Dec 13th 2007 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

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.

What does this say about France? One answer is that the country has a hyperactive president, constantly on the go, who expects the French to be so too. “Work more to earn more” was his slogan, and his use of verbs matches the message. This is a man who likes to jog, where previous presidents preferred a dignified stroll. Indeed, his predilection prompted Libération, a left-leaning newspaper, to ask, “Is jogging right-wing?” It even moved a philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut, to implore the president to take up the promenade—a “spiritual experience”—and to give up jogging, which is mere “body management”.

Another explanation is that Mr Sarkozy is challenging the French tradition of conceptualism. Intellectuals, long cherished by the establishment, get short shrift now. “It's an old national habit: France is a country that thinks,” said Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, in a speech on the value of work, before adding: “Enough thinking now! Let's roll up our sleeves.” This week, Mr Sarkozy sneered at French philosophers during the visit of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi to Paris, accusing them of sipping coffee in Left Bank cafés while others got things done. As for France's famously rigid school curriculum, he has little fondness for it. Too much time is spent, he has declared, “on doctrine, theory and abstraction”, and not enough on practical applications. How long will it be before he has a go at the national motto, a veritable wealth of abstraction: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?