A Semiotic-Semantic Perspective on Lifestyle

The lifestyle is a sign-semantic process, with four phases necessary for its realization. First, we are confronted with communities which are identifiable via their identity structures. These identity structures are one of the important components of the sign sys tems. They are the general situations for the formation of the lifestyle process. Secondly, we are faced with the modes of social existence. These modes are the same Bushy forms of existence functioning based on a set of values and beliefs. Beliefs and values are realized on the basis of the process of verbalization and discursive legitimacy. This is the same which is accounted as a prerequisite for the lifestyle. In the third phase, the style of life is formed based on syntagmatic relations (continuity, anchoring and fixing a form), associative relations (the selection of a form, its preference due to its adjacency with another form) and valuable structures. These lifestyles relying on the modes of social existence are similar to the language recorded in collective memory, which can be used and also they cause the longevity of lifestyle. In the fourth phase, we face with a lifestyle formed at intersection with the modes of social existence. In fact, the role-playing of social actors and the insistence on these roles is based on the same belief and value via anchoring within the style. Here the important hint is that in these four phases, human beings act as the main axis of passing a very general and unstable status to a particular and contingent one, and also it is in a challenge to beliefs and values as a sign or part of the sign-semantic process. The key question here is that how can a person change a lifestyle with another one in locating the stratification process and the constant challenge with beliefs?