Universit degli Studi di Firenze Facolt di Scienze Politiche "C. Alfieri"

FINAL THESIS

MASTER IN

COMUNICAZIONE E MEDIA

CoMundus European Master of Arts in Media Communication and Cultural Studies

BRAZILIAN IDENTITY Media, identity and representational practices

Supervisor: Silvia Pezzoli Candidate: Natalia Engler Prudencio

Academic Year 2010/2011

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INDEX

Abstract................................................................................................................2

Introduction .........................................................................................................3

Research area ......................................................................................................6

Research questions ............................................................................................7

Theories................................................................................................................8

Identity, imagined communities and representation .........................................8

Theoretical accounts of Brazilian identity ......................................................18

Methods..............................................................................................................31

Sampling .........................................................................................................31

Analytical strategy ..........................................................................................33

Analysis ..............................................................................................................37

Discussion...........................................................................................................71

The New York Times......................................................................................71

Folha de S.Paulo..............................................................................................73

General results.................................................................................................75

Conclusion..........................................................................................................80

Original texts .....................................................................................................82

Bibliography ....................................................................................................117

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ABSTRACT

This research aims at analyzing how the Brazilian identity is represented in foreign

and national news in order to uncover the patterns of representation, compare the

representational practices that emerge from the different sources and read it in the

light of theories about identity, representation and Brazilian culture. In order to do

that, a literature review of theories about identity construction, the process of

imagining communities, representation and Brazilian identity was realized and then

followed by a quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper articles collected

from The New York Times and Folha de S.Paulo.

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INTRODUCTION

The idea behind this project was born as a personal desire to investigate the

mysterious apparent stability of Brazils multicultural identity. Brazil is such a varied

country, with so many different cultural heritages and traditions in each region, but

we still feel we are Brazilians. Differently from Italians, who usually answer to the

question Where are you from? saying Im Tuscan (or Sicilian, Neapolitan,

Sardinian etc.), we will always answer that we are Brazilians, not that we are

paulistas, cariocas, baianos etc. There is a unity to these multiple regional

identities which entitle us to be seen as a multicultural nation, a country where racial

democracy has come true a presently disputed idea which gained weight with the

publication of Gilberto Freyres masterpiece Casa Grande e Senzala in the 1930s.

Despite any possible criticism, the idea of Brazil as a multicultural country is still

very strong all over the world and has recently been used as a resource to attract

attention from the international community, as it happened with the Brazilian bid to

host the 2016 Olympic Games. During the campaign, most of the advertising videos

and especially one entitled Passion Unites Us resorted to that multicultural image to

show Brazil as a country in which all nations can come together in peace. This idea

was reinforced by presidents Luiz Incio Lula da Silva speech during the Olympic

sessions in which the poll would take place:

Looking at the five rings of the Olympic symbol, I see my country in them. A Brazil formed by men and women from all the continents. Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians, all proud of their roots, and proud to be Brazilians. We are not only a people that give meaning to the term melting pot, but we also love being part of this melting pot. It is at the core of our identity.1

Despite having gained relevance recently, the idea of a Brazilian multiculturality is

not new and a series of Brazilian scholars especially anthropologists have

1 Extract of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva speech during the 121st International Olympic Committee Session in Copenhagen, Denmark. Oct. 2nd 2010.

http://www.olympic.org/en/content/Olympic-Games/Candidate-Cities/Elections-for-the-2016-Games.

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theorized about it, from Gilberto Freyre and Srgio Buarque de Holanda to Darcy

Ribeiro and Roberto da Matta.

Departing from this eagerness to examine the Brazilian identity, the first

motivation to write this dissertation stems from two basic notions about

culture/society and the media. The first involves the belief that culture becomes

increasingly important in our globalised world, and it may become a catalyst of a

better communication, reducing cultural tensions. The second notion is related to the

weight of the communicative power of the media, in the sense that the media have the

power and ability to influence how individuals, institutions, and societies shape their

subjectivities and identities, and how they conceive of cultures different from their

own.

Since all political and social struggles in the present times necessarily passes

through mass culture, the media are absolutely central to any discussion of identity

and multiculturalism. Shohat and Stam (2006) argue that the contemporary media not

only shape identity, but also exist close to the very core of identity production. As

they affirm,

in a transnational world typified by the global circulation of images and sounds, goods and peoples, media spectatorship impacts complexly on national identity and communal belonging. By facilitating engagement with distant peoples, the media deterritorialize the process of imagining communities. () Just as the media can otherize cultures (), they can also promote multicultural coalitions. (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 6-7)

Hence, what interests me here is to put the theories about identity and

particularly about Brazilian identity in a media perspective. It is a current idea that

identities are constructions and are intrinsically related to representation. Media news

content is a fertile ground for studying representation and representational practices,

since, as the Cultural Studies tradition takes it, news are relative to the givens of the

groups and individuals engaged in its production, and journalism is an area of

everyday culture that (re)produces meaning, sense, and consciousness and serves the

social circulation of meaning (Gottschlich, 2008: 23).

In this sense, it can be very fruitful to examine the Brazilian identity through the

analysis of its representation in different sources of news content. As I am also

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interested in matters of difference and otherness, that also leads me to an analysis of

the representation of the Brazilian identity in foreign news, which can be seen as a

fertile site for the study of stereotypes in this regard.

The moment also seems particularly fit to analyze Brazil from the eyes of

foreigners, since the country has been on the spotlight for some time for its stable and

promising economy, for its former president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva work in

international politics and for it being chosen to host two major international sports

events in the next years: the Soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in

2016.

However, given the apparent stability of the Brazilian identity in an internal

context, it is also necessary to analyze the role of the national media in its fixation or

challenging, to discover if the media are an important component which helps bind

the possible competing identities into one unique national identity, or, in Shohat and

Stams words, it is important to analyze whether the Brazilian media promote

multicultural coalitions.

Therefore, this work aims at analyzing how the Brazilian identity is represented in

foreign and national news, comparing the representational practices that emerge from

the different sources and reading it in the light of theories about identity,

representation and Brazilian culture.

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RESEARCH AREA

We live in a globalised society, which makes it increasingly difficult to live a life

oriented solely towards ones own citizenship, religion, and culture. The social,

economic, and political dynamics of our world are inserted into a complex matrix of

relationships between individuals, organisations, and institutions originated in

different cultures. That complex web of interrelations is complicated by the global

circulation of images, sounds, goods, and peoples, which facilitate the engagement

among distant peoples. Hence, it is a world in which the contact between different

cultures is increasingly more frequent and in which identities are not only constantly

being challenged by new social relations and configurations that emerge all the time,

but also are subject to the influence of mass culture and contemporary media, which

are argued to be at the core of identity production and shaping.

In this sense, we can argue that journalism is a powerful component of mass

culture, since, from a cultural approach, not only journalists draw upon culture to

coordinate their activities, but news itself is seen as cultural, ultimately relative to the

givens of the groups and individuals engaged in its production (Zelizer, 2004: 176,

cited in Gottschlich, 2008: 23). As we have already argued, journalism is an area of

everyday culture which serves as a sphere for the production and reproduction of

meaning, sense and consciousness (Gottschlich, 2008: 23).

As Schudson puts, news is organized as a part of culture that reproduces aspects of

a larger culture, which not necessarily (and most often are not) consciously articulated

by the reporter and the editor. In Schudsons words,

News is produced by people who operate, often unwittingly, within a cultural system, a reservoir of stored cultural meanings. It follows conventions of sourcing (). It lives by unspoken preconceptions about the audience (). News as a form of culture incorporates assumptions about what matters, what makes sense, what time and place we live in, and what range of considerations we should take seriously. (Schudson, 2003: 190)

Hence, we can argue that news has become a significant component in the

construction of a collective experience and it also has an important role in

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determining what is real and important. Or, as Richardson puts, journalism can help

shape social reality by shaping our views of social reality (Richardson, 2007: 13).

