Discursive and technological practices in virtual education: considerations from cartoons

Abstract

Semiotics of culture, as well as cultural studies, have provided human sciences with many approaches that consider the constitutive power of discourses and semiotic practices in the activities that form the society. Consequently, cultural construction processes go through practices of signification and resignification, which include texts and multimodal discourses in the media, i.e., those that integrate several semiosis. The core of this work is the analysis of cartoons that reflect teaching activities during pandemic. According to Brait (1996, p. 34), “the cartoon is expressed by irony, which humor practice is based on political criticism. Caricature humor houses laugh and violence. Laugh is in the purposely paradoxical ambiguity that is present among what is said and the meaning to be communicated”. Thus, the cartoon genre is a humorous one, has verbal-visuality and caricature trait. According to Bakhtin (2010), a discursive function and a socio-communicative context – specific to each area – generate certain genres. Thus, cartoon is a genre that satirize a fact currently occurred, adding humor and criticism to it.