Maggy, Groot or Magroat: an analysis of the referencial process in a Monica's Gang parody

Abstract

It aims to analyze how referents are established in a multimodal parody, where there was the transposition of cinema's code to comics. Theoretical concepts from Textual Linguistics and Cognitive Semantics were employed for this purpose. The objective was to analyze the processes of reference in a comic book from the "Monica's Gang" series "The Great Parodies of Monica’s Gang: Guardoidões of the Galaxy", a parody of the movie "Guardians of the Galaxy". The series promotes the merging of the Marvel´s and Turma da Mônica´s universes. Considering that Mauricio de Sousa's creations represent the movie characters, the study sought to understand how the essence of two merged characters behave in our cognition and as reference. It is understood that, due to the blending of characters, two meanings are brought into a mental space that promotes the junction of the two referents, becoming a unique concept, a blended referent. It was observed that referents in multimodal parodies tend to be established through different semiotic pathways and in a non-linear manner. With the Theory of Blending, it was confirmed that, conceptually, there is a blend of the two, thus constructing a new referent/meaning.