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Since the 1970s the president’s new year speech to the French people has been challenged by the “economic crisis”. This ritual and the functions of political communication tend to impose a speech frame and common syntactic landmarks to whoever becomes President. Yet beyond the effect of economic and political chronology over the treatment of the economic crisis, the speech ethos of each Head of State has grown more singular while free market ideas were making a forceful comeback. This article combines a sociological approach and lexicometrical tools to analyse what the president says about the economic crisis as he addresses his best wishes to the people.