlektionen der deutschen Finanzpresse”. Globale politische Ökonomie 20131: 95-120.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980a. Metaphors we Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Chicago.Google Scholar
. 1980b. “The Metaphorical Structure of the Human Conceptual System”. Cognitive Science 41: 195-208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1995. “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics. Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals. In the Dust”. Social Research 62 (2): 177-214.Google Scholar
. 2002. Moral Politics. How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald, Fabian Muniesa, and Lucia Siu. 2007. Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Deidre N. 1990. If you’re so smart: The narrative of economic expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 1995. “Metaphors Economists Live by”. Social Research 62 (2): 215-238.Google Scholar
McGoun, Elton G. 1996. “Fashion and Finance”. International Review of Financial Analysis 51: 65-79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meunier, Sophie. 2013. “The Dog that did not Bark: Anti-Americanism and the 2008 Financial Crisis in Europe”. Review of International Political Economy 20 (1): 1-25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 1989. More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics and Nature’s Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. Machine Dreams. Economics becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morris, John. 2012. “Demand Doctors in an Era of Disintermediation. The Cultural Economy of the Keynesian Revival in the Anglo-American World.” Paper Presented at the Conference Political Economy and the Outlook for Capitalism. July 5–7, 2012, Paris. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).
Musolff, Andreas. 2005. “Brisante Metaphern: Zur argumentativen Funktion von Krankheitsmetaphorik im öffentlichen Diskurs”. In Brisante Semantik, ed. by Dietrich Busse, Thomas Niehr, and Martin Wengeler, 309-322. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Metaphor in Political Dialogue”. Language and Dialogue 1 (2): 191-206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Cultural differences in the understanding of the metaphor of the ‘Body Politic’”. In Cognition and Culture, ed. by Sonja Kleinke, Zoltán Kövecses, Andreas Musolff, and Veronika Szelid, 143-151. Budapest: ELTE University Publishers.Google Scholar
Neubäumer, Renate. 2011. “Eurokrise: Keine Staatsschuldenkrise, sondern Folge der Finanzkrise”. Wirtschaftsdienst 2011 (12): 827-833. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oberlechner, Thomas, Thomas Slunecko, and Nicole Kronberger. 2004. “Surfing the Money Tides: Understanding the Foreign Exchange Market through Metaphors”. British Journal of Social Psychology 431: 133-156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ötsch, Walter O. 2009a. “Bilder der Wirtschaft. Metaphern, Diskurse und Hayeks neoliberales Hegemonialprojekt”. In Kapitalismus. Kritische Betrachtungen und Reformansätze, ed. by Hubert Hieke, 39-68. Marburg: Metropolis.Google Scholar
. 2009b. Mythos Markt. Marburg: Metropolis.Google Scholar
Ötsch, Walter O., Gerd Grözinger, Karl M. Beyer, and Lars Bräutigam. 2014. (eds.). The Political Economy of Offshore Jurisdictions. Marburg: Metropolis Verlag.Google Scholar
Palan, Ronen, Richard Murphy, and Christian Chavagneux. 2010. Tax Havens. How Globalization Really Works. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Plenum der Ökonomen. 2012. “Satzung des Plenums der Ökonomen.“ Beschluss vom 8.10.2010. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015). Google Scholar
Pühringer, Stephan, and Katrin Hirte. 2014. „ÖkonomInnen und Ökonomie in der Krise?! Eine diskurs- und netzwerkanalytische Sicht.“ WISO 37(1): 159-178.Google Scholar
Pühringer, Stephan. 2015a. “‘Harte‘ Sanktionen für ‚budgetpolitische Sünder‘ Diskursanalytische Aufarbeitung der Argumentationsmuster für den Fiskalpakt in meinungsbildenden österreichischen Medien“. Momentum Quarterly 4(1): 23-41.Google Scholar
. 2015b. “Markets as ‘ultimate judges’ of economic policies - Angela Merkel´s discourse profile during the economic crisis and the European crisis policies”. On the Horizon (Special issue on Language and Economics) 23(3): 246-259.Google Scholar
Rothschild, Kurt. 2010. “Die Kontroverse Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung contra Handelsblatt. Einige Bemerkungen zu einem methodologischen Schlagabtausch anno 2009”. Intervention 11/2010: 24-31.Google Scholar
Schneider, Friedrich, and Gebhard Kirchgässner. 2009. “Financial and World Economic Crisis: What did Economists Contribute?” Public Choice 140 (3–4): 319-327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sinn, Hans Werner. 2009. Kasino-Kapitalismus. Wie es zur Finanzkrise kam und was jetzt zu tun ist. Berlin: Econ Verlag.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Rudolf. 2005. “Systematic Metaphor Analysis as a Method of Qualitative Research”. The Qualitative Report 10 (2): 358-394.Google Scholar
Starkman, Dean. 2009. “Power Problem. The Business Press did Everything but take on the Institutions that brought Down the Financial System”. Columbia Journalism Review June 2009.Google Scholar
Steinert, Heinz. 2010. “Krise? welche Krise? wessen Krise? – Metaphern und Modelle und was daraus folgt. Erster Akt (2008/09): Der Staat als Arzt am Krankenbett des Bankensystems”. URL: [URL] (dl 10.08.2015).
