Referencing on webvideos from YouTube of scientific popularization: A syncretic activity

• Main Authors: Marcos Filipe Zandonai, Maria Eduarda Giering
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) 2016-12-01
• Series: Calidoscópio
• Online Access: http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/11500

<p>This paper reports the building of discourse objects on a webvideo of scientific popularization taken from YouTube. Its main aim is examining the contribution of theatrical performance in referencing. We selected, for analysis, an audiovisual episode from the iBioMovies channel, attempting to understand how bodily movements of promoters take part in the textual cohesion and in the production of pragmatic effects, since, in this channel, the scientist’s body, as well as other imagistic resources, is used to create a type of “theater” that aims to explain science. The functioning of referencing is ascertained based on the classification of Cavalcante (2003, 2011). We adopt, moreover, a theoretical framework from Charaudeau (2008, 2009) assuming that features of communication contract of science mediatization overdetermine the choices of maintenance of the discursive topic. The audiovisual text is, here, conceived as a syncretic text according to the Semiotic’s approach of Greimas (Greimas and Courtés, 2013; Barros, 1990), given that it instances distinct modalities of language, which requires that we adopt concepts from Plastic Semiotics, according to Pietroforte (2008), and from nonverbal communication (Rector and Trinta, 2005), to thus map the semi-symbolism of this text. We proceed a qualitative research from which we obtain signification macrounities of the episode. The research results show points of co-referentiality between imagistic items and designations lexically expressed. Also, we seek to explain the occurrences of this “syncretic referencing” regarding their possible functions in the illocutionary project of the episode.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> referencing, YouTube, science mediatization, semiotics.</p>