Many beautiful words

What do you think of when you hear "Gerechtegkeet"? "Liewenswäert", "Nei", "No", "Gär hunn"? "Lëtzebuerg" (justice, livable, new, close, to like, luxembourg)? The parties compete for the thinly stretched attention of the electorate with a flood of beautiful words. That needs pizzazz. After all, communication is less about what is said and more about what is received. That's why today we're mentally driving past election posters in the DeLorean from Back to the Future with sociologist and computational linguist Christoph Purschke from the University of Luxembourg, sometimes simultaneously travelling back in time to observe the evolution of slogans.

The year is 2023: "Gambia" has completed its second legislative term, the CSV has brought in Luc Frieden, a new old hand, and with Fokus and Liberté two new parties are in the race. We are – mentally – on the A4 in the direction of Esch. Traffic jam. Plenty of time to analyse the slogans. What Christoph Purschke thinks first when he looks at the posters is "Oh, it's elections again". In 2018, he had already taken a closer look at the parties' slogans. His conclusion at the time: none of the campaigns was "really successful rhetorically". It is not an easy task: "Slogans are a rather thankless type of text. They offer very little space, but at the same time they should say as much as possible."

The big challenge is to get beyond the platitude. Sure, everyone is for "a good future", but how can anything substantial be said about it in three or four words? This year's attempts were again not all successful: "Most of the posters are so general that anyone who is not a bit 'mëll' (crazy, ed.) would have to say, 'I agree with that'." Nevertheless, they tell us what accents the parties want to set. "Mainly because the demands of posters don't have to be in the programme or in the coalition agreement. So you can claim quite a lot here that you don't have to honour afterwards, especially in opposition, " says Purschke with a twinkle in his eye. We're off.