Chapter 2: Methodology & Theory

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY & THEORY

OUTLINE

To analyse the material in the corpus I will use three different approaches: voicing and heteroglossia (Bakhtin: 1981), analysing mood, modality and evaluative orientations (Lemke: 1997a, Halliday: 1985), and multi-modal discourse analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen: 1996, 2001). These are used to the extent that they are relevant and necessary for a good analysis, and to provide sufficient basis for an interpretation. Some entire texts are analysed using all three, while others are only be partially analysed or approached with fewer methods. Justifications for the appropriate mix will be given each time. The three methods for text analysis are to some degree framed by a discussion of their relationship to concepts of ideology and its cognitive, social and discursive dimensions (van Dijk: 1998).

MOTIVATION FOR METHOD SELECTION

Within the scope of the project it is necessary to tune the corpus and the number of methods to be both manageable and produce valid, interesting results. I have chosen to approach the data segments with three analytical tools, which each directly serve the research questions addressed in this paper, and also inform eachother.

A productive way to determine which interpretations readers and viewers may generate upon encountering a text or visual is to ask how they evaluate what they are seeing and reading. It is highly likely that a positive evaluation of a text stimulates a different interpretation than a negative evaluation would. To find out which textual and visual elements in the texts are open to evaluation, and specifically to which kind of evaluation, I will use Lemke’s system as described in section 2.2.

Upon determining in which category an evaluative textual or visual feature falls, I will be able to discuss to which possible interpretations these evaluations may lead. An interpretation, however, is not made in a vacuum, but by a reader or viewer. To analyze and describe the multiple voices explicitly and implicitly linked to the texts I find it useful to think of Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia. I have included section 2.1 on voicing and heteroglossia to identify ways to connect the evaluations and interpretations from an initial analysis to the actual social voices and groups who are likely to make and use these interpretations.

For the purpose of analyzing evaluation and linking it to interpretation and social strata, within the scope of this paper, a conceptual framework as described so far would suffice. However, in the corpus I also want to focus to some degree on the same polyvalent phenomenon in multi-modal texts. The visuals in such texts will need to be analyzed on the design level as well as in evaluative terms. Both these goals are met by concepts and tools for visual analysis produced by Kress and van Leeuwen, which engage with modality (evaluation), design, and social stratification.

Combined, the three methods are efficient enough to be manageable within the scope of the project, and complementary and complex enough to allow rich and productive interpretations of the data.

2.1. VOICING & HETEROGLOSSIA

To approach the socio-political issues presented, represented and incorporated in the corpus I found Bakhtin's ideas around heteroglossia especially useful (Bakhtin: 1981). These ideas center around what he calls 'dialogism': texts can only be understood in a dialogical framework, which makes language inherently contextual. Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia as the social stratification of language serves as the starting point for analysis of the different voices than can be heard, read, inserted, deduced, created, repressed, negated, avoided or anticipated when one engages in any way with the interpretation or production of discourse. As each utterance, whether verbal (audible), textual or visual, is inherently responsive to utterances that have occurred before or are anticipated afterwards, it follows that all utterances are in a sense multivoiced or polyphonic. Each 'voice' in the conversation, the text, and as I would argue also the visual, fits or follows to some degree a social stratification parallel to the organisation and distribution of social groups in society (class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, peer groups, etc.).

Bahktin makes a distinction between two kinds of semantic relationship: an ideological and an axiological one. The ideological features of discourse describe what we are talking about (content), while the axiological aspects represent how we feel or think about that content. Lemke refers to ideological as ideational, and axiological as evaluative, and I will consistently use his terminology in the rest of this paper (there are other cases of overlap and parallel, e.g. between Halliday and Lemke, and here I will also use Lemke's terms). To some degree the evaluative and the ideational are interrelated. Simply introducing a topic or theme and writing about it, is already an evaluation of importance, if nothing else. An evaluation, on the other hand, can never appear without some kind of representation of what is being evaluated (the evaluand, e.g. a proposition or proposal).

