The discursive construction of Portuguese national identity: elite vs. lay participants discursive strategies in a phone-in radio show

This paper proposes to analyse the discursive construction of Portuguese national identity in the semi-public (media) discourse, namely how two apparently competing discourses on national identity (that of the elite and that of laypeople) represent and reframe the country’s national identity. I am interested in how these different types of participants coconstruct and negotiate (national) identities and how the rhetorical contrast is set between what the prior speaker has said and what the current speaker suggests as an oppositional action. I will explore, from a discourse-historical approach and a conversation analysis framework, how the discursive practices of participants in an hour-long phone-in radio broadcast programme (whose topic was ‚is national identity in crisis?‛) are constructed along different identity dimensions. I will look at personal deictic forms in order to uncover the participants’ allegiance and non-allegiance to certain groups referred to in the programme.