Subcultural Milieu Research Articles

Армейский языковой коллектив США в знаках языка и культуры

The relevance of this study is determined by the importance of theoretical and practical analysis of issues related to intercultural communication. The object of this paper is the extralinguistic aspect of the U.S. military lingo. The subject area embraces distinctive linguistic phenomena of the military subcultural milieu, going back to the historical and cultural heritage of military society and thus characterized by extralinguistic context. As exemplified in English, the authors point out, that success of cross-cultural communication is largely determined both by a high level of linguistic competence and background knowledge.

Метафоричность как неотъемлемый атрибут армейского идиома США (на материале английского языка)

The relevance of the topic of this publication is preconditioned by the importance of theoretical and practical development of issues related to intercultural communication. The object of this study is the US military professional lingo. The subject area of this scientific research embraces persistent speech formulas of the US subcultural milieu, typical of metaphoricity. This study is exemplified in English based on the analytical-descriptive method, the method of continuous sampling of illustrative material, and elements of intentional and contextual analysis.

Zwischen Parteistruktur und Subkultur Neonationalsozialisten in Sachsen und Nordrhein-Westfalen im Vergleich

Shortly after the “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) put its name on the map, six neo-Nazi groups in Saxony and North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) were banned. In NRW the concerned uniformly joined the party “Die Rechte”. In Saxony, people joined the subcultural milieu and the youth organisation of the NPD. Being protected by the party privilege had provoked an incorporation of “free forces” into consolidated structures.

‘What it takes’: perceptions of mental toughness and its development in an English Premier League Soccer Academy

The purpose of this qualitative study was to undertake an in-depth exploration of coaches’ and support staff perceptions regarding mental toughness and its development in the pressurised and distinctive sub-cultural milieu of an English Premier League (EPL) Soccer Academy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight key staff responsible for a range of different roles in the development of young players. From the analysis, four general dimensions emerged as salient to mental toughness: competitiveness with self and others, mindset, resilience and personal responsibility. To enhance mental toughness, coaches sought to foster in the young players two key characteristics: independence and resourcefulness, via a challenging but supportive learning environment. Importantly, attention to the psychological development of young players was reported to be inadequately addressed in comparison with other aspects of performance such as technical skill or physical conditioning. Although mental toughness was acknowledged to be a crucial factor in securing a professional contract in the EPL, coaches reported a relative lack of knowledge about effectively nurturing this quality in players.

(Re-)Configuring Mao: Trajectories of a Culturo-Political Trend in West Germany

In the early 1960s, West German intellectuals began to discuss the role and importance of Mao Zedong. Recognition of Mao as a political icon soon spread into subcultural left-wing networks and publics. Driven by a desire to change the social and political conditions of West German society, artists and members of the growing student movement adopted the idea of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and reconfigured it for the West German context. At the same time, iconic images of Mao also entered popular culture. After the decline of the student movement, left-wing intellectuals’ accounts of Mao became trendsetting texts for a broad subcultural milieu. During the 1970s, an estimated 100,000-150,000 extra-parliamentary activists turned into adherents of Maoist cadre parties. Living directly at the European frontline of the Cold War, the appeal of Maoist ideology for West German activists derived from its promise to open up a “third way” beyond US capitalism and Soviet communism. The Chinese example inspired hopes for social liberalization, fundamental political change, and, for some, even national reunification. This paper traces how Mao acquired his iconic status among different West German networks and publics throughout the 1960s and 1970s and attempts to identify key agents in this process as well as their acts of trendsetting and gatekeeping.

Bars, drugs and football thugs: Alcohol, cocaine use and violence in the night time economy among English football firms

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork, the aim of which was to explore the functionality of cocaine (used in conjunction with alcohol and on its own) in the subcultural milieu of the English football firm. The study was originally concerned with the use of violence associated with cocaine use among football fans on match days but, like much ethnography, the research evolved beyond its original remit to include the extension of football firm violence within the night time economy (NTE). The study is unique in giving a voice to this group of individuals and permitting them to be active interpreters of their own world. It included 20 interviews with members of football firms who habitually took part in violent exchanges and found that concurrent use of cocaine and alcohol fulfilled three main functions: the facilitation of extreme violence; the acquisition of ‘time out’; and the construction of a (hyper-)masculine identity. These functions were not confined to the subcultural context of the football firm, but had also become an integral component of their mainstream leisure pursuits within the NTE. The findings from this explorative study also contribute answers to the under researched question of whether those ‘who are violent in the NTE are also violent in other contexts’ (Finney, 2004: 5).

Women in Computing: The Role of Geek Culture

‘Geek culture’ evokes a high-tech, andocentric, sub-cultural milieu often associated with computing. Many consider this culture as central to understanding the dearth of women in computer science (...

