Vozes enunciativas em anúncios digitais sobre emagrecimento no Instagram: uma análise discursiva

Abstract

The issue that stimulated the development of this study concerns the increasing influence that discourses conveyed in digital media have on the conception of the ideal body and weight loss in society, especially in view of the high rates of overweight in the population. Considering this influence, this research was developed to understand how enunciative voices mobilized in digital weight loss advertisements on Instagram construct persuasive meanings about the body, health, and consumption. As an educational outcome of this understanding, a critical reading script was developed for teachers working with the digital advertising genre. The theoretical basis lies in Bakhtin's (1979) concepts of dialogism and discursive genres, Authier-Revuz's (2004) enunciative heterogeneity, and Nunes' (2024) and Bezerra and Leão's (2020) multimodal language. Five advertisements posted on Instagram were selected for analysis, following a qualitative approach. The results demonstrate, in relation to the conditions of production and circulation, the great influence of social networks in the creation and dissemination of beauty standards, by exposing the image of thin and defined bodies as the ideal body standard. As for the enunciative voices, there are mobilized social voices that emphasize the thin body as the standard of beauty that must be achieved; and the use of authority figures, such as nutritionists, to persuade the public, relating weight loss to increased self-esteem and happiness. With regard to the effects of meaning, weight loss is constructed as a solution for different dimensions of the subject's life, linking health, aesthetics, happiness, and consumption. In relation to the proposed script, examples with specific interpretation questions were developed for elementary and high school classes, presented in the appendix as a possibility for pedagogical guidance based on the results of the analyses. In short, this research contributes to the academic community by developing an in-depth analysis of how enunciative voices are used in digital weight loss advertisements, producing effects of meaning that guide ways of understanding the body and health in contemporary times. From a scientific point of view, the research contributes to dialogical discourse studies by analyzing enunciative voices in a corpus of wide social circulation, consisting of digital weight loss advertisements on Instagram, which can serve as a theoretical and methodological reference for future investigations and broaden the understanding of the processes of meaning construction in multimodal and media contexts.