Acceptance of this view, consequently, implies the recognition of the importance of

studying the discourse of journalism (as a type of media discourse) in order to

uncover the power of journalistic language to do things and the way that social

power is indexed and represented in journalistic language (Richardson 2007: 13).

In this way, an analysis of media discourse can serve well our purpose of

investigating the representation of identities in this case, the Brazilian identity and

can provide us with insights about the culture in which these representations are

constructed.

Research questions

Considering the above-mentioned points, there are some questions that become

relevant:

What are the main characteristics of the Brazilian identity read through the

foreign media?

What are the main characteristics of the Brazilian identity read through the

national media?

Are these representations in tune with what the theories say about Brazilian

identity?

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THEORIES

Going back to the tradition of Cultural Studies, Stuart Hall says that the question,

and the theorization, of identity is a matter of considerable political significance

(Hall, 2002: 16). From the discursive point of view, identification is a signifying

process and identities emerge within the play of specific modalities of power, and

thus are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion, than they are

the sign of an identical, naturally-constituted unity (Hall, 2002: 4). In this way, the

investigation of identity is also the investigation of power and exclusion, which make

it relevant in any context and makes it crucial to the work we intend to develop here,

since the question, and the theorization of identity in this case, Brazilian identity

together with the question of representation more specifically, representation of the

Brazilian identity by national and foreign news vehicles is the task that this work

proposes to accomplish.

Therefore, before we go into the proper analysis of the media texts that will allow

us to draw our conclusions about the media representation of Brazilian identity, it is

necessary to spend some time clarifying the theories of identity and representation

that inform this study. In the later part of this chapter, we will also investigate some of

the mainstream theories about the formation of Brazilian culture and identity.

Identity, imagined communities and representation

As Hall (2002) explains, identity is usually seen as constructed based on the

recognition of shared origins, characteristics or ideals among a group of people and its

logical consequence is regarded as solidarity and allegiance. It is also commonly seen

as the collective self, hiding inside the many other superficial or artificially imposed

selves which people with shared history and ancestry hold, which can fix or guarantee

a cultural belongingness.

However, the author takes on a discursive approach on the matter that makes

explicit the construction behind the constitution of identities. This approach begins

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with the use of the term identification to replace identity, since it stress the process of

subjectification to discursive practices, and the politics of exclusion which all such

subjectification appears to entail (Hall, 2002: 2).

According to Hall, the discursive approach sees identification as a construction in

the sense that it is conditional, not determined, a process never completed (Hall,

2002: 2). As a signifying practice, identification is subject to the play of difference:

since as a process it operates across difference, it entails discursive work, the binding and marking of symbolic boundaries, the production of frontier-effects. It requires what is left outside, its constitutive outside, to consolidate the process. (Hall, 2002: 3)

In other words, the construction of identity or the process of identification can

only happen in contrast with the Other, in opposition to what is strange to that

group, culture or nation.

Because identities are constructed within discourse, it is necessary to understand it

in the context of specific historical and institutional positions and according to

specific discursive formations and practices, which are obtained through specific

enunciative strategies (Hall: 2002).

As a discursive practice, the process of identification also entails that in late

modern times, identities are increasingly fragmented, never singular but multiply

constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices

and positions (Hall, 2002: 4). In this sense, any discussion about identity has to be

situated within the historical moment and the historical changes that destabilized the

more or less stable character of many cultures and groups, especially the processes of

globalization and of forced and free migration. Here, it is interesting to note the

similarity of this idea to the concept of derritorialisation of the process of imagining

communities (presented in the previous chapter) which, according to Shohat and Stam

(2006: 6), is the consequence of a transnational world characterised by the global

circulation of images, sounds, goods, peoples, that impact on national identity and

communal belonging.

In this sense, the relevance of studying identity in a media context is strongly

connected to a perception of identity which is linked to the process of representation,

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considering that, as put by Hall, identities are constituted within representation. As he

explains, although identities

seem to invoke an origin in a historical past with which they continue to correspond, actually identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not who we are or where we came from, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. (Hall, 2002: 4)

That is not only a view that connects identity to representation but also transforms

identity in something dependent on it. In this sense, identification is less about

tradition itself than about the invention of tradition. This invention is related to the

narrative component of the process: the narrativisation of the self, the necessary

fictional nature of the process that creates belongingness and allows identities to arise,

which do not undermine its discursive, material or political effectivety (Hall, 2002: 4).

This fictional component is also crucial to the idea of nation argued by Benedict

Anderson in his Imagined Communities. In this work, Anderson investigates the

development of the concept of nation an imagined political community and

imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson, 2006: 6) and the

importance of the imaginary to its formation.

According to Anderson, a nation is an imagined community because the members

of even the smallest of nations will never get to know, meet or hear of most of their

fellow-members. However, each member of a nation has in his/her mind the image of

their communion.

To Shohat and Stam (2006), beliefs about the origins and evolution of nations

often crystallize in the form of stories. Thus, nations are a fictive unity imposed on an

aggregate of individual and national histories are presented as if they displayed the

continuity of the subject-writ-large (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 101). In this sense, as

Anderson explains, the collective national self-consciousness that is, the shared

belief of different individuals that they share common origins, status, location, and

aspirations was made possible by a common language and its expression in print

capitalism (Anderson, 2006: 42-46).

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Anderson points that the first two forms of imagining a nation first flowered in

Europe in the 18th century, and they were the novel and the newspaper. According to

him, these two forms provided the technical means for re-presenting the kind of

imagined community that is the nation (Anderson, 2006: 24).

The logical outcome of the above mentioned points is that newspapers made

people aware of the simultaneity and interconnectedness of events in different places

(Shohat and Stam, 2006: 102). That is made possible by the fact that, nevertheless the

mass ceremony of newspaper consuming is performed individually, each individual is

aware that the activity he is performing is being repeated simultaneously by thousands

(or millions) of other people of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity

he has not the slightest notion that is, his co-nationals. Furthermore, as Anderson

points, this ceremony is repeated at least daily and, at the same time, the newspaper

reader, seeing exact replicas of his own newspaper being consumed by people he sees

or meets throughout his daily routine, is continually reassured that the imagined world

is rooted in everyday life (Anderson, 2006: 35-36). Therefore, the contribution of

newspaper consuming to the process of imagining a community is not only a matter

of repetition of a particular activity by members of a community, but also a question

of repetition of readership of the same content by a large group of people, which

validate this content as real and as noteworthy.

These ideas can be connected to the argument that the work of journalism, apart

from creating the sense of community, also shapes the reality in which this

community live, since, as put by Schudson (2003: 2), although working with materials

that real people and real events provide, journalists have to select, highlight and

frame, thus creating an impression that real people then take to be real and to which

they respond in their lives.

In this sense, news builds expectations of a common, shared world and have

become a dominant force in the public construction of common experience and a

popular sense of what is real and important (Schudson, 2003: 13). It also endorses a

historical mentality and encourages a progressive rather than cyclical or recursive

sense of time. (Schudson, 2003: 12). According to Anderson, this idea of a

sociological organism moving calendrically through homogenous, empty time is a

precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid

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community moving steadily down (or up) history (Anderson, 2006: 26). That

analogy makes the event of news even more significant to the process of imagining a

community.

Another important aspect to take into consideration in the relation between news

and the imagining of a nation is the fact that a news report can be seen as a story a

constructed reality with its own internal validity (Schudson, 2003: 4) thus

constituting what Shohat and Stam (2006: 101) call an element that crystallizes

beliefs about the origins and evolution of nations.

