I let the world pinker – one analysis of evaluative instances

Abstract

The advertisement is a discourse genre that integrates visual and linguistic strategies, aiming at persuading an idealized target audience. For this reason, it has appropriate elements for analysis, both linguistic and critical. In this sense, the present study has the objective to examine the verbal and nonverbal elements in the advertisement Eu deixo o mundo mais pink (Revista Capricho, nov./2009). In order to study the visual aspects, we based on concepts of multimodality of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) and, through these concepts, we consider the layout, the disposition of images, what is being portrayed and what colors stand out. We also aim to identify the attitudinal evaluations in the verbal text and in the construction of the meaning of advertisement as a whole. We used the theoretical principles of Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday and especially the Appraisal Theory (MARTIN and WHITE, 2005). It was possible to find at this moment two evaluative stances in the corpus: (1) at the level of verbal text, the judgment for social esteem is highlighted; (2) the values of appraisal predominate in confronting the verbal text to the layout structure of advertisement.