The transition from modernity to post-modernity has been intensively studied from a macro, or social, perspective. There have been, however, few attempts to understand how such a transition is taking place from a micro, or individual, point of view. This is the main purpose of the present study. An analysis of 18 to 25-year-old men and women’s discourse about their use of cell phones made this inner transformation partially visible. This analysis made it possible to identify a process of interpenetration of semantic fields that makes some of the main characteristics of the post-modern world - its immediacy and fluidity - psychologically concrete.
Modernity; Post-modernity; Cell phones; Young people