As camadas estilísticas: análise do estilo na divulgação científica no facebook

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to point out the stylistic changes that have occurred during the insertion of popular science pages on social networking sites, especially on Facebook, our object of analysis. In order to achieve this goal, we analyzed statements posted on the pages of the magazines Scientific American Brasil and Superinteressante on this social network. This study aims to encompass two different types of popular science magazines, resulting from a Bakhtinian point of view, discursive and stylistic differences. From observations of Bakhtin’s work, three stylistic layers are mobilized to support the qualitative analysis of our object of analysis: i) the style related to sociohistorical context; ii) the style of the genre and iii) the inter-subjective style. As a result of this analysis, elements related to social horizon and infrastructural possibilities - multimodal and technological resources present on Facebook - led to changes in style compared to more traditional media (magazines, newspapers). Before the popularization of the Internet in daily life, the popular science magazines had only a limited space of verbal interaction between publication and reader on their printed magazines. Thus, the possibility of interaction was basically restricted to the speech genre “reader letter.” Moreover, after the growth of the Internet for home use, the possibilities of interaction have grown. On social networking sites such as Facebook, verbal interaction is materialized mainly by the use of comments in which there is a plurality of styles. Finally, we analyze the way verbal production on science communication, both from readers and magazines is constituted by different genres and styles. Readers may verbally interact with greater freedom and variety of content and style, the popular science on Facebook tend to use an even higher degree of visual material on digital publications.