De manifestantes a terroristas – as denominações e o discurso sobre os atentados de 8 de janeiro de 2023 pela CNN Brasil.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how CNN Brazil’s discourse produced meanings through the denominations (MARIANI, 1998) used to name who was involved in the attacks on Brazil’s Three Branches of Government on January 8th, 2023. The research is situated within the field of Materialist Discourse Analysis, theoretically and methodologically grounded in Historical Materialism, mainly based on Michel Pêcheux (PÊCHEUX, 2015 [1988]), with contributions from other authors such as Eni Orlandi (ORLANDI, 2015 [1999]), Eduardo Guimarães (GUIMARÃES, 2002), and Bethania Mariani (MARIANI, 1998). Their works provided the theoretical framework for discussing the relations among language, ideology, memory, and meaning. The guiding question of the analysis is: how did CNN Brazil name the participants of the January 8th attacks, and what meaning effects emerged from these denominations? The general objective of this dissertation is to analyze how CNN Brazil’s live broadcast of the attacks on the Three Branches of Government on January 8, 2023 named the subjects involved—through denominations such as demonstrators, invaders, and terrorists—and how these denominations produce meaning effects and evoke ideological positions. The specific objectives are: to identify the main denominations used to name the subjects; to analyze the meaning shifts within the denominations throughout the broadcast; to understand how journalistic discourse positions itself even under the claim of neutrality (which does not exist); and how this positioning contributes to journalistic practice. The choice of research object is justified by the relevance of the media’s role in constructing meanings and producing the memory of events (both historical and discursive). CNN Brazil’s live broadcast revealed important discursive tensions and positioned January 8th as a discursive event, in the Pecheutian sense (PÊCHEUX, 2015 [1988], p. 16), by updating the meanings of the denomination demonstration—initially associated with a democratic memory and later with a memory of criminal attack. The corpus consists of 21 Discursive Sequences (DSs) extracted from CNN Brazil’s live broadcast on January 8th, 2023. The methodology is anchored in the interpretative gestures of Discourse Analysis, focusing on the conditions of production, discursive formations, and discursive memory. The study analyzes the DSs in chronological order, highlighting the moments of stabilization, slippage, and interdiction of denominations. This research contributes to advancing studies on journalistic discourse, denomination, and memory within Materialist Discourse Analysis, by emphasizing the ideological role of language in the constitution of meanings and the production of history. It also provides critical insights for reflecting on the social and symbolic impacts of journalistic activity in the public sphere, especially in a politically and ideologically charged context and in an event of great importance to the history of Brazilian democracy and to the conditions of production that led to the investigation of former president Jair Bolsonaro for an attempted coup d’état.