Abstract The purpose of the present study was to clarify and describe what image men and women present and communicate in their profiles on an online dating site. Further has been investigated if traditional gender roles and stereotypes are as pronounced on this online platform or if it offers a space to go beyond traditional formations. The theoretical framework of this study consisted of a social psychological idea and understanding of identity as well as a gender theoretical perspective. The methodological points of departure were hermeneutic and the data consisted of ten male and ten female member profiles on match.com. The results of the study was divided into three themes, the emphasis on positive qualities, the attractive body and project manager to one’s own life. The results showed that both men and women present a positive image of themselves in their profiles, both concerning inner and outer qualities. The results also indicated that a life with various social activities is of great importance, which implies a reflexive attitude towards life. To create an image of oneself is strenuous work in constant change. Regarding traditional gender roles and stereotypes about what is being regarded as male and female showed that traditional, stereotype ways of describing masculinity and femininity exist, but there were certain tendencies that a crossing of traditional formations takes place on this platform. However, the result of this study has also revealed that this happens to a lesser extent than we first thought.

Previous research using future time perspective or possible selves frameworks provided evidence that learners with definite and elaborate goals, and future self-guides are more motivated in school tasks (Reeve, 2009; Yowell, 2000), exert more effort, demonstrate persistence, and show greater performance (De Volder & Lens, 1982; Lens et al., 2002; Simons et al., 2000), and learners with positive possible selves were better able to face failure, demonstrated better performance, had higher levels of self-esteem, showed more persistence on tasks, and depicted greater motivation (Cross & Markus, 1994; Oyserman et al., 2004; Unemori et al., 2004). The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of future orientation constructs, future time perspective and possible selves, on Turkish college level learners' motivation to learn English and their identity construction, and how future projections of themselves as L2 users (the ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self, and feared L2 self) impacted their motivation to learn English and their identities. A total of 299 Turkish graduate students studying in the United States participated in the study. Also, this study examined the extent to which adding a measure of the feared L2 self construct contributed to explaining motivation to learn English and identity construction. The data were collected via surveys and interviews, and they were analyzed quantitatively, using qualitative data for triangulation. Findings suggested that the L2 motivational self-system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009) contributed to explaining Turkish learners' motivation to learn English and their oriented identities. Also, adding a feared L2 self variable to measures of the L2 motivational self system could help explain learners' identity construction but not their language learning motivation. In addition, future time perspective connectedness and value were not useful in explaining the L2 motivation, but future connectedness was found to be related to the ideal L2 self and feared L2 self, and valuing the future goals was related to the ought-to L2 self. Qualitative data showed that learners presented combination of several identities, including national and oriented. They imagined themselves as professional and successful English users, and their L2 related worries included losing their native language and being seen as "assimilated" or as "showing off" individuals. / text

Mad Pursuits: Therapeutic Narration in Postwar American Fiction examines three mid-century American novels—J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963)—in relation to the rise and popularization of psychoanalytic theory in America. The study historicizes these landmark novels as representing and interrogating postwar America’s confidence in the therapeutic capacity of narrative to redress psychological problems. Drawing on key concepts from narrative theory and the multidisciplinary field of narrative and identity studies, I argue that these texts develop a multi-layered, formal problematization of therapeutic narration: the narrativization of the self through modes of interpretation based on character action and development. The study, thus, investigates how the texts both critique the purported effectiveness of being healed through narrative means, as well as how they problematize their society’s investment in this method. I propose that the novels ultimately explore submerged possibilities for realizing what I call fugitive selves by creating self-representations that negotiate and exceed the confines of the paradigmatic models of plot and character of the period. In Chapter One, I argue that the ego and pop psychological movements during the postwar era encouraged the American public to define and realize psychological health, success and happiness through narrativized means. I show in Chapter Two how careful differentiation between narrative levels of interpretation in The Bell Jar reveals the novel’s complication of the self created in narrative, with and against the socio-cultural scripts and therapeutic assumptions of the period. Chapter Three concentrates on The Catcher in the Rye’s various methods of de-composing the narrative identity of the subject created through developmental and therapeutic narration. In the final chapter, I read Invisible Man as a satire of postwar psychoanalytic theory and method specifically concerning racialized narrative identities, and as a reflection on a method of enduring psychological illness. The Conclusion brings together several argumentative strands running throughout the dissertation regarding what the novels contrastively reveal about the perils, and even the possibilities, inherent in the narrativizing of the self in early postwar America.