The notion of heterglossia both dramatically enriches as well as seriously complicates the work of the discourse analyst. The theory somehow promises and presupposes valuable insights, while practical application in analysis can be a real challenge. I have tried to organise my work in terms of the two notions of scale and complexity, both to explore what happens when one increases or decreases either one of them and to make the process of text analysis more comprehensible and effective. Naturally, scale and complexity are linked and to some degree interdependent in the sense that one is unlikely to remain stable when the other changes. In the sections on scale, complexity and polyvalence below I will go through some detail to lay out the practical implications of heteroglossia for analysis in this project.

SCALE

Evaluative meaning can be analysed on different scales of the social-semiotic system. 'John is finally coming' may be interpreted by John's boyfriend as an entirely desirable event and statement, while his parents or ex-boyfriend may have quite a different evaluation of this utterance. The statement itself can be analysed on different levels, or scales, for example:
- the text or utterance by itself,
- the text in relation to whom it was uttered,
- the text in relation to what was said before and/or after,
- the text in relation to the person who said it,
- the text in relation to others in the room who heard it,
- the text in relation to people who did not hear it (directly)
- the text in relation to social groups in which the speaker or addresse is a member,
- the text in relation to other communities and their value systems.

The list can be continued all the way up to the larger scale of the society where systems of norms and values can allow different interpretations on whether or not having a boyfriend in the first place (as a male) is desirable or not.

In the context of this paper, where multi-modal text rather than conversation is at the core of the analysis, the scale on which the text is analysed also greatly affects the interpretation. It can be argued that XY magazine, made by and for gay youth of which a certain percentage is 'under age', considers itself highly desirable, normative, important, warrantable etc. If we extend the number and social diversity of the overall heteroglossic system of voices in which the magazine exists, our analysis will become richer, larger, and more complex. Some of the young readers who send letters to the editor do not find XY, or some of XY's material, desirable. Some like the many photographs of attractive, young white boys, while others complain about the lack of ethnic-racial diversity or the overly sexual focus of the magazine. Other boys and men may find this sexual focus the most desirable thing about the magazine, while still other groups in society may find it unsuitable for minors, immoral, or even disgusting. Each text and visual in the magazine presents itself in the context of a single issue of the magazine, as well as in relation to the other issues, to other magazines, to all actual, possible and implied readers, and to the larger political, economic, and ideological realities that exist in the world.

Decisions about the scale of units of analysis play a role in the production as well as interpretation of every text, visual or utterance, and our choices are inherently political. What is true or likely on one level, can be less true or likely on another. What is desirable in a large, inclusive context, can be wholly undesirable to a specific individual. It is the job of the discourse analyst to decide on which levels to apply the analysis, and to be aware of the influence these decisions have on the data, the interpretations and the conclusions. This is not to say that studying fewer levels, or 'lower' levels along the range of the scale, is less valuable than studying the entire spectrum. With increasing scale comes an increase in work, practical needs such as time and resources, and possibly a less intense focus and attention to detail for each individual level and feature of the text. Apart from such considerations, a larger scale most likely results in higher complexity, when a multitude of voices, positions and intertexts come into play. This can result in new demands and constraints being imposed on theory and methodology, as well as the project and the researcher.In this study, the focus is at the scales of text excerpts, their role in the agenda of the magazine, and their intertextual connections to the controversy over A&F's ads and XY's criticism.

