Words during the pandemic: a quantitative analysis of politicians' speeches in France

The ways, or in this case words, with which prominent political figures all across the world addressed and communicated the events of the pandemic, shaped people’s perception of risk and ultimately impacted the effective implementation of responses to the crisis. In this thesis, I will analyze the recurrence of specific terms across a selection of the most important speeches delivered during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic in France (January 2020 - December 2021) by two opposing French politicians. Both informants carefully utilized language in order to communicate with the public: one did so to justify suspending some of their otherwise uninfringeable freedoms, the other often to criticize those very demands implemented by the former.