When we deal with the process of imagining a community which also entails the

constitution of identities and the implications of newspapers production and

consumption to the process, we are also dealing with the question of representation,

since reality is represented in the stories that are produced by journalism.

As we have already seen, identities are constituted within the process of

representation, as put by Hall. And, if that is true, it is important to examine how the

process of representation works and which consequences it bears to the groups or

individuals that are being represented.

In a cultural sense, Shohat and Stam (2006) argue, an obsession with realism

treats the matter as simply one of errors and distortions, as if the truth of a

community were unproblematic, transparent, and easily accessible, and it was

possible to promptly unmask lies about that community. However, recognizing the

inevitability and the inescapability of representation does not mean, as Stuart Hall has

put it, that nothing is at stake. Therefore, we can consider that, although there is no

absolute truth, no truth apart from representation and dissemination, there are still

contingent, qualified, perspectival truths in which communities are invested (Shohat

and Stam, 2006: 179).

In a very basic sense, representation could be defined as the process that connects

meaning, language and culture; it is the relation between things, concepts and signs

and it lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. It is also an essential

part of the process through which members of a culture produce and exchange

meaning (Hall: 1997).

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The connotations of representation can also be seen as at once religious,

aesthetic, political and semiotic (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 182):

What all these instances share is the semiotic principle that something is standing for something else, or that some person or group is speaking on behalf of some other persons or groups. On the symbolic battlegrounds of the mass media, the struggle over representation in the simulacral realm homologizes that of the political sphere, where questions of imitation and representation easily slide into issues of delegation and voice. (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 183)

In our discussion here we have to go further and examine the process of

representation within the context of representing a group of people, especially a group

of people that is not a part of the community from which a particular text is produced

(which is the case of the articles from foreign newspapers on issues about Brazil that

we will analyze later). Here, we are mostly interested on how difference and

otherness are being represented.

Hall (1997) analyzes the matter taking as a departure point images of black people

in the press, but many of his conclusions can be broadened to other issues that involve

difference and to other materials that not images texts, for example.

According to Hall (1997), at the broader level of how difference and otherness

are represented in a particular culture, one notices similar representational practices

and figures being repeated with variations from one text or site of representation to

another. This accumulation of meanings across different texts, where one image refers

to another, or has its meanings altered by being read in the context of other images

is called inter-textuality (Hall, 1997: 232).

In this context, he refers to the whole repertoire through which difference is

represented at any historical moment as a regime of representation (Hall, 1997: 232).

According to him, the regime of representation is a matter of inter-textuality since the

images (or texts) representing the otherness and difference gain in meaning when

they are read in context, against or in connection with other texts. It is clear that each

text or image carry its own, specific meaning. However, they also accumulate

meanings, or play off their meanings against one another, across a variety of texts and

media.

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Going back to the question of difference, which we have already seen is crucial

to the constitution of identities, we can look to it from four different theoretical

approaches (Hall, 1997: 234-238):

1. Linguistics this approach is associated with Saussure and the use of language

as a model of how culture works; the main argument here is that difference

matters because it is essential to meaning; without it, meaning could not exist

(Hall, 1997: 234). Saussure stated that everyone knows what black means,

practically, not based on the essence of blackness but because comparison

can be made with its opposite white , thus, according to him, meaning is

relational and it is the difference between black and white which signifies,

and which carries meaning and messages. Accordingly, meaning depends on

the difference between opposites and there is always a relation of power

between the poles of a binary opposition (Derrida, 1974, cited in Hall, 1997:

235).

2. Theories of language the second explanation comes from a different school

of theories of language and the argument here is that we need difference

because we can only construct meaning through a dialogue with the Other

(Hall, 1997: 235). This second explanation is based on Mikhail Bakhtins

study of language as not an objective system, but in terms of how meaning is

sustained in the dialogue between two or more speakers. So everything we say

and mean is modified by the interaction and interplay with another person,

indicating that meaning arises through the difference between the

participants in any dialogue, where the Other is essential to meaning that

is the positive side of Bakhtins theory while the negative side is that meaning

cannot be fixed and that one group can never be completely in charge of

meaning (Hall, 1997: 236).

3. Anthropological the argument here is that culture depends on giving things

meaning by assigning them to different positions within a classificatory

system. The marking of difference is thus the basis of that symbolic order

which we call culture (Hall, 1997: 236). Basically, social groups always order

and organise things into classificatory system by imposing meaning on the

world they live. According to this argument, then, symbolic boundaries are

central to all cultures. Marking difference leads us, symbolically, to close

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ranks, shore up culture and to stigmatise and expel anything which is defined

as impure, abnormal. However, paradoxically, it also makes difference

powerful, strangely attractively precisely because it is forbidden, taboo,

threatening to cultural order. Thus, what is socially peripheral is often

symbolically centred (Babcock, 1978: 32, cited in Hall, 1997: 237).

4. Psychoanalytic the fourth kind of explanation relates to the role of

difference in our psychic life. The argument here is that the Other is

fundamental to the constitution of the self, to us as subject, and to sexual

identity. According to Hall , this view of difference entails that the rise of

subjectivity and the formation of a sense of self can only happen through the

symbolic and unconscious relations which the young child forges with a

significant Other which is different from itself. The downside of this

account lies in the fact that the psychoanalytic perspective assumes that, since

our subjectivities are formed through this troubled, never-completed,

unconscious dialogue with Other, psychically we are never fully unified as

subjects and there is not such a thing as a given, stable inner core to the self

or to identity.

Based on the above discussed four approaches, there are two clear points to take

note: firstly, the question of difference and otherness, deducing from different

directions and within many different disciplines, plays a significant role in the matter

of identity. Secondly, difference is ambivalent, which can be both positive and

negative, since it is both necessary for the production of meaning, the formation of

language and culture, for social identities and a subjective sense of the self and at

the same time, it is threatening, a site of danger, of negative feelings, of splitting,

hostility and aggression towards the Other (Hall, 1997: 238).

To go further in the study of the regime of representation of difference, we have to

examine the set of representational practices known as stereotyping. Stereotyping is a

practice that reduces people to a few, simple, essential characteristics, which are

represented as fixed by nature. It bears essentialising, reductionist and naturalizing

effects.

Since stereotyping is a signifying practice which is central to the representation of

difference, it is necessary to make a clear distinction between the terms typing and

stereotyping, as advocated by Richard Dyer (1977, cited in Hall, 1997: 257). Dyer

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argues that, without the use of types, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make

sense of the world. We understand the world by referring individual objects, people or

events in our minds to the general classificatory schemes into which, according to our

culture, they fit. In other words, we understand the particular in terms of its type;

in this sense, typing is essential to the production of meaning.

Dyer (1977: 28, cited in Hall, 1997: 257) also argues that we always make sense

of things in terms of wider categories. To get to know something about a person, for

example, we think of the role he or she performs, we assign him/her to the

membership of different groups (class, gender, age, nationality, race, language, sexual

preference etc.), we evaluate his/her personality type and so on. Therefore, our picture

of someone is built up out of the information we gather from positioning him/her

within these different orders of typification. In broad terms, a type is any simple,

vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognised characterisation in which a

few traits are foregrounded and change or development is kept to minimum (Dyer,

1977: 28, cited in Hall, 1997: 257).

Stereotypes, on the other hand, get hold of the simple, vivid, memorable, easily

grasped and widely recognised characteristics about a person, reduce everything

about the person to these traits, exaggerate, simplify and fix them without change or

development to eternity (Hall, 1997:258).

