What makes me cool? Estonian tweens' interpretative repertoires

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how “cool” as a concept is constructed by urban tweens in the post‐socialist country Estonia.

Design/methodology/approach

The data consist of 42 essays written by 12‐year‐old schoolchildren of a secondary school in Tallinn in 2007. Discourse analysis was used to discover interpretative repertoires, subject positions and ideological dilemmas in the essays.

Findings

“Cool” is primarily constructed within three interpretative repertoires: cool as appearance, cool as leisure and cool as sports and hobbies. The main subject positions are young expert consumer, fun‐lover/pleasure‐seeker, achiever and creator. The main ideological dilemma is between individual distinction and fitting and merging into the group.

Research limitations/implications

The essays are rather brief and normative statements of what qualifies as “cool”. However, a certain degree of social desirability constitutes the value of these texts, revealing what Estonian tweens consider to be norms and shared beliefs.

Practical implications

The paper addresses the prominent place consumerism occupies in tweens' everyday life. It opens up the world of meaning‐making of “cool” by tweens, offering an insight into which repertoires responsible marketers could use to empower young consumers.

Originality/value

The paper sheds light on tweens' complicated symbolic and material worlds in a post‐socialist context, providing a continuum of meanings of “cool” and its relationships with the consumer and peer culture.

Citation

Keller, M. and Kalmus, V. (2009), "What makes me cool? Estonian tweens' interpretative repertoires", Young Consumers, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 329-341. https://doi.org/10.1108/17473610911007157