Euro crisis metaphors in the Spanish press

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the use of economic metaphors in the particular case of the European sovereign debt crisis, by the examination of the public discourse as reflected in the Spanish press. The general hypothesis, in accordance with the research undertaken in similar studies on economic metaphors, is that one can expect a fairly common use of the same metaphors ‐the most traditional ones- and with the same weight among different newspapers, in spite of their editorial and journalistic diversity. The context of the study and the research approach are justified by addressing in the first part of this article a synthetic review of three research fields that converge around this topic: the analysis of conceptual metaphors, the use of them in financial and economic discourses and their particular categorization to make sense of the crisis situations. In the second part, the empirical research design is explained. Finally, the main results are stated and their significance explained. The study confirms the hypothesis of a very high uniformity in the use of the main metaphors among newspapers, which is translated into a problematic, one-sided, interpretation of the crisis.