The global economic crisis: a complex concept with multiple terms

Abstract

This article presents the results of an interuniversity cooperation research project undertaken between Spain (DGPU) and Brazil (CAPES), whose objective was to create the Dictionary of the Global Economic Crisis. This project compiles and analyses all terms of the principal economic concepts published in the press ever since the start of the crisis in 2007. Starting from the economic crisis concept, an explanation of the fundaments underlying the conceptual analysis adopted in the dictionary is provided and these are contrasted with the terms located in the ad hoc media corpus created (36 million tokens). Using this example, we reflect on the utility of the conceptual study prior to carrying out the terminological work, on criteria (and strategies) for identification of terms and on the classification instability in neology. We have furthermore detected the principal neological procedures used for denominating the US financial crisis, the subsequent international economic crisis and the posterior European debt crisis. The project is innovative because the terminological analysis was carried out in vivo in Brazil and in Spain, in chronological order, and by dealing with each term conceptually, formally and semantically.