Abstinence from coherence

the discourse behind the federal government's “everything has its time” campaign

Abstract

Discourse is an object of transformation that is embedded in society and capable of acting as a shaper of behaviors and actions. Thus, understanding that Power has its lines of application through discourse becomes fundamental to analyzing its construction and its interaction within a discursive web, among individuals and institutions. Therefore, it becomes possible to identify a perpetuation of certain messages and behaviors, which corroborate and sustain constituent elements of power. The objective of this research is to understand how discursive interdiction manifests in the defined object of study, which is the Federal Government's advertising campaign to encourage the reduction of teenage pregnancy: "Everything in its own time: Adolescence first, pregnancy later." The campaign promotes sexual abstinence and the postponement of sexual initiation as contraceptive methods; however, these are recognized as flawed by the WHO (World Health Organization). To investigate the discourse behind the campaign and understand it in its formative lines, an interpretation based on the theories of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (2014) is used, grounding the concept of discourse, mapping its procedures, and delimiting the constituent elements of power, thus allowing for a framework regarding the relationships between power, knowledge, and violence. By reconciling the discourse present in the campaign's hashtag with the title and visual composition, it is possible to identify the perpetuation of a discourse that normalizes social and structural problems such as racism and paternal abandonment, in addition to blaming women. Therefore, it employs an ineffective policy that generates a lack of knowledge and, consequently, corroborates with what it tries to prevent.