Hence, stereotyping deploys three basic characteristics, and these are:

1. Stereotyping reduces, essentialises, naturalises and fixes.

2. Stereotyping deploys a strategy of splitting. This is where there is a clear

division between the normal and the acceptable from the abnormal and the

unacceptable. In other words, stereotyping can be seen as part of maintenance

of social and symbolic order that sets up a symbolic frontier between the

normal and the deviant, the normal and the pathological, the

acceptable and the unacceptable, what belongs and what does not or is

Other, between insiders and outsiders, Us and Them. It also

facilitates the binding or bonding together of all of Us who are normal

into one imagined community; and it sends into exile all of Them (the

Others), who are in some way different beyond the pale (Hall, 1997:

258).

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3. Stereotyping tends to occur where there are gross inequalities of power. This

is so because power is usually directed against the subordinate or excluded

group. One aspect of this power, according to Dyer (1977, cited in Hall, 1997),

is ethnocentrism the application of the norms of ones own culture to that of

others (see also Brown, 1965: 183, cited in Hall, 1997: 258). If we take the

binary oppositions like Us and Them into consideration, then we are not

dealing with [] peaceful coexistence [] but rather a violent hierarchy. One

of the two teams governs [] the other or has the upper hand (Hall, 1997:

258). This is what both Foucault and Gramsci referred to as regimes of

power/knowledge, which classify people according to norms and constructs

that excludes the other; and as an aspect of the struggle for hegemony.

Hegemony is a form of power based on leadership by a group in many fields of

activity at once, so that its ascendency commands widespread consent and appears

natural and inevitable. In support of this, Dyer (1977, cited in Hall, 1997) observed

that normalcy (i.e. what is acceptable as normal) is usually established socially

with stereotypes being one aspect of the habit of ruling groups [] to attempt to

fashion the whole of society according to their own world view, value system,

sensibility and ideology. He completes saying that so right is this world view for the

ruling groups that they make it appear (as it does appear to them) as natural and

inevitable and for everyone and, in so far as they succeed, they establish their

hegemony (Dyer, 1977: 30, cited in Hall, 1997: 259).

From this discussion we can conclude that the opposition between us and then

and the construction and uses of stereotypes are essential matters to the analysis that

will be held later on in this work. On the one hand, concerning the analysis of foreign

news on Brazil, we are clearly dealing with the representation of an internationally

less privileged group (the people from the emerging but still developing that is

Brazil), by an hegemonic culture (the English speaking and First World nation of the

United States, approached through the discourse of its major newspaper The New

York Times). On the other hand, concerning the analysis of national news about some

issues that concern Brazilian society, we are dealing with the representation of

Brazilian identity through the eyes of an economic and cultural elite the owners and

producers of newspapers which may or may not account for the complexity of the

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multicultural constitution of the country and the interests of less privileged groups

within that particular society.

From this point of view, it will be interesting to observe the regimes of

representation and the recurrent images that will emerge from the analysis of both

foreign and national news.

From the point of view of identity constitution and community imagining, we may

conclude that news are essential to both process, since identity constitution is

intrinsically linked to how we have been represented and how that bears on how we

might represent ourselves; in this sense, it will be interesting to note how the

representation of Brazilian identities in news relate to the idea of Brazilian identity

put through by researches of the matter. It is also important to remember that, as we

have already seen, the marking of difference is essential to both the constitution of

identity and the process of representation; hence, in our analyzes, we shall pay careful

attention to what is left outside as well.

At the same time, the process of imagining a community and creating a nation

relies heavily both in the collective activity of consuming news and the forging of a

imaginary that follows this activity and help shape reality by creating a sense of what

is real and relevant; therefore, through the analysis of the sample we may be able to

infer which aspects of Brazilian identity are passed as real and relevant internationally

and nationally.

But before we can proceed to the discussion of the methods of analysis and the

proper analysis of the sample of newspaper articles, we have to give an historical

account of the ideas surrounding the constitution of a Brazilian identity.

Theoretical accounts of Brazilian identity

As this research aims at analysing how specific version of Brazilian national

identity were constructed by the media and journalists, in this section, we will present

some theoretical standpoints concerning identity, especially those characterizing

Brazilian culture. The choice of ideas presented here concern works and authors that

19

have dealt with the question of national identity, especially within the historical

process. Furthermore, the authors were chosen by their relevance to the historical

development of an idea of Brazilian culture and identity. This works are:

- Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), by Gilberto Freyre,

first published in 1933;

- Razes do Brasil (Roots of Brazil), by Srgio Buarque de Holanda, first

published in 1936;

- Carnavais, Malandros e Heris (Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes), by

Roberto da Matta, first published in 1979;

- O Povo Brasileiro (The Brazilian People), by Darcy Ribeiro, first

published in 1995.

We do not intend to present a full account of the works above mentioned, just to

give an outline of the main ideas contained in them, paying close attention to the

features that allow us to characterize the idea of Brazilian identity that has been

predominant in the Academy and to discern its characteristic marks.

Shohat and Stam (2006: 43) emphasize the hybrid (or, in the terms we have been

using so far, multicultural) characteristic of Latin America identities by arguing that,

although hybridity is a cultural phenomenon that exists from immemorial times, the

European colonization of the Americas took it to another level. As they explain,

Although mixing of population predated the conquista, the colonizing process initiated by Columbus accelerated and actively shaped a new world of practices and ideologies of mixing, making the Americas the scene of unprecedented combinations of indigenous peoples, Africans and Europeans, and later of immigratory diasporas from all over the world. These combinations have generated, especially in the Caribbean and in South America, a wide-ranging vocabulary of racial descriptive terms to account for all the permutations (mestizo/a, mulato/a, creolo/a, moreno/a). Mixing has not only been a reality but an ideology in which sex and race have played the major roles. (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 43)

They also point that Latin American intellectuals have tended, at least from the

beginning of the nineteenth century, to conceive national identity in racially plural

terms. In the case of Brazil, it was in the 1930s that this position found powerful

20

expression in the work of Gilberto Freyre, an anthropologist from the Northeast of the

country, whose Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves, 1933), was

a milestone in the treatment of race in Brazil, in that it removed the discussion out of

the realms of physiology and into those of culture, and for the first time gave a

positive value to the contribution of blacks to the nation.

One of the first notorious works on the subject, Casa-Grande & Senzala

represented for Brazilian scholarship a kind of intellectual passport, as a display of the

capacity to build a social theory of Brazil. The oeuvre is a landmark in Brazilian

sociology, with its frank treatment of the sexual lives and patriarchy and the decisive

importance attributed to slaves in the conformation of our intimate way of being.

As Shohat and Stam (2006: 242) point, Freyre viewed Brazils racial diversity as

the key to its creativity and originality:

What Freyre was fond of calling New World in the Tropics was for him made possible by the cultural fusion of three genetically equal races (the Portuguese, the Indian and the African), each of which, he believed, had made an invaluable contribution, even if he tented to romanticize slavery and folklorize the Black and the indigenous contributions. (Shohat and Stam, 2006: 242)

Indeed, Freyre went so far as to affirm that Every Brazilian, even the light-

skinned fair-haired one, carries about with him on his soul, when not on soul and

body alike () the shadow, or at least the birthmark, of the aborigine or the Negro

(Freyre, 1986: 278).

