Processos referenciais em charges de jornais cearenses sob o aspecto multimodal

Abstract

This research analyzes the reference processes of referential introduction and direct and indirect anaphora, in texts composed by verbal and nonverbal language. To that purpose, our theoretical contribution on referencing is Cavalcante (2011, 2012), Custódio Filho (2011) and Cavalcante and Brito (2017), based on assumptions supported by Koch and Marcuschi in Textual Linguistics. The selected corpus is composed of 30 charges, published in local newspaper, “O Povo”, weekly, from 2013 to 2016. The genus charge was analyzed in such a way that the images and verbal expressions indicated reference processes, which signaled to the (re)construction of text meanings. The image analysis was based on the theoretical basis of Visual Design Grammar, by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), who believe in the images ability to integrate the meanings negotiated in texts. According to our study, the compositional, representational and interactive metafunctions were important to verify how the images are directly related to the different possible meanings elaborated by the interlocutor, since these metafunctions deal with the disposition and the relations between the elements that compose the image. Based on this theoretical reference, it was possible to test hypotheses related to the introduction and resumption of referents pointed out in the verbalimagery clues and to the intertextuality that is established in these relations, all eminently argumentative. For the theoretical foundation of the intertextual processes, we use Cavalcante, Brito and Zavam (2017) and, for the reflections on argumentation, they use Meyer (2007). After analyzing the imbrication of verbal and imaginary traces in the construction of referents and intertextualities, we find that: a) the images are responsible for pointing out processes of introduction and retrieval of referents from the elements indicated by representational, interactive and compositional metafunctions; b) the framing and salience criteria of the compositional metafunction reveal the recategorisations raised by the figure/background relation from the arrangement of the participants of the images; c) the contact, the social distance and the perspective of the interactive metafunction are aspects that point to the effective ethos and evidence the argumentative character of the charge; d) the narrative and conceptual subclasses of the representational metafunction have concomitant recurrences that indicate the referents. This research confirms the fruitful relationship that can be established between GDV and studies in Textual Linguistics.