ABSTRACT
This paper assumes that people can use objects as symbolic resources: they watch films to imagine places they will see one day, they keep objects that remind them of past events, they listen to music to change their mood, and they read about other people’s lives to guide their own (Hijmans, 2004; Gillespie, 2006; Zittoun, 2006). If this is so, then people can be changed by their uses of symbolic objects. But how do objects become symbolic in the first place? Adopting a developmental outlook, I distinguish the semiotic properties of objects (their socially acknowledgeable meaning) from their symbolic functions (how a specific person might use it). On the basis of Nelson’s work on children’s development (2006, 2007), I present four modes of representing which coexist in adults. The paper argues that objects become symbolic for a person, firstly, when their multiple semiotic modes meet the diversity of representing modes in the person, and can thus be rooted in embodied, event specific memories; and, secondly, as these modes of representing are rooted in interactions with significant others. The argument is exemplified through a case study.
