Semiotics and politics: a case study

Abstract

The functioning of political discourse goes beyond enunciative textualization strategies or the narratives that institute relations between subjects and objects and the modal structures that constitute them. Politics defines a way of being in the world, articulates interpersonal relations, organizes social life, and installs itself as a way of life. To understand it semiotically, it will be necessary to perceive the axiological systems and the relations of belief, identification and trust among the social actors, mediated by emotional and intellectual factors. This article takes politics in its sense of exercise of power, relationship between rulers and ruled, and legitimation of that power, with the aim of analyzing the electoral victory of the far-right in Brazil in the 2018 presidential elections, based on some campaign images. Through concepts such as those of veridiction, persuasion and figurativization and the mobilization of analysis categories of plastic semiotics, campaign strategies are examined, and the actors involved in the electoral process are semiotically defined.