Representations of Rurality in the Portuguese Press: The Issues of Rural News

Abstract

For some authors, the rural is not an exclusive affair of the "rural" themselves; on the contrary, the rural is a classificatory category strongly invested (in the symbolic and practical sense) by several social actors, whose interests and motivations are not necessarily convergent. By hypothesizing the diversity of meanings of rural and the rurality, we seek their externalization in the speeches of the press, since it is about the privileged space of the public debate. Exploiting the texts published in the Portuguese press, between 1992 and 1996, we try to understand the different grammars activated about the rural one.