The discursive construction of Portuguese national identity in the media thirty years after the 1974 revolution

Tese dout., Philosophy, Lancaster University, 2010

This study examines the discursive construction of Portuguese national identity, focusing on the many attempts to imagine and construct a national identity within the discourses produced for, on and from two events in the media: the anniversary of the 25th of April revolution in 2004 and the European Football Championships 2004 (held in Portugal). These national public events triggered similar discursive topics about the country’s recent history, collective memories and Portugal’s relationship to other nations. This investigation applies interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis, namely the discourse-historical approach, and a triangulation of methods to examine written and spoken discourse in detail and also to investigate salient features of context whilst analysing three distinct datasets: 141 newspaper editorials and opinion articles on Euro 2004, 40 newspaper editorials and opinion articles on the thirtieth anniversary of the 1974 ‘Carnation Revolution’, and a one-hour radio phone-in programme on the topic “Is (Portuguese) national identity in crisis?”. The prime objective is to conceptualise and identify the various macro-strategies which stem from the macro-, meso- and micro-dimensions of an imagined identity employed in the discursive construction of Portuguese national identity, and to describe them. A key point is who, as a group, attains the political, social or symbolic power to shape, within the public sphere, what should be remembered and what should be forgotten, and whether these collective memories, which build in-group(s) of social shared narratives, compete or even collide with other narratives. The ultimate aim of this research project is to contribute to the body of knowledge about the contemporary Portuguese national identity discourses produced by the (political and cultural) elites who have privileged access to the media. At the same time, it introduces ways of questioning the homogeneity of national identity and expands the possible applications of critical discourse analysis approaches to the investigation of the hegemonic construction of (public) national identity discourses. Finally, the analytical chapters highlight how asymmetric access to the public sphere is reinforced by the discursive strategies that are present in the data.