The architecture of self-in-motion: exploring young people’s construction of “becoming”

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 when they start to participate in the world of work. In this paper, we will advance the idea that semiotic regulation may lead to the construction of a future-oriented time perspective – and more specifically, to a new sense of becoming “professional” – through a cycle of production of innovation, leading to the construction of intransitive hierarchies of meaning and creating more flexibility in the self-system. We present a longitudinal case study of three young people who participated in a social project in Salvador, Bahia to illustrate the process. Data was collected through two rounds of in-depth interviews at ages18 (1^st round) and 21 (2^nd 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 and family life). The idea is to show how negotiations of self-positions evolve and activate a mechanism of hierarchical integration and differentiation of meanings, in which flexible meanings are created that allow for the emergence of alternative life trajectories, building an architecture of the self-in-motion.