Processos inferenciais na publicidade : o politicamente (in)correto

Abstract

This paper aims to verify the consistency of the Relevance Theory from Sperber e Wilson (1986; 1995), which seeks to explain how human communication processes occur through a pragmatic-cognitive approach, in which information is mentally represented and inferentially processed. In this model, are taken into consideration not only the information explicitly transmitted or present in the discourse, but also those that are implicit, as well as the intention of the speaker, the context in which communication occurs and the listener s world knowledge. To illustrate how human inferentially processes occur, 11 pieces of advertising were selected, all of them having some prejudice or discriminatory reference. This choice is due to the fact that advertising language is, in general, rich in implicit, leading the reader to retrieve information and to make inferences, in order to achieve the meaning intended by the advertiser. Moreover, it is assumed that sensitive issues, which would be considered an offense to the politically correct if explicited, are still implicitly addressed and recovered by inferentially processes. As these ideas are not linguistically expressed, it is possible the argument that their use was not intentional, and the interpretation that was achieved by the consumer is not the one that was intended by the advertiser resource often use by advertising agencies. Thus, it is considered that the selected pieces of advertising allow illustrating the conceptual architecture of the Relevance Theory, especially in regards to the inferential processing of information and the non-demonstrative character of the inferences.