Dimensiuni ale limbajului n context carceral

with producing street culture are teenagers. More often than not, they act against the well established social
norms and cultural features of the old and try to create new ones, more suitable to their personalities. As a
consequence, groups having the same interests and similar ways of expressing them appear. As Brake (1985:
6) indicates “membership of a subculture necessarily involves membership of a class culture and the
subculture may be an extension of, or in opposition to, the class culture”. This means that youth culture as
well needs to report itself to a consecrated system of values, the one at hand being the adults’ one. Thus, as
Fiske (1989: 36) indicates, subcultures create their products by using materials which have been previously
created by the class culture. Taking the argument further, one could say that street groups simply take what
they like from production and use it to revolt against society and its fixed norms. Youth is characterized by
another aspect as well: originality. Each group tries to come up with new fashions in order to impress and get
some attention from the members of the class culture. These fashions are easily expressed at several levels:
attitude, clothing, visual arts, music, language, etc.
Street attitude is about surviving in street milieu. Only those who are familiar with the know-how of
the streets manage to integrate in the gang. In fact, I would go as far as stating that some kind of street attitude
must be there before one actually becomes a member in a gang. In time, one improves these qualities under
the close surveillance of an older member of the group. The survival of a certain group is assured exactly by
this practice: the oldies teach the newbies, the know-how passes from generation to generation, and as long as
each generation improves, i.e. changes to some extent some of the features, the group lives.
But what exactly is street attitude? Some would argue that it is the result of language, clothing and
art put together. Although we do not contradict them, we like to consider attitude as a manifestation with a
more narrow range of action. For us attitude is a state of mind that is expressed mainly through a series of
gestures.A young member must indeed have some physical features which could place him in a certain
subculture, such as the way of walking (limping, swinging, hopping, on the heels, stepping a bit outside – like
a cowboy, keeping one’s hands in the pockets), the position of the body, the face mimics or the gaze. All these
bodily expressions work together in order to give birth to the “yob”, the “dude”, the “bro”, etc.
This image is completed by the clothing. Like attitude, style is a non-verbal mean of expression, of
clearly stating one’s identity, becoming a defining feature of every subculture. Young people have a wide
range of possibilities when it comes to choosing one’s style, because “Clothes are so many things at once. Our
social shells, the system of signals with which we broadcast our intentions, are often the projection of our
fantasy selves… clothes are our weapons, our challenger, our visible insults” (quoted in Brake 1985: 13-14).It
is no wonder, then, that in our postmodern era, when realities are so many and so personal, young people can
adopt all the styles they want, from flower power to anarchy, from bohemian to Goth, from business suits to
leather jackets. Street culture representatives have their own style as well. The trend was set in the USA side
neighborhoods of the big cities. A prototype would definitely wear snickers, large pants, large t-shirt or