COMPLEXITY

The complexity of text meaning increases when the text is analyzed with more linguistic tools and from more discourse-analytic perspectives. Texts are inherently rich in potential and actual meaning. A productive way to discuss the relationship between scale and complexity in heteroglossic description and analysis may be Fairclough's notions of local and societal orders of discourse (Fairclough: 1992). He argues that the meaning of different elements that are subject to analysis in a text can change depending on where in a particular order of discourse the text is situated. Local orders of discourse refer to the immediate social, political, and institutional environments that surround the utterance or text. Societal orders of discourse signify the large-scale complexities of sets of relations between the different organisations and groups in society. For example: a conversation between a bank employee and a customer can be viewed either within the context of that particular bank (local), but also within the larger system of relations between consumers and banks, financial organisations, governments, capitalist sytems and globalisation (societal). It is probably fair to note that we are not dealing with a simple binary order (e.g. local/global, micro/macro), but that numerous positions, or scales, between local and societal exist. Identifying and categorising the most relevant scales, insofar that is possible and feasible, is one of the difficult tasks required for analysis of this sort.

If meaning depends so heavily on context, then only the study of socially situated discourse can lead to 'correct' or valuable interpretation. Fixed (i.e. context-independent) meaning, which holds up in every given situation and time, is an impossibility. Every utterance or text has a meaning potential (Halliday: 1985) which, I would argue, widens or narrows depending on the scale of analysis, simultaneously increasing or decreasing the levels of complexity we can find in text meaning to some degree. What I have called meaning potential here has also been described as the tactical polyvalence of discourses (Fairclough 1992: 59). The importance of studying socially situated discourse has become more widely accepted, but as Fairclough has argued, the polyvalent nature of discourse deserves more attention. The next section below will be dedicated to a discussion of polyvalence, which is an important aspect of the analysis, methodology and theory of this paper.

The level of complexity in an analysis also depends on our views of social dialogism.
Pujolar (2000), in his socio-linguistic study of Catalan youth culture, recognises that two of Bakhtin's basic aspects of dialogical process need to be considered if we want to understand how meaning is constructed:

1. The process where meaning in other texts is transformed through its re-use by a different voice, labeled reaccentuation, often comes in the form of double-voicing. I will deal with clear examples of this in the text analysis, where material from one source is adopted by another, precisely to change and contest its 'original' meaning and enforce meaning better suited to the new social context.

2. Bakhtin argues that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon. Form and content in discourse operate as one, and when contextualised lead to the formation of speech genres. Genres are constitutive of certain configurations of language use linked to particular social groups and contexts, which leads us back to the notion of social heteroglossia. I will attempt in this paper to also treat non-verbal discourse, such as text and visuals, as social phenomena, and thus analyse and interpret them with Bakhtin's notions in mind.

These two aspects have direct consequences for the level of complexity of the analysis, just as the level of complexity is directly related to the scale of the analysis. Where Bakhtin seems to distinguish between monologized and double-voiced discourses, I would like to argue that no discourse can ever be completely and inherently monological. It is the analyst who chooses the scale of the analysis and allows minimal or maximal consideration for form and context. Opening up to a larger scale can lead to a larger degree of reaccentuation, which forces us to consider more complex social-ideological systems of genres and their heteroglossic relations.

Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) mention Goffman's related theory of footing (Goffman: 1981) in the context of their work on multi-modality. Goffman's work deals with the different dimensions of the production of talk, where different agents participate in different ways in a communicative event. He distinguishes between the principal, the author and the animator. Prinicipal, here, refers to the person or institution whose position or beliefs are represented. Author refers to the person who actually words and designs the discourse that is supposed to convey the principal’s intended meaning. The animator, finally, is the actual person who delivers or acts out the words or situation that has been created by the author. I mention this concept not only because Kress and van Leeuwen explain that the concept of footing comes close to the distinction they make between between discourse, design and production. The concept also also adds yet another possible dimension of analysis, and a further degree of complexity, to the ones we have seen so far.

I have tried to point at only a very limited number of notions that may foreground different layers of complexity when they are applied in analysis of text. There are many more, but they remain outside the scope of this specific project. It seems that all notions of text complexity are in some way related to levels of scale, and this is an idea that may be worthwhile exploring in future research.

