Taking into account the concept of reading as a process that allows the reader to relate a particular discourse with previous ones, this article illustrates how an analysis, subsidized by systemic functional categories, can reveal meanings that might be naturalized as common sense in texts belonging to different genres. This effort of analysis can be used pedagogically to educate critical readers in the classroom. Within this perspective, we analyze the meanings built in an advertising billboard and its repercussion in news articles published in Brazilian online newspapers during the 2011Carnival Festival. In these news articles, the analysis of the ideational elements demonstrates a contradiction of representations which project two views to consumers: libertine or laid-back. The modality analysis indicates the preference for speculative epistemic propositions which contribute to give confidence to the assertions. The analysis of the billboard demonstrates that the advertising campaign was articulated to reach a heterogenic group of consumers, exploring the fact that in contemporary society we assume - and identify ourselves - with different roles. As a result, it is possible to verify that different professional identities can coexist, without having one denying the other.
systemic functional linguistics; ideational and interpersonal meanings; identity
