Outdoor advertising in the critical literacy perspective

ABSTRACT Among a myriad of discursive genres that we are exposed everyday, we find commercial advertising, which study can greatly contribute to the critical literacy of learners of English as an additional language in the Brazilian context, due to its discursive function and multimodality. In order that, an analysis of an outdoor advertising of a cosmetic product of Nivea brand, which generated great polemic in the internet due to racist ideas, was chosen for analysis. Analysis was carried out by means of language capacities (Dolz et al., 1993; Cristovão; Stutz, 2011) and studies on multimodality (Kress; Van Leeuwen, 2006), resulting in the critical comprehension of the outdoor advertising due to the unveiling of the constituent elements of verb-visual language (wordplay, images, colors) and the parameters of the context of production of the text. To the teaching of English, the advertising and its analysis can subsidize the implementation of a didactic sequence around the genre commercial advertising in the English classroom of basic education. KEYWORDS: English Language; Commercial Advertising; Critical Literacy.