The Economist: The decline of the abstract noun. What a reduction in abstraction says about the new France:
“Of all the novelties of France under President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the more arresting is the decline of the abstract noun. In the past, no French leader would make a speech without liberal doses of destiny and history. In one speech Mr Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, squeezed 13 abstract nouns—unity, liberty, humanity and more—into a single sentence. He was almost outdone by his prime minister (and part-time poet), Dominique de Villepin, who came up with the declaration: “Globalisation is not an ideal, it cannot be our destiny.”
The contrast with the wordcraft of Mr Sarkozy is instructive. In his first big foreign-policy speech, he managed in 18 pages to utter neither the word glory nor the word grandeur. Unlike his British counterparts, who favour verbless sentences, Mr Sarkozy is a verbaholic. According to a linguistic analysis of his campaign speeches by Damon Mayaffre, of the University of Nice, one of Mr Sarkozy’s most frequent words is I, usually followed by the verb want.”
