The neglected diseases in the digital media: the health-disease social process, imagination and speech effects

Abstract

This work aims at analyzing, in the light of the Speech Analysis founded by Pêcheux (1969, 1975, 1983) the discursiveness of the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in the digital media focusing in the health-disease social process. The corpus was composed of ten discursive sequences collected from two sites, UOL and G1. In this analysis, we discussed the concepts of speech, subject, discursive memory, imagination and silencing. Furthermore, we discussed some theoretical contributions from the field of social sciences. The results point out that the NTDs are both symptoms and effects of the social disparity existing in the country; the effects of disregard and silencing towards the NTDs are inscribed in the very name of these diseases by the bias of the meanings of neglect. Moreover, there is silencing of meaning in the official speech of the public authority, via the negligence of this serious matter, as well as in the speech of the pharmaceutical industry, bearing in mind its economical interests, once the NTDs are signified by the imaginary of disease of the poor.