Van der Does de Willebois, Emile, Emily M. Halter, Robert A. Harrison, Ji Won-Park, and Jason C. Sharman. 2011. The Puppet Masters. How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It. Washington DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The World Bank. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2005. Discourse and Racism in Spain and Latin America. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Discourse Reader. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Peter Chilton (eds.). 2005. A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis. Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer (eds.). 2009. Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis. Introducing Qualitative Methods. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth (ed.). 2013. Critical Discourse Analysis, Vol. 1, Concepts, History, Theory. London: Sage.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (14)

Cited by 14 other publications

Shi, Linfei
2024. Politicalization of public health crisis – metaphorically “out-grouped” Chinese authorities in their domestic COVID-19 campaign. Social Semiotics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Forseth, Ulla, Emil A. Røyrvik & Stewart Clegg
2023. Naturalizing, normalizing and neutralizing: metaphors framing the global financial crisis in Nordic banks. Culture and Organization 29:2 ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
Kapeller, Jakob, Stephan Puehringer & Christian Grimm
2022. Paradigms and policies: the state of economics in the German-speaking countries. Review of International Political Economy 29:4 ► pp. 1183 ff. DOI logo
Renzi, Barbara Gabriella
2022. Metaphors of the Troubles. In Specialized Knowledge Mediation, ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Ötsch, Walter Otto, Katrin Hirte & Stephan Pühringer
2022. Die Netzwerkanalyse und der Umgang mit ihren Forschungsergebnissen. Eine kritische Replik zum Beitrag von Nico Sonntag. Berliner Journal für Soziologie 32:1 ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Mooney, Annabelle
2020. Games that people play: Capitalism as a game. In Meaning, Life and Culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka, ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo
Pühringer, Stephan & Markus Griesser
2020. From the ‘planning euphoria’ to the ‘bitter economic truth’: the transmission of economic ideas into German labour market policies in the 1960s and 2000s. Critical Discourse Studies 17:5 ► pp. 476 ff. DOI logo
Dimmelmeier, Andreas, Jakob Hafele & Hendrik Theine
2019. „Die Daten sind nun einmal die Daten“. In Perspektiven einer pluralen Ökonomik [Wirtschaft + Gesellschaft, ], ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
Rheindorf, Markus
2019. Combining Analyses at Different Levels of Discourse. In Revisiting the Toolbox of Discourse Studies, ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Rieder, Maria & Hendrik Theine
2019. ‘Piketty is a genius, but … ’: an analysis of journalistic delegitimation of Thomas Piketty’s economic policy proposals. Critical Discourse Studies 16:3 ► pp. 248 ff. DOI logo
Maesse, Jens
2018. Austerity discourses in Europe: how economic experts create identity projects. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 31:1 ► pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Maesse, Jens
2018. Discursive Marxism: how Marx treats the economy and what discourse studies contribute to it. Critical Discourse Studies 15:4 ► pp. 364 ff. DOI logo
Hirte, Katrin & Stephan Pühringer
2017. Netzwerke der Wirtschaftswissenschaft in Deutschland und die Performativität ökonomischen Wissens. In Die Innenwelt der Ökonomie, ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
Dr Tanweer Ali & Pühringer, Stephan
2015. Markets as “ultimate judges” of economic policies: Angela Merkel’s discourse profile during the economic crisis and the European crisis policies. On the Horizon 23:3 ► pp. 246 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.