Advertising and the struggle against disinformation: an analysis of referential networks and (inter)subjectivity in the ad “A ufologista”

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the referential web and the effects of (inter)subjectivity in the textual (re)construction of the referents of the advertising piece “A ufologista”, with regard to addressing disinformation and anti-vaccine movements. To this end, we discuss how the concepts of language, disinformation and advertising intertwine in the production of meaning for persuasion, based on Pinto (1999), Carvalho (2002), Wardle and Derakhsan (2017), Martins (2018), Hissa (2022), Silva (2022), Barreto (2024), Demuru (2024), among others. Next, we present convergences of two areas of Linguistics, namely, Usage-Centered Functional Linguistics (UCF) (Furtado da Cunha; Bispo; Silva, 2013; Rosário; Oliveira, 2016, among others) and Textual Linguistics (TL) (Koch, 2015; Cavalcante, M. et al., 2022, among others), mobilizing, mainly, the concepts of referential construction (Croft, 2001), (inter)subjectivity (Traugott; Dasher, 2003) and referentiation (Mondada; Dubois, 2019[1995]). Regarding the methodology (Paiva, 2019), this research is applied in nature, with a qualitative approach and is characterized, in terms of its objectives, as explanatory. The results of the analysis lead to the understanding that referential nominal constructions (re)create the referential web and the discursive world of “A ufologista” and promote an identification of the characters with the interlocutor. These (inter)discursive and (inter)subjective strategies favor the valorization of the pro-vaccine discourse and, consequently, the adherence to the center that applies them, the Hermes Pardini laboratory, in a game of advertising seduction. It is concluded that advertising language can be an alternative to combat misinformation as it uses co(n)textual aspects that operate in an integrated manner to create a very significant persuasive narrative in tackling this social problem.