Forfattere
Jamile César & Magnar Ødegård
Sammendrag
This work aims to understand how adolescents use branded clothing to negotiate the ambivalence between individual aspirations and social expectations. To achieve this, we employ a theoretical framework that integrates psychoanalysis and cultural semiotic psychology, focusing on the concepts of identifications and social suggestions. The data obtained through qualitative methodology, specifically semi-structured interviews conducted with Brazilian adolescents between 16 and 20 years old, were analyzed on two levels: individual and collective. This analysis enables us to imply that, in the context of this research, branded clothing is adopted as a tool in a deep and intricate identification process related to social suggestions. Furthermore, this work enabled us to develop a model of “limiting factors” affecting the expression of social suggestions and a better understanding of the dialogical nature of the identification process.