Language and National Identity

The construction of national identity is an important area of study for linguistics because it raises questions about the relationship between discourse and the enunciation of a national subject (the definition of national citizenship as distinct from other nationalities). By looking at Brazilian journalism of the beginning of the twentieth century, we see the emergence of a new dichotomy between "Brazilian" and "foreign," not only in the subjects and biases of reporting, but also in the language used to discuss nationhood and citizenship. In a general sense, we can see the emergence of a foundational discourse about Brazilian identity that takes place in a differentiated national language. In this regard, interrogating texts involved in the construction of Brazilian citizenship we can explore the ways in which a separate Brazilian nationality is defined against a shared language with Portugal. What we see is that newspaper articles modify Brazilian Portuguese in order to distance it from European Portuguese. Thus discussions about citizenship in Brazil come to take place in a differentiated language of Brazilian Portuguese, making language a tool in constructing citizenship.