As metáforas animais e suas implicações interacionais

Abstract

The article focuses on implications of animal metaphors in everyday language taking into account the pragmatic approach to verbal metaphor based on the hypotheses of inexpressibility, of compactness and of vividness formulated by Gibbs (1994); and the discussion about the social role of animal metaphors as put forward by Rodriguez (2009). The paper is organized in three sections. In the first one, we discuss the role of verbal metaphors in human communication according to Gibbs (1994); in the second, the animal metaphor human is animal; in the third, the relevance of animal metaphors in the comprehension and construal of genre and social identities (RODRIGUEZ, 2009). In connection with this concern, we analyze the animal metaphor ‘perua’ in the blog Saltimbanca and the site Na Casa da Gabi (At Gabi’s House).