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Discussions of the cultural and linguistic construction of self often assume monoculturalism and monolingualism to be the norm. This article explores how the complex sociolinguistic repertoires of French‐Portuguese bilinguals allow speakers to perform different kinds of "selves" in each language. Narratives of personal experience in each language are analyzed in terms of the effect of narrative forms on speakers' reported experience of dual selfhood and the effect of these forms on others' perceptions of the speakers in each language. This approach shows how different ways of speaking in each language point to contrasting experiences and positional identities of bilinguals in French and Portuguese societies. It is suggested that the context from which "self" emerges is itself created in part by the choice among different forms of language(s).

I address how the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Luso-descendants (LDs), interpret their language practices and identities relative to models of language and personhood from their 'sending' society. Specifically, I examine how LDs tell each other narratives about having been identified as an emigrant in Portugal, based on French-influenced speech. In telling each other these stories, LDs position themselves relative to two models of language and personhood. The first diasporic model interprets LDs' French as willful abandonment of an essential Portuguese identity. The second transnational model interprets LDs' French as the legitimate result of extended residence abroad. I examine how participants explicitly and/or implicitly invoke both models, through the relationship between narrating and narrated participants' language use. I conclude by asking about LDs' awareness of their simultaneous adherence to multiple models of language and identity.Examino como os descendentes de emigrantes portugueses, os Lusodescendentes (LDs), interpretam as suas pr aticas de linguagem e as suas identidades em relac ßão a modelos de linguagem e de identidade da sua sociedade de origem. Especificamente, analiso como os LDs contam narrativas nas quais uma personagem e identificada como emigrante por ter falado em francês. Quando narram estas hist orias, os LDs posicionam-se em relac ßão a dois modelos de linguagem e de identidade. O primeiro modelo diasp orico interpreta o francês como um abandono volunt ario de uma identidade essencial portuguesa. O segundo modelo transnacional interpreta o francês como o resultado leg ıtimo de residência prolongada no exterior. Os participantes invocam os dois modelos, implicitamente e explicitamente, atrav es da relac ßão entre a escolha de l ıngua pelas personagens da hist oria e pelos participantes na entrevista. Termino perguntando-me se os LDs têm consciência da sua adesão simultânea aos multiplos modelos de l ıngua e identidade. [Portuguese]

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We analyze how France-based YouTube comedic performers Ro et Cut enact the stylized figure of a Portuguese migrant in France, Antonio, in their most popular video, Carglouch. We then examine how commenters respond to the enactment. Specifically, we apply Irvine and Gal's notion of semiotic differentiation to study how participants use language to construct and apply polycentric notions of modernity/nonmodernity. This allows us to analyze how YouTube performers and commenters produce their own and Antonio's relative (non)modernity, as they orient to different versions of a modern/nonmodern axis of differentiation, situated in multiple ‘centers’: France, Portugal, or Europe. That is, participants either interpret Antonio as a nonmodern immigrant in France, a nonmodern emigrant from Portugal, or an international representative of Portugal, spreading nonmodern images of Portugal abroad. We then consider how participants bring these differently centered images of the nonmodern Other into dialogue with each Other, with different outcomes for variously positioned participants. (Migration, heteroglossia, YouTube, transnationalism, Luso-descendants, (non)modernity, France, Portugal)*

I argue in this article that language practices and ideologies are central to French–Portuguese transmigrants’ efforts to obtain recognition of legitimate identities in both French and Portuguese national contexts. Drawing on ethnographic work, I describe the encounters of Luso‐Descendants, the adult children of Portuguese migrants, with French and Portuguese monolingual language ideologies. Although these actors’ lives are led transnationally, their life possibilities are structured by sociolinguistic norms centered within two ideologically monolingual nation‐states. This article thus contributes to scholarship about the sociolinguistics of migration by advocating a more transnational approach to the study of migrant populations. Similarly, it contributes to discussions of transnationalism by looking specifically at how language becomes an important site for the enactment of identities within and across multiple national boundaries in the context of the European Union.

This article lends empirical support to the notion that quoted speech is “constructed dialogue” by exploring empirically how narratives of personal experience involve creative performance of locally imaginable personas, rather than accurate or faithful representation of actual people and their words. This work examines quotation in narratives of personal experience as a site where speakers use language pragmatically to enact socio-culturally locatable identities. Using a corpus of narratives in which French–Portuguese bilinguals told the same narratives of personal experience once in each language, it demonstrates that speakers do not quote more extensively when recounting experiences in the language in which those events “originally” occurred. Ultimately, what differs most in speakers' quotations in French and Portuguese tellings of the “same event” are the nonequivalent kinds and ranges of registers in which narrated characters are quoted. More specifically, speakers are more likely to quote themselves as speaking or having spoken in creative, marked registers in French than in Portuguese. This difference in the registers put in the mouths of quoted characters, in particular of quoted selves, may point to ways in which these bilinguals' multiple identities are instantiated within and across their two languages. More broadly, this work reveals ways in which all speakers may use narrative not only to describe the past but also to perform a variety of cultural selves, reinventing and reenacting characters as quoted selves and others.