Discursive representations in the journalistic media of the democratic school in the Federal District (DF)

Abstract

This work concerns the horizontal and vertical societal accountabilities, as well as representation and intertextuality, in order to analyze discursive representations of the democratic school, including quality of the democracy (DIAMOND; MORLINO, 2005; O’DONNEL, 1998) and the violence (MINAYO, 2006, 2009) that reproduces relations of dominance and exploration (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003). This study demonstrates how meaning-making potentials broadcasted by the journalistic media can legitimate social hegemonic relations. The linguistic analysis of verbal, non-verbal and multimodal texts found in an article from the portal “Metrópoles” on public schools of the Federal District focused on the lexical selection of verbal texts, multimodal approach and metaphors used based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001, 2003, 2006) and on the Theory of Multimodal Social Semiotics (TMSS) (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2001, 2006 [1996]; KRESS, 2010). This research evidenced that the journalist legitimated social hegemonic relations, despite showing a high level of commitment to the social identity created for the Government of the Federal District by means of metaphors and lexical selection used to depict such authorities.