| Summary: | The financial crisis stemming from the US subprime mortgage meltdown represented a setback for the European economy that still affects many European countries. The European Central Bank (ECB), a key monetary policy institution, is one of the major actors shaping European neoliberal financial discourse.
An earlier lexicometric analysis of a corpus of speeches delivered by ECB presidents between 2003 and 2016 revealed a high specificity index for the term sovereignty in certain years. This article aims to analyze how the ECB justifies transferring, inter alia, financial and national sovereignty to the European Union and its institutions and what the ECB refers to when utilizing this highly symbolic concept from public discourse. Ultimately, this work aims to determine how the ECB, “Europe’s illicit emperor” (Bouchard 2013), frames its discourse of economic domination.
Consequently, this article quantitatively (using Lexico 3.6) and qualitatively analyses the various forms in this lexical family (sovereignty, sovereignties, sovereign, sovereigns) to assess how they have evolved over time in the speeches given by ECB presidents. It adopts a methodology steeped in the theory and practice of discourse analysis, studying the contexts in which the selected terms appear in order to shed light on the implications of these changing backdrops
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