The Semiotics behind the transformation of popular products into elite products: the Havaianas case

Abstract

This article proposed to examine aspects of publicity, such as they are disseminated in televised media, particularly in regards to microsystems of implicit values. The theoretical approach is based on operational and epistemic models of French semiotics which proposes that the meaning of a text is built through a generative trajectory divided in three levels: fundamental, narrative and discursive. We did not limit ourselves only to Greimas’s proposals, but we also searched for others interpretations, especially those developed by socio-semiotics which focuses on social discourses that are not literary, among them publicity. The main objective was to analyze, from the semiotic point of view, how Havaianas sandals – originally seen as a popular product – are being transformed into luxury products. In the analysis, we have sought to examine the mechanisms and strategies used by media for interpellation of consumer, that is, what kinds of signs are used to make communication among interlocutors possible and how they are built syncretically. The corpus of research comprises a commercial advetising of Havaianas sandals that was broadcasted on televised media in 2006. We examined the spatial, temporal and actorial projections, describing the effects of meaning engendered by such mechanisms. Through discourse semantics, we tried to reveal immanent ideologies of discourse and, using the operations of narrative structures, we analyzed the actions of each semiotic subject that is in search of their object of value, as well as the modalities that establish them semantically.