[pt] Diante do atual interesse pelas escritas de construção de selves, haja vista a proliferação de suas manifestações e incessante processo de reinvenção, discutimos nesta dissertação o romance The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man de James Weldon Johnson, lançado anonimamente em 1912. Partindo da descrição das estratégias autobiográficas nele adotadas, evidenciamos seu caráter camaleônico e performático, tanto na construção da narrativa, quanto na vivência identitária do narrador-personagem. Nessa perspectiva, elucidamos como o procedimento literário adotado por Johnson deixa entrever também uma dimensão de crítica política e cultural. A partir disso, apresentamos uma leitura alternativa da obra através da conceituação do termo autobiografia cultural . Para tanto, refletimos sobre as categorias já existentes relativas ao espaço autobiográfico, mostrando seus limites e possibilidades: de um lado, discutimos suas insuficiências para pensar o romance; de outro, mostramos até que ponto corroboram a proposição do conceito alternativo, que aqui sugerido: o termo autobiografia cultural . / [en] Given the current interest in the writings of themselves construction, due to the proliferation of its manifestations which are in constant reinvention process, we discuss in this dissertation the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man written by James Weldon Johnson, issued anonymously in 1912. From the description of the autobiography strategies adopted in it, we show it s chameleonic and performative character, both in narrative construction and identity experience of the narrator-character. In this perspective, we elucidate how Johnson s literary procedure suggests a dimension of political and cultural criticism. From this moment, we present an alternative reading of the book through the definition of the term cultural autobiography . Therefore, we reflect on the categories of autobiographical space, highlighting theirs limits and possibilities – on one hand, we discuss theirs insufficient to think of the novel; on the other hand, we show to what extent they corroborate to define the alternative concept that it is suggest here: the term cultural autobiography . Keywords

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L’objet de ce travail est de rendre compte d’une triple invention. La première, au sens de « trouver », tient à la découverte fortuite des œuvres d’Henry Darger (1892-1973). La deuxième, qui est le fait de la réception institutionnelle, consiste à faire de l’écrivain et illustrateur un artiste d’Art Brut, créateur pour ainsi dire par accident. Qui plus est, cette approche privilégie sa production picturale, alors qu’il se considérait lui-même avant tout comme romancier. Ces deux inventions seront avant tout l’occasion d’exposer l’objet central de cette étude : l’invention de l’artiste par lui-même, rétabli en écrivain. Dans ses écrits, autobiographiques et fictionnels, Darger déploie une inquiétude volontaire qui lui permet de remettre en cause le primat de l’identité personnelle, en multipliant les Moi potentiels. L’état d’inquiétude interroge la relation au monde, bouleverse les rapports conventionnels entre réel et vrai, vrai et faux, et met au jour l’irréel, ce pan de la réalité que la fiction rend accessible. Enfin, Darger déploie une pratique littéraire en rapports à des œuvres préexistantes, véritable écriture-lectrice qui repose toutefois sur une mythologie personnelle, un ensemble de thèmes structuré en architecture de symboles. / The purpose of this study is to account for a triple invention. The first resultsfrom the incidental finding of Henry Darger’s works (1892-1973). The secondone, which is the result of institutional reception, consists in turning both writerand illustrator into an Outsider Artist, creator by accident, so to speak.Moreover, this approach favour his pictorial work, whereas he consideredhimself to be a novelist above all. These two inventions will give us theopportunity to present the main issue of this study : the artist’ self-creation,reclaiming the status of writer. In his writings, be they autobiographical or fiction, Darger displays a purposeful anxiety enabling him to question theprimacy of personal identity, hence multiplying potential selves. This purposefulanxiety questions his relation to the world and upsets the traditional structuresbetween what is real and what is true, right and wrong. It also unveils the unreal,this aspect of reality made available by fiction. Finally, Darger displays aliterally craft associated with pre-existing works, a fully-fledged writing-in-thereadingexperience still based upon a personal mythology: a set of themeswoven into an architecture of symbols.

