The text between entextualization and ethnography: a media news event on subaltern beauties and their multiple recontextualizations

Abstract

This article puts forth a methodology for reading and analyzing texts that seriously considers the language-society nexus. Inscribed at once in the pragmatic and linguistic-anthropological perspectives, the article analyzes a mediated event – namely, the Profissão Reporter TV show of Aug. 30, 2011, which enacted, side by side, the beauty contests “Miss Presidiária” (Brasília), “Miss Gay Brasil” (Juiz de Fora) and “Beleza Nordestina” (Rio de Janeiro) – so as to consider the fact that the event not only entextualized (i.e., caused to travel, in terms of BAUMAN; BRIGGS, 1990) talk and images from other contexts, but also imagined the trajectories of reception of the event. We looked for ethnographic evidence of the modes of production and circulation of the text, from a participant observation with subjects who variously received such mediated event.