Entre socialistas de iPhone e capitalistas sem capital: análise da construção de sentidos em memes baseada em frames

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis is based on one of the most prominent discursive categories of social networks, the meme. Knowing that meme represents a large number of typical internet phenomena, the type of meme object of this analysis is that consisting of verbal and non-verbal elements, more precisely memes that deal with – what users mean by – “politics”, in Facebook social network. The starting point for this work is that this discursive category, massively present in the life of Brazilians, presents complex resources for the construction of meaning, which will be investigated from the analysis of frames triggered by meme comprehenders. For this purpose, in addition to memes, comments on memes will also be taken into account exactly so that it is possible to verify which resources were used for the construction of meaning. In order to be able to develop this analysis, the theoretical contribution of the present work is located in the field of Cognitive Linguistics, more precisely in the Ecological conception of language and cognition, according to which the interaction of the organism with the ecosystem is the starting point of cognitive development (DUQUE, 2015b; 2016; 2017; 2018). In this view, it is in social interaction that the linguistic construction of meaning comes into play. From the methodological point of view, two Facebook pages were selected, one of a conservative nature and the other of a progressist nature, under the criterion of greater relevance for users (greater amount of likes). Having made this selection, the resources for constructing meaning, the types of frames evoked, are compared between the two political perspectives mentioned. Conservative and progressive memes use similar resources to construct meaning, such as some specific dimensions of the frame, as well as confrontation between touted theory and practice by conservative and capitalist individuals. With this work, it is expected to contribute to studies that consider cognition as a result of the mind-body-ecosystem interaction, as well as to the analysis based on frames of processes of construction of meaning in memes.