La notion de pauvreté dans le discours des acteurs associatifs de trois pays européens : France, Irlande, Italie

This article seeks to analyse elements of language and discourse with regard to the use of the words “poor” and “poverty” in the web pages of charities and benevolent organisations in 3 European countries, France, Ireland and Italy. The corpus is composed of texts taken from the opening web pages of 30 organisations actively involved in combating poverty in the three countries concerned. We chose mission statements of charities and benevolent organisations from each country, (France Ireland, Italy) working on a contrastive analysis of the website content, with reference to outside historical, linguistic, social and economic data. By examining the use of the terms “poor” and “poverty” in the three languages (English, French, Italian), we offer an approach that is not only one of linguistic/discourse analysis but also seeks to illustrate what indicators may emerge from the discourse surrounding these two words that could lead to an understanding of the different cultures, values and attitudes of their users in relation to the fight against poverty and exclusion.