Freyre tended to idealize the sugar-plantation economy, which survived, along

with its traditional oligarchy, longer in the Northeast than in other parts of the

country, and which he saw as a original model for the whole country, in part because

it was the first colonial economy to flourish in Brazil. Although Freyres ideas have

been under heavy dispute since their publication especially when it comes to the use

of the expression racial democracy to characterize the Brazilian society , it is hard

to deny that he forms a central part of the national ideology that has developed since

the 1930s, and which says, in essence, that Brazil is the greatest example of racial

democracy on earth. Freyre argues that because Portugal was a maritime nation and

had long been receiving and commercializing with peoples from different parts of the

21

world, and also because races were being mixed in the Iberian Peninsula for centuries,

the Portuguese developed a kind of tolerance to racial difference not to be found

amongst the other colonising nations of Europe. This characteristic lead to the

capacity of the Portuguese people to easily mix themselves with other races. They

arrived in Brazil without their families, alone, needy of human contact and started to

mate first with the Indians and later with the African slaves. The consequence was a

widespread sexual intimacy which produced a predominantly mulatto nation, and a

kind of social intimacy which crosses enormously wide class divides.

Another point taken by Freyre to explain the unity of the country is the fact that the

Portuguese did not bring to Brazil any kind of political separatism or religious

divergences, and they were not concerned with racial purity as well. Hence, the unity

of the great territorial extension, which bore deep regional differences, held together

by the use of force in several occasions, was made possible mostly because of the

uniformity of language and religion.

Following Freyres Casa-Grande & Senzala comes Razes do Brasil (roots of

Brazil), published by the historian Srgio Buarque de Holanda just three years later,

in 1936. His work is another landmark in the studies of Brazilian culture and society

and can be considered one of the founders of the modern Brazilian historiography and

social sciences, which has not lost its actuality and continues to be studied until the

present day.

Antonio Candido, who signs the preface of the book, emphasizes the importance of

the work and the relevance of the method used by De Holanda, which is constructed

through the exploration of polarized concepts, building enlightenment through the

dialectic play between oppositions. Using this tool, De Holanda analyzes the

foundations of our historical destiny, the roots of the title, showing their

manifestations in the most diverse aspects. As Antonio Candido says,

Work and adventure; method and care; rural and urban; bureaucracy and charismatic autocracy [the untranslatable caudilhismo]; impersonal norm and affectionate impulse are pairs that the author highlights in the way of being or in the social and political structure, to analyze and

22

understand Brazil and Brazilians. (De Holanda, 1995: 13)2

In order to analyze and understand Brazil and Brazilians, De Holanda goes back

to the configuration of the Iberian society to trace the origins of some of the traces

that he will explore in the book. It is the case of the traditional personalism, from

which derives the laxity of institutions and the lack of social cohesion. Linked to that

idea is the absence of the principle of hierarchy and the praise of the personal prestige

related to privilege that were characteristics of the Iberian Peninsula. As a

consequence, nobility remained open to merit and success, that is, accessible,

favouring a certain general inclination to aristocracy. This inclination was also related

to the repulse towards regular work and utilitarian activities another fundamental

theme of Razes do Brasil , which caused a lack of organisation in the society.

De Holanda also distinguishes between two types of ethics: the worker and the

adventurer. While the latter searches for new experiences, accommodates himself in

the provisory and prefers discovering to consolidating, the first values security and

effort, accepting compensation in the long run. According to De Holanda, the

American continent was colonized by adventurous men and the worker had a very

limited, almost inexistent role (De Holanda, 1995: 45). The factors that were

opposed to the spirit of work were reinforced by the slavery, which would have

killed in the free man the necessity to cooperate and organize themselves.

The rural character of the Brazilian society, which was based in dominant rural

groups, supported by the economic and familiar autarchy, manifests itself in the

mental plane by the over-appreciation of talent, of intellectual activities that are not

linked to manual work and which seem to emerge from an innate quality.

Another key component of Razes do Brasil is the concept of the amicable

man (homem cordial). De Holanda argues that, formed inside the familiar

structure, the Brazilian received the burden of the relationships of empathy, which

would make it more difficult to him to be normally incorporated into other kinds of

2 All the texts that are referred to in their original versions, published in Portuguese, were freely

translated by the author of this work.

23

grouping. Hence, the Brazilian does not find impersonal relations, characteristic of the

State, as being pleasant, thus trying to reduce them to personal and affection patterns.

In this sense, the idea of an amicable man does not entail kindness, but only the

prevalence of behaviours of affectionate appearance, including its external

manifestations, not necessarily sincere or deep, which are opposed to the politeness

ritualism. In the way De Holanda puts it, it would be a mistake to assume that those

virtues may mean good manners, civility. They are above all legitimate expressions

of an extremely rich and overflowing emotional core (De Holanda, 1995: 147). As

he explains

Our ordinary way of social coexistence is, in reality, exactly the opposite of politeness. It can delude in its appearance and that is explained by the fact that the polite attitude consists precisely on a kind of deliberate mimic of manifestations that are spontaneous in the amicable man: it is the natural and vivid form converted into a formula. (De Hollanda, 1995: 147)

De Holanda explains this attitude as a defence against society, a kind of mask

which the individual puts to be able to maintain its supremacy over the social, a

search for a type of intimacy that prevents the occurrence of situations in which the

individual has to put himself as inferior or subaltern for prolonged time.

To this amicable mentality are linked various important traces of our society,

such as a sociability that is only apparent, which does not impose itself to the

individual and does not have a positive effect in the structuring of a collective order,

from which follows an individualism that manifests itself with reluctance in the face

of a law that goes against it.

In our timeline of the ideas about the Brazilian identity and culture developed

within the context of Brazilian social sciences, the next work we are going to examine

is Carnavais, Malandros e Heris (Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes), first published

by the anthropologist Roberto da Matta in 1979.

One of the main ambitions of Da Mattas work is to understand not what we have

of historical, dated and changing, but what is permanent and lasting. The attempt to

uncover the Brazilian reality behind its most notorious self-images is performed

through the study of the Brazilian daily life and its rituals and action models.

24

Central to this work is the dilemma between the extremely authoritarian,

hierarchical and violent aspects of Brazilian society and the search for a harmonious,

democratic and non-conflicting world in this same society. In this context, the

opposition between individual and person becomes crucial and the two concepts

become the general categories for the authors argument. According to Da Matta, the

individual, in the Brazilian context, is defined in contrast with its contrary: the person.

The person, on the other hand, is defined as a basically relational being, a notion that

is only understandable with reference to a social system in which relations of

collusion, family, friendship and exchange of interests and favours constitute a

fundamental element. In the individual, on the contrary, we could see a structural

continuity with the world of impersonal laws that subjugate and subordinate.

Da Matta also insists in the extreme hierarchisation of Brazilian society, which

operates a dissociation between two ideal worlds that are present in the Brazilian

mythology: the world of the home, in which people are valued by what they are and

peace and harmony rein; and the world of the street, in which the individuals fight

for their life in a cruel and anonymous battle.

In Da Mattas view, while parades and religious processions ritualize and make it

explicit the hierarchical and authoritarian aspects of Brazilian society, Carnival and

the popular heroes dramatize its opposite. The singularity of Carnival is the fact that,

for a few days, the street becomes home and ideals of spontaneous, affectionate and

symmetrical relations are transported to the street, transforming in a safe place the

usually inhumane, competitive and hostile environment of the street. In this sense,

Carnival is an inversion of Brazilian reality.