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RESUMO O dissertação aborda o “Auto-conceito do comprador e as estruturas de decisão de consumidores norte-americanos e brasileiros “, através de uma pesquisa internacional comparada, com base no referencial teórico específico, modelos e hipóteses da tese de doutorado de Rowe, intitulada “Purchaser’s Self-Concept and Decision Frames". O referencial bibliográfico genérico com relação ao comportamento do consumidor, metodologia de pesquisa, pesquisa internacional comparada e a aculturação dos instrumentos de pesquisa (questionários, estímulos, situações hipotéticas), foi desenvolvido pelo autor brasileiro da dissertação de mestrado. As pesquisas exploratórias foram conduzidas junto a estudantes de graduação da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade e da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo e buscaram verificar como se comportaria no ambiente brasileiro o modelo teórico, desenvolvido e comprovado nos USA, bem como comparar os resultados das pesquisas norte-americana e brasileira. O modelo teórico desenvolve o Auto-conceito do comprador, a partir do auto-conceito funcional numa situação de compra e uso de um produto. O Auto-conceito do comprador teria duas dimensões ; Estilos de compra e Selves prováveis. O Auto-conceito do comprador influenciaria, através de qualquer uma de suas duas dimensões, Estilos de compra e Selves prováveis, a formação dos pontos de referência com relação a preço e criaria estruturas de decisão de ganho ou perda que influenciariam o desejo por um produto e a intenção de compra. Por último, o modelo hipotetiza que o tipo de intervenção de visualização permitiria prever a efetividade da visualização e os tipos de Selves prováveis a serem evocados pelo consumidor. Ainda, seria possível predizer a mudança de desejo por um produto através dos tipos de Selves prováveis. Finalmente, são apresentados na dissertação as implicações, conclusões e sugestões para futuras pesquisas e estudos.

RESUMO O dissertação aborda o “Auto-conceito do comprador e as estruturas de decisão de consumidores norte-americanos e brasileiros “, através de uma pesquisa internacional comparada, com base no referencial teórico específico, modelos e hipóteses da tese de doutorado de Rowe, intitulada “Purchaser’s Self-Concept and Decision Frames”. O referencial bibliográfico genérico com relação ao comportamento do consumidor, metodologia de pesquisa, pesquisa internacional comparada e a aculturação dos instrumentos de pesquisa (questionários, estímulos, situações hipotéticas), foi desenvolvido pelo autor brasileiro da dissertação de mestrado. As pesquisas exploratórias foram conduzidas junto a estudantes de graduação da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade e da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo e buscaram verificar como se comportaria no ambiente brasileiro o modelo teórico, desenvolvido e comprovado nos USA, bem como comparar os resultados das pesquisas norte-americana e brasileira. O modelo teórico desenvolve o Auto-conceito do comprador, a partir do auto-conceito funcional numa situação de compra e uso de um produto. O Auto-conceito do comprador teria duas dimensões ; Estilos de compra e Selves prováveis. O Auto-conceito do comprador influenciaria, através de qualquer uma de suas duas dimensões, Estilos de compra e Selves prováveis, a formação dos pontos de referência com relação a preço e criaria estruturas de decisão de ganho ou perda que influenciariam o desejo por um produto e a intenção de compra. Por último, o modelo hipotetiza que o tipo de intervenção de visualização permitiria prever a efetividade da visualização e os tipos de Selves prováveis a serem evocados pelo consumidor. Ainda, seria possível predizer a mudança de desejo por um produto através dos tipos de Selves prováveis. Finalmente, são apresentados na dissertação as implicações, conclusões e sugestões para futuras pesquisas e estudos.