A basic lexical analysis of the Swiss Constitution. The verbs are listed in order of frequency: at the top, in large print, the most common verbs; at the bottom, in small print, the verbs that appear only once.

The form of the text relies on a figure of speech that we typically hear in political speeches that want to sound ‘poetic’: the anaphora...Notably used by François Hollande in his programmatic speech “I, President of the Republic” (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moi_président_de_la_République). The most common verb forms (which appear at the very top of the list) are the auxiliary verbs pouvoir (can), être (be), devoir (must), and avoir (have), used in sentences so generic that they bring to mind the deliberately vague slogans of election campaigns.

All the verbs here are conjugated in the active voice; they have the country itself as their subject. The aim is not only to apply a stylistic simplification consistent with political discourse, but also to question these common and typically journalistic metonymies that turn countries into agents....Lecolle, Michelle, “Métonymie dans la presse écrite: entre discours et langue,” Travaux neuchâtelois de linguistique, no.34—35, 2001.