Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: MATHEUS PINHEIRO DOS SANTOS

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : MATHEUS PINHEIRO DOS SANTOS
DATE: 19/10/2026
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: Google Meet
TITLE:

THE ETHOS OF HEROINES IN CONTEMPORARY SERIAL NARRATIVES:

A Discourse Analysis of the Image Construction of Wanda Maximoff (WandaVision) and
Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones)

KEY WORDS:

Keywords: Discourse Analysis. Discursive ethos. Female power. Serial narratives.

PAGES: 124
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Lingüística
SUMMARY:

This dissertation analyzed how the discourses of contemporary serial narratives construct
meanings about female power, examining the construction of self-images (ethos) that
sustain the trajectories of Wanda Maximoff (WandaVision) and Daenerys Targaryen (Game
of Thrones). Grounded in the interdisciplinary interface of Applied Linguistics and within
the theoretical-methodological framework of French Discourse Analysis, the research
mobilized the concept of discursive ethos (character, corporality, and guarantor) formulated
by Dominique Maingueneau (2005, 2008), articulating it with cultural studies, film theory,
and the critiques formulated by Teresa de Lauretis (1994), Silvia Federici (2017), and bell
hooks (2019) regarding cinema, representation, and technologies of gender. The corpus
consisted of audiovisual analytical cutouts (breakdown and frame extraction) of the
episodes "On a Very Special Episode..." (E05), "Previously On" (E08), and "The Series
Finale" (E09) of WandaVision, and the episodes "And Now His Watch Is Ended" (S3E04),
"Battle of the Bastards" (S6E09), and "The Bells" (S8E05) of Game of Thrones, collated
with their respective shared fictional universes. The results reveal that the construction of
the discursive ethos of both characters is marked by hybridization and identity
fragmentation, tensely navigating between the poles of heroine and villain, sovereign and
vulnerable. It is identified that themes such as motherhood, trauma, grief, isolation, and
emotional lack of control are mobilized to justify the exercise of their agencies. It is
concluded that, despite initially presenting discourses of female agency and ruptures with
patriarchal structures, the productions operate, in their outcomes, a flattening of the
protagonists' subjective complexity under the imperative of the spectacle and the
entertainment market, reenacting punitive technologies of gender and archaic discursive
formulas that associate the pinnacle of female power with irrationality, moral corruption, and self-destruction.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1476540 - CELLINA RODRIGUES MUNIZ
Externo ao Programa - 3943432 - JOSENILDO SOARES BEZERRA - nullExterno à Instituição - MÁRCIO GATTI - UFSCAR