O urubu malandro e a cultura amazônica: uma análise cognitiva da metáfora animal na história em quadrinhos Castanha do Pará

Abstract

This master's thesis focuses on the fields of knowledge involving cognition, language, and multimodality, with the objective of addressing, in light of the postulates of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff; Johnson, 2002 [1980]), the Multimodal Metaphor Theory (Forceville, 2006; 2008; 2017), and the Critical Metaphor Approach (Charteris-Black, 2004), the relationship between the animal metaphor HUMAN IS VULTURE and the zoomorphism of the protagonist Castanha in the production of meaning in the Comic Book Castanha do Pará, published in 2016 by Gidalti Oliveira Moura Júnior, which narrates the story of violence experienced at home and on the streets of Belém by this hybrid protagonist of human and vulture. Thus, we start from the assumption that the animal metaphor HUMAN IS VULTURE would structure the zoomorphism of the main character in the comic, motivated by the knowledge and perceptions of the Belém community regarding the negative character of the vulture. Furthermore, we suppose that the very title of the work uses the metonymy CASTANHA FOR PARÁ to conceptualize the protagonist's identity. Based on a qualitative, descriptive-interpretive methodology, we collected 38 out of the 461 comic strips that make up Castanha do Pará, grouped into eight thematic categories, to examine and explain the relationship between zoomorphism, metaphor, the multimodal elements constitutive of this textual genre, and the Amazonian knowledge of the people of Belém. The results show that, by licensing the zoomorphism of the protagonist, the metaphor HUMAN IS VULTURE structures the production of meaning in Castanha do Pará, allowing the author to establish a relationship between the discursive, cognitive, and ideological levels, as it narrates the tragic story of a hybrid boy who lives on the margins of society. Additionally, we observed that the metonymy CASTANHA FOR PARÁ contributes to the production of meaning in the comic, considering that, by pointing to the diversity of social groups in the Amazon region, the author conceptualizes poor and marginalized boys as socially unaccepted. In doing so, by establishing a contrast between the hegemonic knowledge of post-industrial societies, such as Belém, and the enchantment stories of the Amazonian communities, the comic book artist explores the polysemy of the conceptualization, both monomodal and/or multimodal, of the metaphor HUMAN IS VULTURE