The “Esperanto” of business... or how to be successful in life: A decolonial reading, using semiotics, of English language courses’ advertisements in Brazil

Abstract

The present paper seeks to analyze, based on the decolonial perspective, how the epistemic and ontological elements of the coloniality of power that operates through the linguistic imperialism of English are made present in the hierarchies of knowledge in marketing. For this, we use the generative trajectory, a semiotic theoretical model of meaning, to analyze advertisements of a transnational online English language company operating in Brazil, which reinforces in its communications the importance of learning English as the only way to succeed in the business world and to overcome the backwardness of local culture and language. The semiotic analysis helped to analyze the manipulation path and strategies and the concretization of the narratives present in the communication made through the ads, unveiling epistemic and ontological elements that make up the coloniality of power and its association to English, which was, in turn, related to the hierarchies of knowledge in marketing.