SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS: ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN OF THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH IN COMBATING DENGUE

Resumen

The present work aims to analyze a poster of the National Program to Combat Dengue of the Ministry of Health of the Brazilian Federal Government, from the perspective of the French Semiotic Theory. Discursive Semiotics, the production and interpretation of meaning are simulated as a course endowed with three different strata of meaning. In the course of interpretation, one begins with the manifestation (that is, the way a given substance accomplishes a certain content) in order to arrive at the first level of organization of meaning: the discursive level. Then, by simplifying and abstracting discourse by a process of gradual "downsizing" of meaning, in which some semantic properties are neglected for the benefit of others, considered more general, one reaches the narrative level. Insisting on this process of abstraction and simplification of meaning, one arrives at the fundamental level, where are found the elementary structures of signification. Thus, we obtain a set of semantic categories that structure the meaning of a given text in its different levels of organization. The responsibility for the care of people with dengue prevention and mosquito assignment as villain this kinds of arguments are also found on analyzed posters. Finally, there are posters which use the nationalist ideas, patriot, in order to move the population to disease prevention. We analyzed the images and their texts of the dengue prevention posters, that is, the products elaborated and used in the informative and educational actions of the Ministry of Health of Brazil.