The Language of Adolescence: An Anthropological Approach to the Youth Culture

This paper examines the youth culture as a cultural system. It proposes that the model of the youth culture as a contraculture does not point to many of the most distinctive properties of the adolescent subculture. In order to appreciate the differences between adult and adolescent orientations to social reality, we mustlook at the meanings that peer-group norms have for adolescents. From this perspective, the youth culture is a genuinely independent subculture: The socialcategories inherent in the adolescent status teminology provide the members of this age-grade with their own world view, life styles, and moral standards.