1001 mesclas de Bom Bril: o humor em anúncios impressos à luz da Teoria da Integração Conceitual

Abstract

Experts from different areas of knowledge often resort to the Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT) in an attempt to understand human cognition. Humor, as an essentially human and sociocognitive phenomenon, could not be left out of those investigations. The present research proposes to examine the interrelationships between multiple blends and the emergence of humor in the multimodal printed publications of one of the most representative Brazilian advertising brands Bombril. To do so, it analyzes 10 ads, advertised on the back cover of national magazines of great circulation, between the years of 1997 and 2007. These ads were randomly selected from the book Eterno - 1001 Bombril ads (2008), and were descriptively and qualitatively analyzed in the light of Cognitive Linguistics. The analytical model the study draws on is Jabłońska-Hood s (2015), which integrates all elements of the context, including the viewer. The assumption that blending can generate understandings about the phenomenon of humor motivated the search for answers to questions, such as: how is blending related to the process of humour in Bombril print ads? What are the possible impacts of multiple blends on the viewer's memory? The analysis suggests that CIT can describe the humorous nature of Bombril ads with relative explanatory adequacy, since it covers not only the linguistic indexes that activate humor, but also the intimate and personal aspects generated from the experiences of those who come across those ads, without neglecting other contextual indexes. The blends seem not only to favor the persuasive effect necessary for advertising, but also to reinforce the brand by affording its memorization by the public via networks of blends and their multiple nodes. The present study contributes to the field of Language Studies in general, since knowledge of the blending process can be used to train those who need to persuade in their professional spaces and actions. Future studies may explore other types of humor and the possibility of CIT contributing to explain them.