App deliverers in The Entrepreneur’s cartoons: a discursive analysis

Abstract

This article aimed to analyze cartoons that deal with the theme of the work of app delivery workers, seeking to discursively understand their mode of operation. For this, it relied on the theoretical-methodological apparatus of Materialist Discourse Analysis at the interface with the Sociology of Work. The analytical corpus consists of cartoons by the cartoonist Toni D'Agostinho, more precisely his cartoons belonging to the series entitled “The Entrepreneurs”. The results of the analyzes showed that, through the linguistic-discursive resource of irony, the cartoons deconstruct the discourse of entrepreneurship that is in the basis of the discourse of application companies, highlighting insecurity, vulnerability and precariousness of work in the neoliberal era.

Keywords:
App delivery workers; cartoons; discourse; the precarization of work; uberization