Performing and evaluating (non)modernities of Portuguese migrant figures on YouTube: The case of Antonio de Carglouch

Michèle Koven, Isabelle Simões Marques

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We analyze how France-based YouTube comedic performers Ro et Cut enact the stylized figure of a Portuguese migrant in France, Antonio, in their most popular video, Carglouch. We then examine how commenters respond to the enactment. Specifically, we apply Irvine and Gal's notion of semiotic differentiation to study how participants use language to construct and apply polycentric notions of modernity/nonmodernity. This allows us to analyze how YouTube performers and commenters produce their own and Antonio's relative (non)modernity, as they orient to different versions of a modern/nonmodern axis of differentiation, situated in multiple 'centers': France, Portugal, or Europe. That is, participants either interpret Antonio as a nonmodern immigrant in France, a nonmodern emigrant from Portugal, or an international representative of Portugal, spreading nonmodern images of Portugal abroad. We then consider how participants bring these differently centered images of the nonmodern Other into dialogue with each Other, with different outcomes for variously positioned participants. (Migration, heteroglossia, YouTube, transnationalism, Luso-descendants, (non)modernity, France, Portugal)∗

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-242
Number of pages30
JournalLanguage in society
Volume44
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Apr 2015

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