An investigation of the intertextual relations of strict and broad allusions in advertising posts shared on Instagram from a Text Linguistics’ perspective

Abstract

In recent decades, in an interactional sociocognitive perspective, Textual Linguistics theorists have developed studies focused on textual-discursive strategies in multimodal texts. Adopting this perspective, this article investigated the intertextual phenomena of strict and broad allusion in advertisements shared as Instagram posts. To do so, we based it on theories about the text, especially about intertextuality and advertising on Instagram (Piza, 2012; Sousa and coauthors, 2020; Pinto; Batista, 2021; Machado, 2024). Using a qualitative, documentary and descriptive methodology, we selected four advertisements published on the Hershey’s Brasil company account. Next, we described their contents and semiotic compositions to verify how strict and broad allusions manifest in them. The results demonstrate that the posts use both broad and strict processes to construct the company's advertising messages – including the simultaneous occurrence of both phenomena in the same text – so that modes such as images, colors and typography also perform both allusive functions. It is important to note the relevance of studies focused on this and other phenomena in multimodal texts, in order to expand other analytical categories and textual genres and to undertake reflections on new ways of textualizing, enhanced by digital technologies.