Childhood and care in Argentine audiovisual advertising. An approach from the Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This exploratory-analytical article investigates the representations of care in childhood in audiovisual advertisements that circulated on Argentine television channels. To address it, elements of Discourse Analysis are combined with the perspective provided by the Sociology of Childhood and Care Studies. This work also takes up two previous elaborations by Viviana Minzi (2006) and Juan Gómez Espino and Juan Blanco López (2005) that serve as a trigger to develop its own classifications that arise from the analysis of a corpus made up of 53 advertisements. The five typifications to classify the children represented there are receptive childhood, resistant childhood, dialoguing childhood, imitative childhood and imaginable childhood. This elaboration recognizes, as a conclusion, an adult protagonism even though the spot in question talks about children. In addition, the products are positioned as mediators in the relationship between children and adults. In this article, we see advertising discourse assuming an expert ethos regarding the needs of children.