Publicidade de roupas da diesel na aula de língua inglesa: por que ser um ‘Smart’ num mundo de ‘Stupids’..

Abstract

Capitalist society is known by its eagerness to stimulate consumerism, often unbridled, and by its devotion to venerate certain aesthetic standards. In the clothing advertising of Diesel’s campaign, named be stupid, object of this research, it has been observed that there is a subtle imposition of an audacious and cool pattern to the audience: the Diesel standard. Therefore, the aim of this research is to reflect upon the importance of analyzing some resources employed by Diesel in their advertisements to sell their products in order to raise a more critical consciousness in the reader and student of English Language (EL). Regarding the importance of the Other in the advertising, the self-destruction of the body and the role of ideology in advertising, the main theoretical basis is Saflate (2010). The concept of ideology is primarily based on Fernandes’ (2008) assumptions, as for him, ideology is a world’s view of the subject within a particular social group. Considering the study of advertising in general, its concept and its techniques, this investigation is relied basically on Sant'Anna (2005), but other authors are also considered. In terms of Diesel advertising, the most prominent support is the contributions of Maia (2011) and Santos and Monteiro (2015). The concept of reading in a foreign language is taken from Monteiro (2003). It is an exploratory qualitative research. Considering data collection, it was used two types of instruments: questionnaires (pre-test and post-test) and the transcript of an English for Special Purposes class. The class was lectured to 21 undergraduate students from different courses of the Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (in English: Federal University of Campina Grande). The collected data were analyzed qualitatively seeking to understand how EL students interpreted advertising texts and to what extent they believed that these texts could assist them in developing a more critical reading comprehension. As a result, it has been realized that most of the students seemed to show a more critical attitude concerning reading advertising in English.