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In June 2016, three economists from IMF published an article in the organization’s journal that had a strong impact on the use of the word neoliberalism to describe certain economic policies, including austerity policies. We show that the driving forces behind the discussions about the article lie in the characteristics of the text, whose rhetorical processes reflect a desire to widen the audience, and in the institutional arrangement that makes it possible to establish a standard of interpretation. We then analyze how the article was received in the French-speaking press, shared between the adoption of the standard of interpretation and the staging of distance from the IMF. Also examined is the article’s reception in the English-speaking press, structured around the Financial Times, whose editorial and a debate on it reveal a “controversial-consensual” discursive set-up. More than a rupture, the IMF article reflects a reconfiguration of the discourse on austerity.