La religion dans la publicité : analyse des cas sur la bière à Kinshasa

Abstract

This article studies the relations between the rise of revivalist churches, and more globally the Christian religion, and the promotional discourses on beers in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1990s. We conducted in-depth socio-semiotic analyses of three commercials aired in 1993 and 1994. These analyses showed that Christian religious allusions peppered the texts of the advertisements, with references to the rhetoric of revivalist churches of the Congo and with marks of the Catholic religion, both of which we consider as euphemistic or “de-dramatizing” discourses that favour beers. These discourses make a corrective or “recategorizing” contribution (Bonhomme and Horak, 2009) to previous discourses on the depreciative nature of beer, which was (and still is) a victim in Kinshasa, due to the teachings of certain Pentecostal religious formations that are against the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Keywords

• socio-semiotics
• beer
• pentecostalism
• Catholic church
• happiness