As representações da identidade regional no discurso publicitário contemporâneo

Abstract

By considering the advertising as a mediatical representation of a cultural industry, this thesis reflects upon the recognition of regional identity proposed in the advertising appeal. This qualitative study explored a few concepts and procedures from the enunciative Discourse Analysis in order to locate the meaning production which could answer to the following questions: What gaucho‟ has been portrayed by contemporary advertising? What are the main features of its mediatised identity? Based on the identity canon created, sustained and popularised (in terms of publicity) by the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement (GMT), were defined as specific objectives: (a) discursively describe and analyse different adverts, taking into account the localisation strategies guided by regional culture; (b) identify the verbal and non-verbal elements often used in the discursive appropriation of the gaucho myth (South Brazilian, Portuguese-speaking); and (c) verify what is(are) the predominant representation(s) of regional identity. The corpus is composed by 10 adverts published in different editions of the daily newspaper Zero Hora, which belongs to the RBS Group (South Brazil Network). The time span for data collection was 3 years (2005 2007). Adverts were collected during the months of September, in particular the Farroupilha Week and the holiday of the Gaucho Day, on September 20th. Sampling was intentional; it was selected adverts related to a variety of products and services thus contributing to diversify the representations promoted by the advertisers. The working hypothesis was that the contemporary mediatical representation of regional identity by advertising has been reified. After the analytical discursive analysis, it was possible to understand that once turned into a product, such identity is at the reach of several publics for an individual level of appropriation depending on the announcer‟s needs with their product/services and brands. Such condition would be visible when taking the gaucho myth popularised by the GMT, as its representation would be revisited in the adverts in two forms. This can be either in a compromising way, because the stereotype‟s appropriation may let slip traces of superficiality, i.e. poor arguments, faults, amateurism, forgetfulness, illogicalities, or in an openly customized way, when the advertisement bets on its overdoes and promotes itself due to its very embroidered experimentalism proposed on unusual relationships, surprise elements, provocative reads, i.e. pastiches. In those terms, the stereotype obtained from the analysis has revealed the representation of the regional identity manifested especially the following features: focus on the anonymous human plasticity in non-verbal texts; character‟s demarked phenotype, dominant masculinisation; individualising approach; socio-cultural values presented as having a common origin on a supposed ground zero, the Farroupilha Revolution; and a representation based on the gaucho myth of GTM, yet not necessarily loyal to it.