HOUSE DEFEATS DILMA, AND MINAS FAILS AÉCIO: A FUNCTIONAL-COGNITIVE ANALYSIS OF BRAZILIAN NEWSPAPER HEADLINES

This paper intends to evaluate Brazilian newspaper headlines under the perspective of functional-cognitive Linguistics. How do headlines affect the cognitive process of reality and ideology acquisition? We analyzed headlines published at O Globo and Folha de S. Paulo newspapers, collected between October 6th and October 31st 2014 (from the 2nd round definition to the election results). We evaluate features such as: metaphors and metonymies; strategies of voice changing; choices of (non-)prototypical alignments between grammatical relations, semantic and pragmatic roles; and the relation between such alignments and the representations built by the speeches produced by the politics section of Brazilian newspapers. Preliminary results show how headlines work characters: President Dilma does not have control over the situation, and Aecio is a victim of the circumstances.