Representations of the brazilian culture by YouTube users using global english: are brazilians hospitable?

Abstract

Global interaction has exponentially increased through the Internet, where communication happens mostly in Global English, the current lingua franca on Internet environments. This way, the Brazilian community also interacts online, shaping and perceiving general sociocultural impressions that foreigners may have upon Brazil and its people. This study aims the analysis of public comments made on the website YouTube, concerning Brazilians’ hospitality and the matter of current immigration crises. The research is based on Computer-mediated discourse analysis and on the literature of Netspeak and Global English. The impressions seen on comments portray Brazil as a reasonably welcoming country, though other comments contrasted with this image, showing off specific anti-immigration positions defended by many Brazilians and non-Brazilians’ YouTube users. From these results, the traditional idea that retracted Brazil as a hospitable country is questioned. Further, the Internet public discussion environments and the possibility of anonymity by their users seem to reveal a polarized architecture of discussion, which occasionally tends to bigotry manifestations and hate speech.