Domesticating Feelings Through Short Message Service (SMS)

• Authors: Raluca Moise
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Starting from the ostentatious presence of the SMS for teenagers, I attempted to identify the values of its appropriation process and to outline the trajectory of SMS within teenage culture. My argument is that the SMS develops two interpenetrating usage trajectories: an individual and a collective line, the later bearing a marked cultural logic. The relation between the object of consumption and the individual is framed by specific values of usage and regulated by cultural practices. In this article, I will present the factors that regulate the individual usage of the SMS, incorporating this form of communication in teens’ universe. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Romania, I have carried out participant observation and interviews in places that are frequented by teenagers and I have collected and analyzed more than 300 text messages, written by teenagers in daily personal journals of communication.

Keywords

EN

communication; consumption; incorporation; intimacy; mobile phones; implicit rules

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: International Review of Social Research
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 145-162

Dates

published

2011-06-01

online

2015-05-04

Contributors

author

Raluca Moise

• University of Bucharest

References

• Akrich, M. (1993) ‘Les objets techniques et leurs utilisateurs. De la conception à l’action’. In B. Conein, N. Dodier and L. Thevenot (eds.) Les objets dans l’action. De la maison au laboratoire. Paris: EHESS.
• Bidart, C. (1997) L’amitié, un lien social. Paris: Editions La Découverte.
• Blandin, B. (2002) La construction du social par les objets. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• Bonnot, Th. (2002) La vie des objets. Paris: Maison Sciences de l’Homme.
• Bromberger, C. and Chevallier, D. (1999) (eds.) Carrières des objets: Innovation et Relances. Paris: Éditions de la Maison Sciences de l’Homme.
• De Gournay, Ch. (1997) «‘C’est personnel». La communication privée hors de ses murs’. Réseaux, 15(82-83): 21-39.
• De Gournay, Ch. and Smoreda, Zb. (2001) ‘La sociabilité téléphonique et son ancrage spatio-temporel.’ Paper for the Conference e-Usages, Paris, 12-14 June.
• Duby, G. and Ariès, Ph. (1985) L’Histoire de la vie privée. Paris: Seuil.
• Haddon, L. and Ling, R. (1998) ‘«One can talk about common manners!» The use of Mobile Phones in inappropriate situations’. In L. Haddon (ed.) Communications on the Move : The Experience of Mobile Telephony in the 1990s. Farsta: Telia.
• Haddon, L. (2004) Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life: a Concise Introduction and Research Guide. Oxford and New York: Berg.
• Horst, H. and Miller, D. (2006) The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. Oxford and New York: Berg.
• Horst, H. and Miller, D. (2005) ‘From Kinship to Link-up’. Current Anthropology, 46(5):755-778.
• Ionescu-Ruxăndroiu, L. (2003) Limbaj şi comunicare. Elemente de pragmatică lingvistică. Bucureşti: Editura All Educaţional.
• Johnsson-Smaragdi, U. (2001) ‘Media Use and Styles among the Young’. In S. Livingstone and M. Bovill (eds.) Children and Their Changing Media Environment. A European Comparative Study, pp. 113-140. Manwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Kaufmann, J.-C. (2007) [2002] Prima dimineaţă de după. Cum începe o poveste de dragoste [Premier matin. Comment naît une histoire d’amour] Bucureşti: Editura Humanitas.
• Ling, R. (2004) The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. San Francisco: Morgan Kauffman Publishers.
• Livingstone, S. (2002) Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment. London: Sage.
• Manceron, V., Leclerc, Ch., Houdart, S., Lelong, B. and Smoreda, Zb. (2001) ‘Processus de hiérarchisation au sein des relations sociales et diversification des modes de communication au moment de la naissance d’un premier enfant’. Paper for the conference e-Usages, Paris, 12-14 june.
• Millerand, F., Giroux, L. and Pons, C.-M. (1999) ‘Les usages d’internet chez les adolescents québécois’, Paper for the conference Usages and Services in Telecommunications, Arcachon, 7-9 june.
• Pasquier, D. (2005) Cultures lycéennes. La tyrannie de la majorité. Paris: Editions Autrement, Collections Mutations.
• Pierozak, I. (2003) Le français tchaté (une étude en trois dimensions – sociolinguistique, syntaxique et graphique – d’usages IRC). Thèse de Doctorat, Université de Provence / Marseille I.
• Rainie, L. (2001) ‘Technology and the Social World of American Teens’. Paper at workshop Domesticating the Internet, commercializing the family: a comparative look at families, the internet and issues of privacy, Haifa, 4-6 June.
• Warnier, J.-P. (1999) Construire la culture matérielle : L’Homme qui pensait avec ses doigts. Paris: PUF.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/irsr-2011-0016