The Brazilianness notion in the Anglo-Saxon journalism: a discourse analysis of The Times coverage during FIFA 2014 World Cup

Abstract

This article analyzes the discourse of the English journal The Times to verify how their journalists covered the 2014 FIFA World Cup and, in this coverage, how they described Brazil (the host country) and Brazilians. The research methodology is based on French Discourse Analysis (specifi cally, on the idea of “implicit” by Oswald Ducrot) and on Cultural Studies (notably, on Stuart Hall’s studies). The objective of the paper is to verify if The Times texts worked with commonplaces about Brazil and Brazilians, such as the epithet “Brazil: country of soccer”. In a fragmented identities context and in a period that some social scientists suspect of a classical identity crisis, would Brazil and Brazilians be described as “the” country of soccer, from an essentialist and homogenizing perspective, as if all country inhabitants were passionate about soccer (with no exceptions)? How do The Times’ journalists work with this discursive construction in the coverage of a World Cup? Which other identities are reinforced (or produced) about Brazil and Brazilians? The analysis indicates that although at certain moments the texts homogenize and (re)produce commonplaces about Brazil and Brazilians, there were excerpts in which a pluralistic and diff erentiating representation of local realities became notable.