Chap 7: Style

Style when the resources become global products such as magazine texts. Combines individual and social styles. 144. That mKes this category fuzzy. Characterized by shared consumer behavior - buying, consuming, etc. Social because signified by appearances, and the meanings of those appearances work by social and established code. Those elaborations are deliberately produced and disseminated by experts. 145. Meanings are not unconscious but deliberately. Signifiers of lifestyle are already loaded with cultural meaning, unlike those of individual style. 146.

Remainder of chapter looks at styles as they occur in Cosmo.

Distinction between individual and lifestyle is tricky. But we can see it in the media resource employed, eg clothing as predetermined or other.

Individual seems to become social quickly, then lifestyle when marketed back to members of the social group.

Manner of the doing

tied to Identities and values, as in lifestyle

Has not been closely addressed in semiotics. This is an early attempt.

This chapter's coverage is messy - the conceptualizations are fuzzy and not up to rigor.

Common point is they articulate and enact a relation between individual freedom and social determination (constraint or regulation) 140.

The types are provided as an inventory, a repertoire, not pigeon holes. Not mutually exclusive.

Mark of distinction, difference, w/in the socially regulated realm.

What's expressed in style?

1 nothing. It's a fingerprint. It identifies but does not express.

2 expressive meaning of feelings and attitude, expresses personality - not the same thing as identity. Gives away the feeling, desires of speaking subject 141 (this goes back to speaker is constructed, not pre-originating). Could be seen as symptomatic of personality - goes to psychological analysis. Mark and evidence of biographical. Some are markers are deliberate, others unconscious. As acts of individual creation, they cannot be completely socially regulated. 141. Basis of interp goes to experiential metaphor. 141.

> I find this all a little weak, based too much on loose psychology, although the idea that individual style constructs the creator is useful. Perhaps inventorying individual style moves from the unconscious through the stylistic tic to the hyper-conscious ... Also, what gets identified by one agent as individual style might be more readily seen as social regulation.

Style as expressing social position, identity in terms of class, gender, etc - social categories. Not internally motivated but externally motivated. 143. We can see these as markers of social categories or as expressive of social feelings and attitudes - ideologies. But here lies confusion. 144. Accent is an example. Social style, not individual, a market and not expressive, highly regulated. Social and private realms coexist, but the social world regulates meanings socially. 144.