A AGÊNCIA EM CHAMAS: SEMIÓTICA COGNITIVA E CRISE ECOLÓGICA NO DISCURSO SOBRE OS INCÊNDIOS

THE AGENCY IN FLAMES: COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS AND ECOLOGICAL CRISIS IN THE DISCOURSE ON FIRES

Abstract

This article presents a semiotic analysis — grounded in cognitive, tensive, and discursive semiotics — of the media coverage of the fires that affected the interior of the state of São Paulo during the summer of 2024, when, according to INPE, there was a 225% increase in fire outbreaks compared to the previous year. Situated within the research project Voices of the Anthropocene: Maps and Models for Ecological Conflicts (VAMP), the study begins from the hypothesis that ecological crises are, above all, crises of meaning: manifestations of cognitive and cultural tensions that call into question fundamental categories of language such as “nature,” “culture,” and “agency.” Based on the analysis of a corpus of local and national news reports, the article examines how journalistic discourse constructs different attributions of causality and responsibility surrounding fire, revealing the hesitations and contradictions that emerge when attempting to distinguish between human and non-human agents. It argues that the media narrative of the fires exposes a genuine cognitive crisis in the categories of causality and responsibility, reflecting the contemporary difficulty of assuming collective responsibility in the face of the environmental transformations of the Anthropocene.