A marca Vale em disputa: sentidos mobilizados a partir da maior tragédia socioambiental do Brasil

Abstract

This work outlines and analyses the dispute between the meanings put into circulation by the Vale brand and by modified versions of it, after the rupture of the Fundão dam in Mariana (MG). The changes in the brand constitute an artistic form of expressing repudiation, a communication practice that is articulated in local and global scope due to the proportions of the tragedy and the size of the companies involved, Samarco and its parent companies, the Brazilian multinational Vale and the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton. The research then contemplates the brand – object of the academic field of Organizational Communication –, in the space of social media, in Instagram specifically. Based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of French Speech Analysis, the meanings mobilized are established in business discourse and counter-discourses (activist discourses) that materialize relations of power. To the general aim, of delineating such discourses to understand the dispute of meanings around the Vale brand, are added the specific objectives of: demonstrating the imbrication between image and verbal text in the processes of signification of the posts; contribute to the understanding of the image / social memory interface; and, in parallel with the discursive analysis, to observe in general the necessary skills for the interventions in the images. Finally, this dissertation confirms the importance of the discursive perspective for the understanding of the aforementioned communicational practice and of others for what is founder in them, the language.