Economic crisis' metaphors: hypertextuality and discourse on on-line journalism

Abstract Considering the construction of meaning and the hypertextual materiality in on-line journalism, this article aims to analyze, based on the Discourse Analysis of the French orientation, the discursive production conditions throughout the processes of digital enunciation about the world economic crisis of 2008. In order to do that, we analyse the Lehman Brothers bank's crash in USA, which was thematized in several major on-line magazines, newspapers and news portals in Brazil, such as Estadao.com.br, Folha Online, Jornalnacional.globo.com, Globo.com, ISTOÉ Dinheiro and Veja.com, which expressed through a network of hypertextual links the fear of the markets about a possible global recession. It was observed in our analysis that the crisis metaphors present in the political and in the economic discourses are usually introduced into the media discourse by means of entextualization processes and digital hypertextualization with displacements of the ideas and meanings which circulate in the society.