Chapter 8: Signifying Girlhood: Cultural Images of Girlhood and Semiotic Meaning-making by Girls in the 21st Century United States

The concept of Umwelt introduced by Jacob von Uexküll (1940/1982) provides a valuable lens for understanding girls’ relationships within the surrounding world. Umwelt is a German word that literally translates as environment. However, this simplified translation of the word loses much of the meaning that the concept of Umwelt actually intends to convey. A notion of Umwelt extends beyond the physical environment to include relationships between subjects and the meaning that subjects make of objects and organisms in their surrounding worlds. When applied to girlhood, Umwelt illuminates the process of meaning-making that girls participate in while simultaneously constructing a sense of their own subjectivity in the world.