LANGUAGE AND YOUTH CULTURE

Abstract

American Speech american speech 75.3 (2000) At the same time, we must also keep things in perspective. Changes in primitive belief systems, such as those governing religion, morality, and language, do not take place rapidly. Major changes in ideology can take generations to be realized, and even then there is continued, residual resistance. It has taken generations for the teaching of scientific theories of human development to be implemented in our schools, and there are still pockets of opposition. We cannot realistically expect a different time line for the scientific and humanistic understanding of sociolinguistic diversity. Perhaps the most we can expect is incremental progress as more people gain an understanding of the inevitable, orderly naturalness of language diversity. While it might be easy to get discouraged about what has not yet changed with respect to the national consciousness about language varia- tion, there are signs that a small movement towards equitable sociolinguistic policies and practice has begun. I personally am thankful that I have had an opportunity to be present at the initial stage of this movement. walt wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, where he directs the North Carolina Language and Life Project. He is past president of the American Dialect Society and president-elect of the Linguistic Society of America. GLOBALIZATION LANGUAGE AND Y OUTH CULTURE mary bucholtz, Texas A&M University One of the richest influences on American speech in the new millennium will certainly be youth culture, the diverse and rapidly changing stylistic practices that many teenagers and young adults draw on in the construc- tion and display of their identities. As an important component of these cultural styles, language constitutes a flexible and omnipresent set of resources. Although styles and situations constantly change, the symbolic use of language to perform identity will endure as long as language itself. Published by Duke University Press