POLYVALENCE

I will briefly, and in a somewhat oversimplified manner, explain how I arrived at the term polyvalence to represent most accurately the meaning potential of the texts in the corpus. When the A&F Quarterly first caught my eye I interpreted the photography immediately as obviously targeting a gay male audience. Only after learning more about the company and hearing the corporate language about a ‘New England preppy’ lifestyle, about sports and straight jocks, did I shift from the fixed meaning that was obvious to me at first to a feeling of ambiguity. Admittedly, most heterosexual consumers may go through this process in a reversed order (i.e. first seeing the catalogue as enforcing and representing heteronormativity, then possibly only later recognising some homo-eroticism in it) and that in itself is an example of the importance of context when interpreting discourse. Ambiguity also seemed too simple a description of what was going on, as the texts and visuals did more than offer ‘either ? or’, which resulted in my attempts to categorise them as vague or fuzzy. I eventually arrived at the decision that the material must be interpreted as polysemous because several different kinds of meaning could obviously be read into the text. Finally, the realisation that different kinds of meaning are foregrounded in different readings depending on the reader/viewer and the context, led to the term polyvalence: a text (consisting of textual and/or visual information) has a potential of different meanings which are foregrounded or backgrounded depending on the reader/viewer and the intertextual, socio-political, and time-scale context. The intertextual dependence refers to the changing meaning of texts when they are seen in the context of other, somehow related texts that exist in the world. The socio-political aspects influence the construction of meaning depending on the reader's social class, gender, race, group affiliations, sexuality, and the political agenda they may pursue, oppose or be invested in. Time-scale is not really an element discussed in detail within the scope of this paper. It is nevertheless important to consider how different kinds of meaning in a text are realised depending on when a text is reviewed, and over which period of time meaning is constructed. For example: a youth magazine means something different to a teenager at the time when they are a teenager, compared to a second interpretation ten years later when they may be able to assess what influence those texts have had on their lives in the long run.

Interpretation or analysis of text is not a one-way street. An author (and/or narrator in some cases) of a text always assumes a certain position in relation to his intended, possible, and actual audience. This positition, or stance, of the author to the reader/viewer and its effect on the interpretation by the reader/viewer produces the dialogism of texts (Bakhtin, 1984). The way an audience is addressed in the text can affect the probability that they render a certain interpretation as more or less plausible, feasible, likely, deniable, et cetera. If we accept the polyvalent nature of text, then we need a way to assess how likely a particular interpretation is when the text is read or viewed by a certain audience, and why that is so. We can think of the degree to which an interpretation is likely on a scale from most to least likely, and so 'rank' the results of the analysis.

Michael Halliday uses the term polarity to describe the absolute positive and absolute negative in propositions and proposals (e.g. is / isn’t, do / don’t). As there are many options in between yes and no (e.g. maybe, sometimes), he introduces the notion of modality: intermediate degrees between the positive and negative poles. Modality and polarity are useful notions to employ in a discussion on valid methods to analyse systems of polyvalence in a particular corpus. However, as I am primarily interested in people’s values and beliefs related to the texts they write and read, a mere description of the grammatical technology of modality does not suffice. In producing and consuming discourse, people attach and insert evaluations to express their feelings and ideas about the content. These evaluations signal the reader, viewer, or analyst whether the author thinks what is being discussed is more or less true, desirable, important, etc. Therefore, analysing the evaluative markers in the text will tell us something about where on the scale between positive and negative the text-meaning may be (degree), and how the author thinks and feels about what is said in the text, to some degree. To expand Halliday’s notions so that they can include an analysis of values and beliefs in the text, I have found it useful to employ Jay Lemke’s method to analyse evaluative categories, which is discussed in the next section.

