Dialoguing with the self
Prayer is an example of autocommunication and Muslim cultures are more oriented towards this mechanism ¾ Ramadan[vii], for instance, may be seen as one of the most significant cultural practices of autocommunication; it is expressed in the form of fast with inherent symbolic endowment with meanings of purification and release. Nonetheless, it affronts several changes when is inserted in non-Muslim environments. This device works with the introduction of secondary codes to the information contents. For getting acquainted with the new host environment, our teenagers introduce a series of codes for adapting the native Basque codes to their own codes. The first codes throughout they start to remodel themselves are the new natural languages — primary modeling systems (Lotman & Uspensky, 1979, p. 68), which must master for translating the everyday reality. Based on the interviews realized we can say that most of them stressed the importance of learning Spanish. This linguistic commitment did not function in the same way with Basque, though. Besides the linguistic codes, there are some others that function as secondary ones to the information content i.e., religious code, culinary code, dress code and so on. I consider style as one of the most important codes that our interviewees use to autocommunicate. With regard to this matter, Dick Hebdidge (1979) sees style, and its immanent generation process, as a complex question that is not only related with the organization of intentional, meaningful behavioral patterns, but also with distinctive behavioral practices; people express several meanings that are related with identification and playing specific roles in society, among others “who they are” in terms of belonging either to a group, or a class, but also in terms of gender, age and so on. Thereby, individuals (particularly during the adolescence) seek to convey information about themselves by means of what they say, or what they dress, but also by virtue of the people whom they spend time and hang out with. These processes: negating, ignoring, stressing, or re-interpreting received meanings, are style-generation processes that are developed both in terms of content (as a self-image), and in terms of portable symbolic objects. I argue that this is an autocommunicative process because it helps to organize their individuality. Strictly speaking, through autocommunication the “me” is transformed, readjusting his individuality” (Lotman 1998, p. 28). Therefore, we can see style as a sign-vehicle that acts as a secondary code combining the development of other semiotic resources like attitudes, feelings, or the intentions of marking differences with other individuals. This is closely related with Theo van Leeuwen’s distinction between two functions of style: social and individual. In the first place, style is social because not only permits people to express self-interpretations of the everyday life, but their own values and attitudes, as well as sharing them with other peers. On the other hand, the individual function of style lies on the fact that it introduces the very important resource of choice; by means of it people decide how to talk, to dress, to behave and to act according to certain patterns of age, gender, class, occupation, or faith. They are subjectively internalized and expressed as individual choices (Van Leeuwen, 2009, p. 212). Therefore style, as the result of this autocommunication process, enhances the self of the people and starts to be “spoken” through the multiple ways in which they want to express two main issues: first, their feeling of membership and commitment to a certain group; secondly the need to differ from their same-age peers within the same group, or among other groups. The former is carried out by means of self-description and self-identification, choosing one identity or another. The latter is expressed through the construction of a personal style that is deployed as a set of unordered culturally meaningful signifiers: the way in which clothes are worn, the readjustment of traditional Muslim dress code, the hairstyle, the color of this or that jacket, or even in how certain physical artifacts and symbols are deployed on the body: tattoos, the amount of earrings they use, the material of the necklaces they wear, and so on.
A further particular signifier that is salient in individual style refers to choosing one type of speech or another; I mean the use of slangs (specific languages). By way of slangs we can realize and measure different beliefs of the speaker. In addition, it is possible to contrast certain facts that are interpreted individually. Our informants can choose among the languages of streets, or certain conversational style that connotes the way in which they speak with a set of peers, or with their acquaintances.
Summing up, we have seen how Moroccan immigrant youth carries out some autocommunicative processes that will unleash in the generation of individual styles. Autocommunication provides a transformation of the self-image, translating the existing information into new signifiers that flow with the forms of codes, instead of messages. What occurs is not the creation of objects and meanings from nowhere, but a transformation and readjustment of what is already given within the Basque society, into new patterns that are new meaning-carriers, and a subsequent adaptation into the new context. By introducing the code of style we can see how people is stimulated and enhanced on their selves, creating attachment and awareness of membership to certain groups. Style also remarks the action of choosing, inserting sentiments of self-modeling and change. I argue that through the construction of an own style, Moroccan youth is walking on the first pathways to self-description and the seeking of identity. In the next section I will delve in the issue of self-description.