Fashioning the self: Symbolic meanings of the mobile phone for youths in Japan.

摘要

The proliferation of the mobile phone has brought telephone-mediated communication to public spaces. One of the consequences of publicly displayed telephone mediated communication is that one communicates not only with others at a distance, but also with co-present others. If one is to develop a fuller understanding of the communicative roles that the mobile phone plays, the latter type of communication deserves an equal amount of attention as the former type of communication. Thus, the present dissertation proposed to examine the mobile phone communication with co-present others by resituating the mobile phone from a mere functional telephone medium in transit to a personal object. Drawing new theoretical approaches such as Apparatgeist and Machines That Become Us, combined with Goffman's notion of personal front and the notion of fashion, the dissertation examined the questions of how the mobile phone is a symbolic object for Japanese youths.;The findings of a survey and focus group interviews of Japanese college students suggest that the mobile phone has become an aestheticized object that resembles clothing. However, what the mobile phone means was not uniformly the same to the youths in Japan. There was a divergence in the way the study participants understand the mobile phone and the divergence appeared to be explained by fashion attentiveness and the way they use their mobile phones.;Nonetheless, a larger group of participants relate to the mobile phone as an aestheticized symbolic object. To them, the mobile phone is clothing, increasingly incorporated into their appearance. Through the mobile phone appearance, the Japanese youths seek to manage the expression of who they are and to whom they are connected. This is a process of defining the self, perceiving others, and redefining the self with the mobile phone. Furthermore, this self-reflexive process that involves the mobile phone is performed within the framework of the mobile phone fashion: rapidly changing norms of the mobile phone appearance. Thus, Japanese youths are fashioning the self; that is, they are shaping the self by participating in the mobile phone fashion.