Performing and evaluating (non)modernities of Portuguese migrant figures on YouTube: the case of Antonio de Carglouch

We analyze how France-bassed 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 diferente 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 diferente outcomes for variously positioned participants.