2.2. ANALYSING VISUAL AND VERBAL EVALUATIONS

A key method of linguistic analysis when considering issues of identity and conflicts of values between different communities or 'social voices of heteroglossia' is to look for distinctive semantic patterns of evaluations. A useful scheme for identifying the principal dimensions of evaluative language in verbal text is described in "Resources for Attitudinal Meaning: Evaluative Orientations in Text Semantics" (Lemke, 1998). It can be generalised to analysis of visual images (see Lemke on political cartoons, 1997), and there is a particular interest in seeing how evaluations are made jointly by combining visual and verbal elements. It seems at least as obvious that there are (homo-) erotic images or visual modes of expression as that there is (homo-) erotic language (Leap, 1996), and in popular media these usually work closely together. The principal thesis of this approach is that a large part of what makes text, discourse, or images (homo-) erotic, gay-oriented, or gay-indexical is the system of attitudes and values that is expressed and invoked.

I will be analysing the texts by looking at evaluations of textual elements and themes, based on the semantic categories for the evaluative attributes of propositions and proposals. The principal dimensions of evaluation for propositions, which are also useful generally for identifying evaluative patterns, are listed below. Each category has been color-coded and examples with color-identified evaluators are given each time. These same color codes will be used throughout this paper.

DESIRABLITY-- evaluations of the goodness, desirability, wickedness, beauty, ugliness, etc. (many subtypes);

It is simply wonderful that John is coming / that John may come.
It is really horrible that John is coming / that John may come.

NORMATIVITY -- evaluations of how necessary, appropriate, incumbent, permissible, forbidden, inappropriate something is;

It is quite necessary that John come / that John is coming.
It is entirely appropriate that John come / that John is coming.

WARRANTABILITY -- evaluations of the truth, certainty, probability, dubiousness, uncertainty, etc. of a state of affairs;

It is quite possible that John is coming / that John may come.
It is very doubtful that / whether John is coming.

USUALITY -- evaluations of the frequency, typicality, expectedness, surprise value, or shock of a state of affairs;

It is quite normal that John is coming / may come.
It is highly surprising that John is coming / may come.

IMPORTANCE -- evaluations of the significance, importance, triviality of something;

It is very important that John is coming / may come.
It is really quite trivial that John is coming / may come.

COMPREHENSIBILITY -- evaluations of how comprehensible or mysterious a state of affair is;

It is perfectly understandable that John is coming / that John may come.
It is quite mysterious that John is coming / why John is coming.

HUMOROUSNESS-- evaluations of how funny, ironic, serious, or humorous something is;

It is just hilarious that John is coming! / that John may come.
It is ironic that John is coming / may come.

All evaluations are potentially matters of degree; all have negatives or opposites; all can be expressed as attributes of propositions in the frame: ‘Its is very [attributive adjective] that [proposition: e.g. John is coming].’ There is a somewhat larger class of evaluative attributes of persons and things, and there are some borderline cases, such as Ability and Temporariness. In general, evaluations express the attitude of the speaker, or the projected attitude of some other social viewpoint, toward a state of affairs. Texts construct complex systems of relationship among the evaluative orientations of different social viewpoints (heteroglossia) and position various actors, agents, and social voices within the system. As Lemke notes, it is also common for lexis from one evaluative dimension to be metaphorically substituted for that of another dimension, and a single lexical item can conflate evaluations on two and sometimes even three dimensions, though this is less common. Dimensions can be identified and disambiguated by substituting synonyms and by constructing test phrases that match or contrast polarities, e.g. : It is very important, but highly undesirable that [John is coming]. Both realis propositions [that John is coming] and irrealis propositions [that John come] can be evaluated. Evaluations also ‘propagate’ by logical entailment or inference from one phrase or clause to another, and from phrases and clauses to their functional semantic elements (agent, patient, process, circumstance). (For more details, see Lemke, 1998).

