A Study of the Sociossemiotic Representation of Black People in RAÇA BRASIL Magazine

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting a multimodal analysis of the social semiotic representation of Black people in Raça Brasil magazine. Drawing on the various semiotic elements of construction of the magazine texts, we intend to unravel which discursive practices are being brought forth as well as the dynamics of text construction and the world view that is represented there, and how Blacks are represented in the discursive game. Thus, we look to the theoretical tools of Social Semiotics and its developments in the Grammar of Visual Design (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996, Jewitt & Oyama 2001), combined with some theoretical stances of Critical Discouse Analysis (Fairclough 2001) for the analysis of visual and verbal multimodality, respectively. Furthermore, we sought to employ studies on racial issues (Gonçalves 2003, Hofbauer 2003) and on Black aesthetics (Gomes 2003, Hooks 2005) so as to support our critical reading. The corpus for this research is made up of ten multimodal texts, corresponding to the articles from the sections ‘Negro Gato’ and ‘Negra Gata’. These texts were published from July to December 2007, the year in which the magazine celebrated its eleventh anniversary.