Abstract
This study aims to analyze the process of semiotic regulation in youth transition to adulthood from the perspectives of cultural developmental psychology and dialogical self theory. The focus is on the transformations that occur in youth’s self-system configurations during a critical developmental period. In this paper, we will advance the idea that semiotic regulation may lead to the construction of strong signs (i.e. those signs that bring rigidity to personal meaning systems)—and more specifically, of strong inhibitor signs—that block the emergence of alternative meanings, leading to rigidity in the self-system. We present a longitudinal case study of a young man who participated in a social project in Salvador, Bahia to illustrate the process. Data was collected through two rounds of in-depth interviews at ages 18 (1st round) and 21 (2nd round) years. Analysis followed a mapping of positions and counter-positions, as well as emerging tensions and their resolution over time and in different spheres of life (i.e. work, school, and family life). The idea is to show how negotiations of self-positions evolve and activate a mechanism of inhibition of hierarchical integration and construction of alternative future meanings, in which rigid meanings are created and do not allow for emergence of alternative life trajectories.
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Notes
Microgenetic, mesogenetic, and ontogenetic are mutually related levels of experiencing. The microgentetic level relates to the immediate living experience, occurring as the person faces the ever-new next time moment the sequence of irreversible time; mesogenetic level refers to relatively repetitive or recurrent situated activity frames or settings (i.e. going to school, going to work, taking a shower, eating lunch in a table with family members) that canalize subjective experiencing by setting up a range of possible forms for such experiencing to take place; ontogenetic level correspond to experiences that are transformed into relatively more stable meanings over time and start to guide the person within her life course (Valsiner 2007).
By “sermon” he means ‘lecture’ about his wrong doings.
Military enlisting is a duty for all males of 18 years old in Brasil.
Both of his parents and his older brother work at the bus transportation company.
The person’s field of experience becomes pervaded by a positive or negative feeling (for example, a feeling of love, compassion, or disgust, distrust, fear, etc.) that starts to organize and regulate her actions and thinking, without the possibility to specify the origin of that feeling. For example: the person becomes frightened and refrains from going for a walk on the street yet she is unable to specify the source of that feeling.
In the same way as he would be “lectured” by a priest in church or by his parents when he would do something wrong.
People create abundant meanings to deal with life experience, and these meanings, loaded with feelings, become organized in different levels of symbolization/abstraction. Meanings at lower levels of symbolization are linked to specific here-and-now situations, and meanings at higher levels of symbolization are meanings that rise above the here-and-now specific situation and become generalized or hyper-generalized (Cabell and Valsiner 2011).
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de Mattos, E., Chaves, A.M. Semiotic Regulation through Inhibitor Signs: Creating a Cycle of Rigid Meanings. Integr. psych. behav. 47, 95–122 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9223-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9223-x