Letreiros Populares do Recife: uma análise dos seus aspectos semânticos e morfológicos

Abstract

Popular letterings are cultural artifacts that are capable of situating one in time and space and capable of producing different senses in agreement with the historical and sociocultural contexts where they are inserted. In the urban scenario of Recife, where a varied array of signs, colours, forms, images and letters of the alphabet can be observed, these artifacts represent an important share of the material local culture since they resist to time and to cultural renovations and technological innovations. Hence, the objective of this work is to map, catalog, describe and interpret the semantic and morphological aspects of verbal and pictorial elements which comprise vernacular graphic manifestations encountered in the urban space of the metropolitan Region of Recife. In order to carry out the research, a methodology of analysis of the morphological-semantic classification has been developed. It has been achieved through the development of an online system of cataloguing. The results have enabled to outline an overview of identity of these vernacular manifestations through the cataloguing of 115 letterings found in eleven neighborhoods of Recife. The separation of the letterings has led to a total of 200 images of verbal elements and 72 images of pictorial elements. One can conclude that the letterings made without the use of moulds are still predominant in the sphere of vernacular manifestations and the graphic elements found in these artifacts have morphological and semantic features which make it possible to outline graphic patterns. Moreover, the existence of semantic, plastic and visual peculiarities might establish an interesting dialogue with other kinds of local manifestations and artifacts encountered in carnival, folklore and colonial architecture. Upon presenting a wide array of possibilities of analysis, it has been concluded that many unexplored characteristics which are part of this popular manifestation universe might be applied in the process of child education based on the creation of artifacts which stimulate learning through stimuli to child sensorial experiences. Thus, at the end of the research, a proposal of applying the achieved results in a ludic artifact in an adapted version of the classical game Guess Who, named Cara a Cara is made.