ECONOMIC DISCOURSE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY: A CRITICAL CORPUS – BASED LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Economic discourse has become one of the most influential forms of public communication in contemporary societies, shaping not only economic policy but also social perception, political legitimacy, and ideological consensus. Although commonly presented as neutral, technical, and objective, economic language is deeply embedded in power relations and ideological assumptions. This study investigates economic discourse as a discursive practice that constructs social reality through specific linguistic strategies. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and corpus-based methods, the research examines political speeches, media texts, and institutional policy documents to identify recurring lexical, grammatical, and metaphorical patterns. The findings demonstrate that economic discourse systematically suppresses agency, naturalizes market-oriented ideology, and frames economic outcomes as inevitable processes rather than contested political choices. By integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study contributes to current debates on discourse, ideology, and institutional communication, emphasizing the need for critical engagement with economic language in democratic societies.