Abstract

This thesis identifies the concept of transition as central to the construction of girlhood identity and examines this through three key discourses on girlhood: academic discourses, market discourses, and discourses of the self. By providing a discourse analysis of the construction of transitional girlhood identity through the lenses of the social world, consumer culture, and personal narrative, this research outlines the ways in which girls have been constructed as transitional, fluid, unfixed identities in need of surveillance, guidance and control--neither children nor adults, two identifications that encompass fixed points in the social world. A discussion of the fashion doll as a technology of gender that codes normative identity in girls' play provides an opportunity to discuss this discursive formation in the context of everyday social practices and acknowledges the ways in which these codes are negotiated in girls' interpretations and readings. While this element of identity construction is central to the ways in which girls interact in a variety of social territories, girls are able to actively engage with elements of the social world and carve out their own identities to become multidimensional, relational social subjects.