Speaking French in Portugal: An analysis of contested models of emigrant personhood in narratives about return migration and language use

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.