2.3. MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Today, in a time when most teenagers and adults spend much of their time in a primarily audio-visual world, it is no longer sufficient to consider only written text as influencing identity, socio-political and economic processes, ideology, etc. Children still spend much of their time in school with books (which have become increasingly multi-modal), but most of their free time is spent with music, videogames, television, magazines and computers. Adults increasingly encounter visual and multi-modal demands in the workplace as they are required to make computer-generated presentations and interpret those of others. At home the internet, digital photography and video, website building, dvd, and an overwhelming entertainment industry in television, film and magazines immerse the consumer in a world where text is less dominant than it used to be. Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress have been calling for some years for a visual literacy campaign in schools, so that young people learn to work, play, and critically engage with the multimodal and multimedia world.

It is impossible to give a complete overview of recent work in the field of multimodal theory and analyses within the scope of this project. I would, however, like to use three elements of Kress’ and van Leeuwen’s work, because they are useful in the modest approach to multimodality that I seek. My objective is to see whether multimodal analysis informs monomodal analysis productively, and if so in what ways. Obviously there is room for a lot more research here, but I will treat the work in this paper as a pilot project for possible future studies.

1. Strata

Kress and van Leeuwen distinguish four domains in which meaning is made within the multimodal world: discourse, design, production and distribution. In doing so, they expand their discussion on multimodal analysis to what they call a theory of multimodal communication. They define communication as a process in which both interpretation and production play a role. The four domains are defined as (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001);

Discourse: socially situated forms of knowledge about reality.
Design: conceptualisations of the form of semiotic products.
Production: Articulation in material form of semiotic products.
Distribution: technical re-coding of semiotic products for recording or distribution.
When approaching items in the corpus, I will touch on the relationships among these domains, as they influence the way that the message is created and conveyed.

2. Composition

In their chapter on composition Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) discuss the way that representational and interactive meanings relate to each other through three interrelated systems;

1: Information value: placing elements in visuals in particular zones (left, right bottom, top, margin, center) to convey different kinds of meaning and information.
2: Salience: size, contrast, color, etcetera, are used to foreground or background objects.
3: Framing: framing devices (lines, colors) can connect or disconnect one item from an another.

Again, when appropriate I will show examples of these systems in the analysis.

3. Modality

Kress and van Leeuwen have also adapted Halliday’s notion of modality to discuss levels of reality, fiction, and truth in images. By using visuals in a text, or by creating any semiotic product or event, producers not only communicate a degree of truth regarding their own position, but also convey information on truth or untruth related to values and beliefs of other groups. Obviously, information on modality can be distilled from visuals, text, and especially the combination of the two.

I would like to extend the concept of modality in visual images to include not just a discussion of truth or untruth, but also the full range of Lemke’s evaluative categories that expands Halliday’s ‘linguistic notion’ of modality which has been discussed earlier. Modality can then refer to degrees of desirability, usuality, importance, normativity, comprehensibility, humorousness, as well as warrantability.

As mentioned previously, resources for evaluative meaning may also be found in visuals, and the methods of analysis already described can be effectively applied to point at such meanings. In some cases, however, the evaluative stance may be that of the image and text taken in conjunction, even though it may not be unambiguous for just the image or just the text (e.g. a caption or accompanying text) alone. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001) have proposed several evaluative dimensions for visual feature criteria and these will be used when they seem appropriate to the genres being analysed. Lemke (1997a) also considers jointly produced evaluations when text and image are combined.

A key issue in this paper is how sexual desirability is coded visually as well as verbally, and in some cases more explicit verbal codings help us establish the visual conventions. The visual and the verbal may be at odds, however, for ideological reasons. The text, for example, may permit a verbal deniability of what is portrayed as visually desirable, but ideologically taboo.

2.4 POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IDEOLOGY

In his book Ideology, Teun van Dijk sets up an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ideology that covers the interaction between three domains: discourse, cognition and society. He claims that language, discourse, is the most important carrier of ideological information. This information, these beliefs and values, are otherwise ‘merely’ part of the cognitive domain and live in our minds. They are formed, informed and transformed in the cognitive, but communicated and interpreted through discourse. Cognition, communication and discourse all ‘happen’ in the real world: in society. The physical realities of our lives, our bodies, geographical locations, jobs, families, relationships, socio-political alliances, all form the stage on which these ideologies operate and through which they are created and recreated. In short, a discussion of ideology, according to van Dijk, can never be complete without taking all three domains and their complex relationships into account.