Another important feature of Brazilian society, according to Da Matta, is the use of

the phrase do you whore talking to?, which is an authoritarian ritual that Brazilians

prefer to keep hidden. As Da Matta explains,

in the drama of do you know who youre talking to?, we are punished for the attempt to enforce the law or for our idea that we live in a really egalitarian universe. Because the identity that emerges in the conflict is what will allow the hierarchisation. (Da Matta, 1997: 216)

And he continues:

25

It is as if we had two foundations through which we think our system. In the case of general laws and repression, we always follow the bureaucratic code or the impersonal and universalizing, egalitarian, version of the system. However, in the case of concrete situations, those which life presents us, we always follow the code of personal relationships and morality, taking the way of the jeitinho [an attitude that allows a way out of any difficult or problematic situation, usually by twisting or ignoring the rules], of malandragem [trickery] and solidarity as an axis for action. In the first choice, our unity is the individual; in the second one, the person. The person deserves solidarity and a differentiated treatment. The individual, on the contrary, is the subject of law, the abstract focus to whom rules and repression were made. (Da Matta, 1997: 218)

Another point taken by Da Matta is that, in a society so strongly hierarchical,

conflicts are seen as extremely disturbing, since open conflicts are marked by the

representativeness of opinions and are a revealing trace of an individualistic

egalitarianism, which, between us, almost always clashes violently with the

hierarchising structure of our society (Da Matta, 1997: 184). In this way, in the

Brazilian society, conflicts are seen as abnormalities.

Last but not least, we are going to examine O Povo Brasileiro (The Brazilian

People), work of the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, which, for its later publication

when compared to the other already examined oeuvres (it was published in 1995 as

the result of 30 years of work), also draws on and follows many of the ideas that we

already discussed. He points that the Brazilian people acknowledge themselves, feel

like and behave as one single people, belonging to the same ethnic group a national

ethnic group, a nation-people.

To Ribeiro, in Brazil, disparate racial matrixes, distinct cultural traditions and

obsolete social forms clashed and merged to give rise to a new people. It is a new

people to the extent that it emerges as a national ethnicity, culturally different from its

forming matrixes, strongly hybrid, boosted by a syncretised culture and singularized

by the redefinition of cultural traces originated in those matrixes. As he points,

New also because it sees itself and is seen as a new people, a new human genre different of the ones already existent. New people, yet, because it is a new model of societal structuring, which inaugurates a singular form of social-economical organization, founded in a renewed kind of slavery and in a continuous servitude to the world market. New, again, for the

26

implausible joy and astounding will to happiness, in a so much sacrificed people, which encourage and touch all Brazilians. (Ribeiro, 2006: 17)

Ribeiro argues that, although the mix of such varied matrixes could have resulted

in a multiethnic society, torn apart by the opposition of discrepant and unmixable

components, what happened is that, despite the fact that the signs of the multiple

ancestry remained in the spirit and in the somatic physiognomy of the Brazilian, it did

not differentiate into antagonistic racial, cultural or regional minorities.

This basic ethnic unity does not mean any uniformity though, because three

diversifying forces acted upon it. The ecologic force, which created distinct human

landscapes where the environment demanded adaptation; the economic force, which

created different forms of production; and immigration, which introduced new human

contingents however, these new populations already found a formed nation, capable

of absorbing and brazilianising them.

In the way Ribeiro sees it, the unity of Brazil as a nation-people results from a

continuing and violent process of political unification, realized through a deliberate

effort of suppression of any disparate ethnic identity and of repression and oppression

of any virtually separatist tendency.

Continuing his discourse on the uniqueness of the Brazilian people, Ribeiro argues

that we are not and nobody takes us as extensions of whiteness. We have other

guidelines and other ways taken from more people. Which, he points, do not make us

poorer, but richer of humanities, more human. This bizarre singularity of ours was a

hundred times threatened, but was fortunately able to be consolidated.

Another characteristic of the configuration of the Brazilian people would be that,

in here, there has always been coexistence between an entrepreneurial prosperity and

a generalized poverty of the local population. In fact, society was not more than a

conglomerate of multiethnic peoples from Europe, Africa or natives, formed by

intense miscegenation, brutal genocide that exterminated tribal peoples and radical

ethnocide which caused indigenous and African contingents to lose their characters.

Paradoxically, it was in this way that, according to Ribeiro, it was possible to

achieve ideal conditions to the ethnic transfiguration through the forced

27

de-indianisation of natives and de-africanisation of blacks, which, without their

original identities, were forced to invent a new ethnicity which could encompass all of

them.

This mass of mulattos and mestizos of natives and whites, lusitanianised by the

Portuguese language that they spoke and by the worldview that they absorbed, began

to create the Brazilian ethnicity and to simultaneously promote its integration in the

form of a Nation-State. When the nation received large contingents of European and

Japanese immigrants, it was already mature, a fact that made possible the assimilation

of this newcomers in the condition of generic Brazilians.

Ribeiro points that what dissociates and separates Brazilians are not separatist

ethnic contingents, but class stratification. However, it is this stratification that,

especially in its lower side, unifies and articulates the huge predominantly dark

masses as Brazilians.

In its final considerations, Ribeiro again stresses the importance of miscegenation

to the constitution of the Brazilian people:

We, Brazilians, () are a mestizo people in flesh and spirit, since miscegenation was never a crime nor a sin in here. In it we were made and continue to make ourselves. This mass of natives originated from miscegenation lived for centuries without a consciousness of themselves, sunk in nobodyness. It was like this until it defined itself as a new national-ethnic identity, that of Brazilians. () Looking at them, hearing them, it is easy to realize they are, in fact, a new romanity, a late but better romanity, because it is washed in Indian and black blood. (Ribeiro, 2006: 410)

He once again emphasizes the homogeneity of the Brazilian people which he

claim to be one of the most linguistic and cultural homogenous and socially

integrated people on Earth (Ribeiro, 2006: 410), for it speaks the same language,

without dialects, and does not shelter any contingent that demands autonomy to,

then, finalize the book with a discourse that can be seen as very optimistic and almost

too much enthusiastic:

In reality, what we are is a new Rome. A late and tropical Rome. Brazil already is the biggest of the neo-Latin nations, for its population magnitude, and it also begins to be it for artistic and cultural creativity. Now, it needs to be it in the dominion of the technology of the future

28

civilization, to make itself an economic power, of self-sustained progress. We are building ourselves in the struggle to flower tomorrow as a new civilization, miscegenated and tropical, proud of itself. More joyful, because more suffered. Better, because it incorporates in itself more humanity. More generous, because open to the coexistence with all races and all cultures and because placed in the most beautiful and luminous province on Earth. (Ribeiro, 2006: 411)

* * *

To conclude our discussion about the paths taken by the studies of Brazilian

culture and identity, it is useful to summarize the ideas of each of the works

discussed, so we can clarify the traces of Brazilian identity as seen by some of the

most important Brazilian scholars on the matter that will later guide us in our

analysis of the media discourse.

From Freyres work, the most noteworthy component to the purposes of this

research is the racially mixed character of Brazilian identity, an identity that puts

together characteristics from European, indigenous and African cultures, with an

emphasis to the contributions that the latter left to this identity through the

configuration of a rural economy based on sugar cane plantations and slave work-

forces that also made part of the everyday living of their masters houses, leading to a

special kind of social intimacy amongst different races and classes. In this way, racial

mix, African traits, and social intimacy are the keywords here.

From De Holandas work, we should emphasize the importance of personalism in

the social lives of Brazilians; the repulse towards regular work and utilitarian

activities inherited from our Iberian founding fathers, which entails an over-

appreciation of talent and activities that seem to emerge from an innate quality; and

a lack of organization of the society, being noteworthy that the latter two points were

reinforced by slavery. Another very important aspect of De Holandas ideas is the

concept of amicability, which is related to personalism and in which relationships of

empathy are predominant in the social lives of Brazilians and impersonal relations are

seen as unpleasant and reduced to personalistic patterns. This amicability must be

seen not as an affectionate, civil and polite behaviour, but as apparent sociability, and

individualism that make the individual reluctant towards laws that go against it.

Hence, the keywords here are personalism, lack of inclination to work, amicability

29

and individualism.

