A Semiotic Analysis Of College Students’ Dormitory Culture

The college dormitory culture is increasingly valued by researchers and management workers.From the perspective of students,the dormitory culture is of great significance to the mental health and personality development of college students.From the point of view of post-secondary education schools,the dormitory culture is subculture of campus culture as well as the foundation of campus climate.Symbol is a tool for expressing as well as understanding meaning,and culture is a collection of meaningful activities in human society(including individuals).Cultural semiotics is a meaning study that considers culture as a symbolic system.This is a qualitative study on dormitory culture from cultural semiotics perspective.Taking the School M as the case,the author conducts a thorough interview with college students from 11 dormitories.The symbolic presentation of the dormitory culture is extracted from the interview content,and formation and development of the symbols is also discussed.This study also interprets the dormitory cultural symbols based on member’s cultural background.Dormitory cultural symbols,which are extracted from School M interviews,are classed as material culture symbols,institutional culture symbols and behavioral culture symbols.Material culture symbols project emotion and pursue of college students.Behavioral culture symbols stand for the need for communication and leisure,and institutional culture symbols present different forcing meanings including formal and informal.According to the study result,college students agree on the existence of dormitory cultural symbols,but they are not active about culture construction.The development of dormitory cultural symbol is restricted since college dormitory is considered as a rest area and "gas station" for students instead of essential sites.This research reveals that even though there was a high expectation for dormitory culture construction,there is not effective utilization of the cultural symbols among dormitory members.In addition,the traditional "top-bottom"hierarchical cultural symbols may not fit dormitory members well,especially in the development process of dormitory culture and policies.It is essential to motivate the dormitory members’ needs and identification of cultural symbols,regardless of in the circumstance of self-generated or pre-active developed dormitory culture.Based on the current circumstance of School M,the current study proposed a framework of dormitory culture,including the developing "bottom-up" and positive dormitory cultural symbols,exerting the effectiveness of student supervisors in the empowerment process,facilitating the relationship between dormitory members,motivating students’ socialization needs,and planning variety of activities related to dormitory culture in order to disseminate cultural symbols.