Obviously the focus of this paper is on the discursive domain. The arguments for verbal and written language as carriers and conveyors of ideological material are strong and have been widely accepted by academics and others alike. It is an important goal in this paper to show how ideologies operate in the texts that are analysed. However, I also want to explore the role visual images play in the way ideological meaning is constructed, and therefore need to expand an analysis which is mostly text-oriented to one that is more oriented towards a multimodal approach. Textual analysis, visual analysis, and multimodal analysis all have an important place in this paper. Within the limited scope of this project, I intend to explore how meaning can be constructed differently depending on which of these approaches is used. It is possible that underlying ideological positions and agendas are maintained, disguised, or denied in a variety of ways which would not be revealed by analysing the text or visual alone. In the concluding chapter I will discuss whether or not the data showed enough reasons to justify a larger study of the implications a multimodal approach may have for ideological analysis of discourse.

2.5 YOUTH CULTURE & QUEER THEORY

A discussion that relates popular youth media discourses to issues around culture, class and ideology is certainly relevant and necessary in the context of this project. Polyvalent technologies applied to the creation, use and re-use of text, may provide ways of thinking about strategies young people use to accommodate deviant behavior and expression. In this sense, polyvalence allows young people to move into areas generally considered to be outside the normative guidelines in place for their social group, while maintaining an official status inside the mainstream framework. Producers and users of texts are aware that some key features or markers of the stratified social class need to be present in the text for that text to be accepted by the group. Simultaneously, the same features or other features can be read differently to create meaning not generally considered usual or acceptable in the group. An A&F Catalog, for example, can de displayed on the living room table in a fraternity house by straight college jocks as an affirmation of white, middle class, masculine values. Simultaneously though, it can be considered a homo-erotic marker by anyone who put it there or sees it there, while the official hetero-normative story can be maintained when necessary. De Certeau (1984) has discussed ways in which people appropriate parts of the culture around them in tactical ways to put them to their own use, which can be quite different from the way the producers of the material intended it to be used.

If polyvalent technologies do allow for deniable deviance there are obvious linkages to sociological research in the areas of youth cultures and subcultures. The ways in which young people make meaning out of these texts, and use them for their own purposes, most likely corresponds or is related in some way to the complexly stratified social classes and groups they belong to. However, a study of these linkages and relationships is too large and complex for the scope of this project, which focuses mainly on the linguistic and semiotic systems used to provide the basis for the existence of polyvalence.

Along the same lines, parts of queer theory may provide insights into how polyvalent meaning-making is used in the construction of gay identity. Especially in regard to the materials used for analyses in this project, where homo-erotic subtexts are plentiful, such an approach may be fruitful. The introduction of queer theory into socio-cultural theory has put more emphasis on the importance of sexuality in the construction and manifestation of identity, as well as our world view at large. In the case of A&F, there are interesting reversals in the way that sexual orientation or taste can influence interpretation of popular culture text, especially sexually charged text such as Abercombie's. Gay boys may read A&F's representation of supposedly hetero-normative college boy life as homo-erotic and obviously open to a gay reading. Straight boys may read it as straight. A straight boy may, however, also read it as an officially straight representation which is so obviously open to a gay reading, that keeping the catalog on the coffee table may cause friends to start doubting his sexual orientation. Obviously I am over-simplifying the categories of sexual orientation and taste here to make a point, and the actual range of sexualities, interpretations and the dynamics between them is infinitely more complicated.

It is not the goal of this study to relate the concept of polyvalence to a critical queer theory or gay studies perspective, but further work in this area would most likely bring interesting contributions. Popular media play an important role in the enactment of identity by young people, and the influences of sexually accented texts, which are plentiful in popular culture, is certainly also a rich area for future research.