From Da Mattas work, the main points are the opposition between the pairs

individual and person, impersonal laws and personal relations and street and home, all

of them inscribed in a extremely hierarchical society that sees conflicts as a threat to

the order of things and in which everybody has to know their place in order for the

system to work in a harmonic way. These oppositions are complicated by the

existence of a dualistic pattern in which the domains can be subverted in certain

occasions, especially by rituals that bring the person to the street, such as Carnival (a

festivity which is the inversion of the hierarchic structure of the Brazilian system),

jeitinho (an attitude that allows a way out of a difficult or problematic situation,

usually by twisting or ignoring the rules), trickery (malandragem) and the use of the

phrase do you who youre talking to?, which brings the code of personal

relationships to the domain of general laws. Thus, the keywords (which are more like

key-phrases) here are opposition between impersonal laws and personal relations,

hierarchy, aversion to conflicts and rituals of subversion of the system.

From Ribeiros work, which is also the most optimistic of the four works we have

examined, we have to note the emphasis given to the novelty of the hybrid,

syncretised, varied and yet homogenous character of the national ethnic group that are

Brazilians. Ribeiro insists that, as we were born from different cultural and ethnic

matrixes, as we are made of more peoples, we are also richer of humanities and more

open to the coexistence will all races and cultures (that is, multicultural). He also

points to the joyful and happy character of Brazilians despite all the suffering that was

necessary to give birth to them as a nation-ethnicity. One of the main ideas that are

reinforced throughout the book is that of the original cell that became the basis to the

formation of a Brazilian identity, born very early in the process of colonization in the

form of mestizos of Portuguese fathers and Indian mothers, that did not belong to

neither group and became a group on their own, heavily influenced by Indian manners

and traditions, but displaced from its context; African slaves, on the other hand, could

be seen as playing a major role in the affirmation of the Portuguese language as the

national language, since they came from different tribes and ethnicities and the only

way for them to communicate among themselves and with their masters was to learn

their masters language. In this way, as Brazilians were consolidated as a people very

early, the contingent of immigrants that came later were not able to destabilize the

30

identity that had been consolidating for centuries. According to Ribeiro, this process

was responsible by the fact that the social divisions of the Brazilian society are not

based on culture and ethnicity, but in deep class stratification. In this way, the

keywords here are novelty, hybridism, syncretism, homogeneity, multiculturalism,

mestizage, joy, happiness, national-ethnicity and class stratification.

31

METHODS

In order to achieve our objective of uncovering the patterns in the representation of

the Brazilian identity in foreign and national news, so we can compare the

representational practices that emerge from the different sources and read them in the

light of theories about identity, representation and Brazilian culture, this work will

apply two main strategies in the analysis of the corpus of material obtained through

sampling: content analysis and textual analysis, both adapted to best serve the

purposes of the work and to fit in its practical limitations. But before we go deeper in

the description of the method of analysis, we shall first discuss the process of

sampling.

Sampling

Since the media is a vastly broad territory and the ambition to analyze every

possible representation of Brazilian identity by either foreign or national

communication vehicles would make this research virtually impossible, we had to

reduce the scope of material by selecting particular vehicles.

First of all, in a evaluation which took into consideration mainly practical matters,

it was considered that print media would be more suitable to the limitations of time

and resources that have to be considered when developing a research, since it is

promptly available for textual analysis (as their main components are texts), more

broadly available for access in libraries and databases, easier to collect and document

than TV and radio broadcastings and have a longer life than internet news. This

choice also avoids the time-consuming process of transcription. However, it is

important to note that not only the texts are going to be taken into consideration in the

analysis, but also the visual components will be examined.

Secondly, when it comes to the origin of the communication vehicles, language

had to be taken into consideration, since, in textual analysis, translations is a

problematic element that introduces another level of interpretation. This was not a

32

problem when it comes to the national communication vehicles, since the author of

this work is a native speaker of Portuguese, trained in the Brazilian journalistic

practices, allowing the analysis to be performed in the original language and making

it necessary to translate only the results and considerations. However, when it comes

to foreign communication vehicles, the most sensible decision would be that of

choosing Anglophone media in order to avoid translations. Hence, the United States,

the main English speaking country of the world in terms of international relevance,

was chosen as the origin for the print media vehicle that will provide material for our

analysis.

In the choice of the particular vehicle of communication that will serve our

analysis, two main points were taken into consideration: the broadness of its reach

(which could also be taken in terms of their prominence in each national media

landscape) and an arguable sense of trustworthiness.

In the case of the United States, we have chosen The New York Times as our source

of data because it is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, founded

in 1851 and considered to be an American institution. The newspaper has won 101

Pulitzer Prizes3, which is the largest amount among news agencies, while its website

is the leader in traffic among all online newspapers4, making the publication a central

source of information. As a well-established newspaper, which claims to give

thorough coverage of different issues and to base its contents on facts (its motto is

All the news thats fit to print), it is also considered to be credible by its large

audience.

In the case of Brazil, we chose the major metropolitan newspaper of the country,

which is based in the city of So Paulo, the biggest, richest and most influential city

3 The Pulizter Prize is an annual award administered by Columbia University (New York); in

the field of journalism, it evaluates achievements of United States-based news organisations since

1917. Sources: The Pulitzer Prizes (http://www.pulitzer.org), viewed on Dec. 6th 2010; Wikipedia

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize), viewed on Dec. 6th 2010.

4 Source: Web Traffic to Top 10 Online Newspapers Grows 16 Percent Year-Over-Year in

December, According to Nielsen Online, Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS147719+27-

Jan-2009+MW20090127), published on Jan. 27th 2009, viewed on Dec. 6th 2010.

33

of the country, considered to be the capital of economic decisions and cultural life of

Brazil: Folha de S.Paulo. Folha de S.Paulo has been the Brazilian newspaper with the

highest national circulation rates since the 1980s5.

In order to epitomize the search for representations of Brazilian identities in the

discourse of the chosen media outlets, it was considered that the occurrence of

particular events which draw attention to Brazil would be an opportunity to

concentrate the samples over a definite period of time and to collect data that could be

more relevant to the present research.

Hence, one particular recent event was selected as a focal point to the process of

sampling: the poll to elect the host city for the Olympic Games of 2016, which

occurred in 2009 with Rio de Janeiro eventually being chosen. To make this selection

useful to the purpose of limiting the material for analysis, the event was examined

throughout a whole week, in which it was positioned in the middle. The poll which

selected the host for the 2016 Olympic Games occurred on October 2nd 2009; hence,

the period examined for the collection of articles comprehended the editions

published between September 29th 2009 and October 5th 2009.

In the case of the foreign newspaper, articles published within the determined

period, which dealt directly with Brazil or Brazilian characters in the context of the

chosen event were identified and collected. In the case of the national newspaper,

further consideration was necessary, since the merely collection of articles about

Brazil and Brazilians in the context of the chosen event would mean we would have

to analyse almost all the published content. Hence, besides identifying articles directly

linked to the events chosen, a closer examination was performed in order to collect

only articles that could allow insights about the main theme of this work, that is,

Brazilian identity.

Analytical strategy

5 Grupo Folha triplica faturamento em dez anos e consolida liderana. Folha de S.Paulo, Feb.

19th 2011: 90 Anos 12-13.

34

As we have mentioned before, the analysis will be guided by two main analytical

strategies, both adapted to better serve the purposes of this work: content analysis and

textual analysis.

Content analysis is taken in the sense defined by Berelson: Content analysis is a

research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the

manifest content of communication (Berelson, 1984: 18), assuming that knowledge

of the content can legitimately support inferences about non-content events

(Berelson, 1984: 18).

