Bodily regimes and meaning production in Bolsonaro’s visual discourse: a sociosemiotic perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the semiotic strategies through which Jair Bolsonaro’s body is represented in his Instagram profile. In order to do that, we build upon Landowski’s elliptic semiotic square, through which we display Bolsonaro’s different bodily postures and lifestyles. The diagram shows four bodily regimes through which the body of the current Brazilian president is portrayed: 1) the military body, 2) the buffoonish body, 3) the institutional body, 4) the popular body. The results show that the institutional body is the least present, while the other three reinforce Bolsonaro’s non-political identity and anti-establishment discourse.