Dialogical Analysis of Children’s Booklet “Coronavírus - Vamos nos Proteger”: Tensions between Scientific-Preventive and Political Governmental Discourses

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how different discourses are valuatively intertwined in the constitution of the “Cartilha para crianças: Coronavírus - vamos nos proteger” of the Ministry of Health, based on tense dialogical relationships between the discursive thematization of preventive guidelines for coping with the Covid-19 pandemic and other political government discourses. Dialogical studies of language, in the light of Bakhtin Circle´s writings and contemporary research in Dialogical Discourse Analysis (DDA), have guided the discussion. The results show that, in its socio-historical, cultural, ideological and verbal-visual dimensions, the semantic-axiological confluence between what has already been said and what is to come in the Cartilha engenders political-governmental discourse legitimated by hybrid refractions of the public-scientific-everyday ideological spheres, in a valued whole from which citizens' accessibility discourses emerge into guidance and into medical care by the SUS/government; euphemization of the consequences of the disease; denial of its seriousness; denial of the permanence of its pandemic status; family and governmental protection for children and for the elderly, among others.

Keywords:
Dialogical Discourse Analysis; Dialogical Relationships; Valuation; Cartilha; Pandemic