Can we still speak the language of unemployment? Some reflections based on the French experience

Abstract

This chapter adopts the hypothesis that, as a commonly accepted noun in the French language, unemployment—chômage—lends itself to analysis by means of linguistics. On the semantic level, between the conventions initially adopted to define unemployment and the realities that attempts are today being made to pinpoint, name and measure, the gap has been growing, in recent decades, at an accelerated pace. On the syntactic level, the unending quest for the right figures—in the plural—reveals the difficulty of devising coherent indicators for unemployment. It is nonetheless remarkable to witness, this time on a pragmatic register, the frequency with which the public authorities are tempted to adjust the measuring instrument in an attempt to mitigate the politically disastrous impact of escalating unemployment figures.