In this sense, content analysis was applied in the following ways: quantitative

analysis evaluating the number of articles published during the given period of time,

the position of the articles within the issue, the position of the article within the page,

the length of the article and the amount of space it occupies in order to identify the

level of importance that is given by the publication to the matter. An adaptation of the

qualitative content analysis described by Berelson was also used, in connection

with the textual analysis, to identify and separate into categories the words and

expressions used to represent Brazilian identity and to analyze the presence-absence

of this particular kind of content.

The other analytical strategy derives from the tradition of Critical Discourse

Analysis and is based on the textual dimension of texts postulated especially by

Norman Fairclough. Fairclough points to textual analysis as his preferred method to

capture sociocultural processes in the course of their occurrence (Fairclough, 1995:

186).

Textual analysis involves the analysis of the way propositions are structured and

the way they are combined and sequenced (Fairclough, 1995b, cited in Richardson,

2007). In a critical textual analysis, the analyst examines the text in terms of what is

present and what could have been but is not present. In other words, the analyst is

concerned with the choices involved in a text.

However, considering the length of the sample (20 texts) and the limitations of

time and resources that this work has to deal with, it was considered that applying a

complete textual analysis would be both impractical and unproductive. Thus, the

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analyst decided to focus in two particular aspects of textual analysis: the lexical

choices and inter-textuality (since, as we have seen in the Theories chapter,

representations are constructed inter-textually).

Lexical analysis, that is, the analysis of particular words used in a text, is the most

common first stage of any text or discourse analysis, because words convey the

imprint of society and of value judgments in particular (Richardson, 2007: 47). All

words, but particularly nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs carry connoted and

denoted meanings.

Inter-textuality is taken mostly in Halls terms (1997), as similar representational

practices and figures being repeated with variations from one text or site of

representation to another, with meaning accumulating across different texts, building

regimes of representation. Inter-textuality is also considered in the sense Fairclough

(2003) uses by linking it to the concept of assumptions, that is, what is not said in the

text, but taken as given, connecting one text to others and to the world of texts.

Considering all the above mentioned points, the analysis applied here is of a

descriptive and interpretative kind and was carried in the following way:

- identification of the relevant articles by standards already discussed in the

Sampling section;

- measuring of the articles and description of their length and the space they

occupy both in the issue and in the page;

- description of other elements that were associated to the article (such as

photographs);

- careful reading of every article, to identify the paragraphs in which

information relevant to the context of this research was presented;

- description of the content of the paragraphs, followed by interpretation using a

lexical and inter-textual analysis;

- coding of the words and expressions associated with Brazil and Brazilians to

separate them in broader categories;

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- discussion of the results obtained through the analysis in the light of the

theories about identity, representation and Brazilian identity presented in the

Theories chapter.

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ANALYSIS

Text 1

The New York Times, Oct. 2nd 2009

Headline: The Smart Choice for Olympic Host

Placement: Business/Financial, section B, page 2 (even page)

Position in the page: top left, as part of a column called BreakingViews.com

Length: three columns wide, a third of the page in height, 729 words (the whole

BreakingViews.com column; the article that refers to the Olympic Games bid

occupies almost two thirds of the column)

Another features: a one column photograph of Michelle Obama and Oprah

Winfrey with the caption Two Chicago rooters in Copenhagen: Michelle Obama and

Oprah Winfrey.

The article is placed in the second section of the newspaper (section B), which

indicates that the matter is not one that is at the top of the hierarchical placement of

the news of the day. However, its appearance in the Business section indicates that

it is not only a sportive matter, but one that has broader implications to the

newspapers readers and producers. The article is placed in the second page of the

section, which points to the fact that it is a significant matter, however not as

important as to deserve the first page.

The convention that guides the design of newspaper pages usually see even pages

as a less privileged space, since the same convention says that readers attention is

first drawn by odd pages, that is, those in the right. However, within the design of one

page, the top left is seen as the most privileged space of the page, following the

conventional reading direction of western languages (from left to right and from top

to bottom).

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Its length also denotes the importance given to the theme, since the article occupies

approximately one fifth of the page.

The basic subject of the article is the economic costs of hosting an Olympic game

and how the bidders are making an effort to keep the costs low.

In the paragraphs that refer to Rio de Janeiros bid, the country is portrayed as

having a poor infrastructure and as being somewhat violent, what can be inferred by

the reference to the need of public investment in transportation and security

(paragraph 7).

However, its flourishing and stable economy (that has done relatively well despite

the global slowdown, paragraph 8), its great population (which makes the cost of the

games to be better absorbed) and the fast-growing character of Rio de Janeiro are also

emphasized, leading the authors to conclude that the Brazilian bid is the one that

makes the most economic sense.

From the short part of the text that deals with Brazil, what emerges is an image of a

great country in terms of population, in the process of developing (it needs investment

in transportation and Rio is a fast-growing city), somewhat violent, and with a stable

and promising economy.

Text 2

The New York Times, Oct. 3nd 2009

Headline: Rio de Janeiro Picked to Hold 2016 Olympics (in the front cover); Rio

de Janeiro is Awarded 2016 Games; Obama Fails to Sway Voters (in the continuation

of the article, on Page D6)

Placement: cover, section A, page 1; Sports, section D, page 6

Position in the page: top left on page A1; top of page D6

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Length: on page A1: one column wide, half a page in height, plus a four-column

photograph, almost a third of the page in height; on page D6: the whole width of the

page (five columns) and more than half of the page in height; 1420 words

Another features: on page A1, a four-column photograph of a celebrating crowd

in Rio with the caption Celebrations in Rio de Janeiro followed the announcement as

local officials declared a holiday for city and state employees; on page D6, four two-

column photographs showing the reactions to the decision of the Olympic committee

in the four bidders cities, with the caption Brazils president, Luiz Incio Lula da

Silva, left at top left, joined in the celebration in Brazil as three other cities ached.

Spaniards in Madrid's Plaza Oriente, top right, after losing in the final round. A man

in Tokyo, above left, was inconsolable. In Chicago, above, there was disbelief at a

first-round exit.

The choice for Rio as the host of the 2016 Olympic Games was clearly the most

important news of the day, since it was placed in the most noble part of the

newspaper: the top left of the cover, the most privileged place of a page (as we

discussed earlier) which is also the first page of the newspaper, the space for

displaying the most important headlines of that days issue, the first thing that the

reader sees when he picks the newspaper.

It also has a privileged space on page D6, occupying more than half the page and

placed in its top. In this case, the fact that page D6 is an even page is not so relevant,

since the article is referred to in the cover of the newspaper and, as we will see later,

the choice of the Olympic Games host also occupies most of the section cover (page

D1) and of the following page (page D7), with emphasis being given to the newly

chosen host.

The length of the article, which begins in page A1 and continues in page D6, is

another indicator of the relevance of the matter, since it is not a current situation that

any matter is given that much space.

The structure of the article does not follow exactly the scheme of the inverted

pyramid, since the opening paragraph is not structured as a lead (answering the

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questions what, whom, how, when, where, why), but gives a description of the scene

in which the election took place.

The main theme of the article is the voting and election process, but most of it is

dedicated to trying to find explanations to the exclusion of Chicagos bid in the very

first round of voting.

However, the sections that do refer to Brazil (and, especially, to Rio), can be seen

as particularly useful to the aims of this research.

In the first paragraph, the celebration of the Brazilian delegation after Rio won the

election is described as a a boisterous party with members in uniform navy or moss

green blazers hugging, dancing, crying and waving Brazilian flags and a yelling bid

leader. In this particular case, Brazilians are represented as noisy and energetic festive

people, very affectionate (hugging each other) and emotional (crying and

yelling). This representation is of particular relevance because of its placement in

the opening paragraph, which is usually the place for the most important information

and which receives the biggest amount of attention from the reader. The style in