Differences between HIV-positive gay men who ‘frequently’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ engage in unprotected anal intercourse with serononconcordant casual partners: Positive Health cohort, Australia

By measuring the actual number of risk acts engaged in by HIV-positive men participating in the Positive Health (PH) cohort study, this paper sets out to document the distribution of risk acts, to report on the proportion of acts of unprotected anal intercourse with casual (UAIC) partners that occurred between HIV-positive men (i.e. seroconcordant positive) and to examine the factors that differentiated men who ‘frequently’ compared with ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ engaged in unsafe UAIC (i.e. UAIC with serononconcordant partners: partners who have not tested positive for HIV). The findings show that 42.6% of all UAIC acts occurred between seroconcordant HIV-positive partners, posing no risk of HIV infection to an HIV-negative person. A minority of participants (10%) accounted for the majority (70.7%) of the unsafe acts of UAIC. The HIV-positive men who ‘sometimes’ engaged in unsafe UAIC had higher treatment optimism scores and were more likely to use Viagra in comparison with those who did not engage in such risk. Those who reported ‘frequent’ engagement in unsafe UAIC were more likely to engage in a range of esoteric sexual practices, be slightly less well educated and be taking antiretroviral therapy compared with HIV-positive men who ‘sometimes’ engaged in unsafe UAIC. As such, taking ART but not viral load, predicted frequent unsafe UAIC. When considered alongside earlier studies, these results suggest that HIV-negative men who engage in esoteric sexual practices may be at increased risk of HIV transmission, not necessarily because they engage in esoteric sex practices but because of the sub-cultural milieu in which esoteric sex is occurring. The findings from this study also endorse the measurement of UAIC acts as a useful gauge of risk.

Delusions and hallucinations as a reflection of the subcultural milieu among psychotic patients of the 1930s and 1980s.

Delusions and hallucinations reported in the social histories of 150 patients admitted to an East Texas state hospital during the 1930s and of 150 patients admitted during the 1980s were examined for content that would characterize and contrast the patient subcultural milieu of the two time periods. Patients admitted during the 1930s tended to reflect the material deprivation and personal powerlessness of the great depression in delusions of great wealth and positive "special powers." The hallucinatory visions and voices of the 1980s patients reflected a more threatening and negative subcultural milieu, with more visions of blood, snakes, and dead people or animals. Command hallucinations to hurt, to kill, or to do "perverse things" would also suggest that the subculture milieu of the 1980s had become more dangerous.

Social skills and the perception of interaction episodes

Accurate and well‐differentiated cognitive representations about the social world are an important prerequisite of skilled social behaviour. The aim of this study was to demonstrate empirically that a significant relationship exists between social skill and the way an actor perceives and interprets various interaction episodes. Based on a free‐response diary study, the most typical and common interaction episodes in a subcultural milieu were established. A second sample from the same milieu were asked (a) to indicate their perception of these episodes, and (b) to complete a battery of social skill assessment scales as well as personality scales. The episode judgements data were analysed using an Individual Differences Multidimensional Scaling (INDSCAL) procedure, identifying three episode dimensions (social anxiety, evaluation and perceived intensity). Subjects falling within the top and the bottom quartiles of the distribution on the social skills measures had significantly different cognitive representations about these episodes, with low skilled actors relying on the social anxiety dimension, and high skilled actors on the evaluation and intensity dimensions most heavily. The nature of these differences was further explicated by a canonical correlation analysis, showing that sex and personality variables were also related to episode cognition. The results are interpreted as indicating the important role episode representations play in social skills, and the implications of the findings for social skills assessment and therapy are discussed.

Episode cognition and personality: A multidimensional analysis

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to examine the relation between personality variables and the way an individual cognitively represents and interprets various interaction situations. A sample of typical and recurring interaction episodes within a student milieu was first elicited using a free response diary method. In the main study, subjects from the same subcultural milieu were asked to (a) complete a battery of personality assessment measures, including measures of social anxiety and social competence, and (b) indicate their perception of the interaction episodes of the group. Their judgements of the episodes were analyzed using Carroll and Chang's (1970) Individual Differences Multidimensional Scaling (INDSCAL) procedure, indicating that four characteristics, subjective self‐confidence, evaluation, seriousness, and involvement defined subjects' implicit view of the episode space. A canonical correlation analysis between the personality measures and each subject's episode cognition weights indicated a significant relation between these two groups of variables. The link between social skills and episode cognition style was further explored by a multiple discriminant analysis of the episode cognition weights of subjects who scored in the top and the bottom third of the sample on a composite social skills measure. The results are interpreted as providing significant support for recent cognitive theories of personality, and the link between episode cognition and personality variables is considered. The role of episode cognition in social skills assessment and therapy is also discussed, with a view toward exploring the relevance of the findings for applied areas.

Social Class, Diagnosis, and Treatment in Three Psychiatric Hospitals

in violative behavior were far stronger than any counterpressures the Project could bring to bear. This explanation will derive from a general theory of gang delinquency whose tentral proposition, to be expanded at length, will be that patterned involvement in violative behavior by gangs of the Midcity type occurs where four cultural exist concurrently-maleness, adolescence, urban residence, and low-skill laboring class status. Each of these conditions is conceptualized as a particular type of subcultural system-each of whose demanded sets of behavior, taken separately, contribute some element of the motivation for engagement in gang delinquency, and whose concerted operation produces a subcultural milieu which furnishes strong and consistent support for customary involvement in criminal behavior. Data on impact presented here document the influence of two of these conditions-age status and social status. Court-appearance frequency trends (Tables I and II) would appear to indicate that the single most important determinant of the frequency of that order of criminal behavior which eventuated in court appearance for Midcity male gangs was age, or more specifically, movement through a series of age-based subcultural stages. Commission of criminal acts of given types and frequency appeared as a required concomitant of passing through the successive age-stages of adolescence and a prerequisite to the assumption of adult status. The influence of these age-class demands, on the basis of this and other evidence, would appear to exceed that of other factors-including conditions of the family, school, neighborhood or job world; police arrest policies, sentencing, confinement, probation and parole policies, and others. Data on social status (e.g., footnote 27, passim) along with much additional data not reported here, indicate a systematic relationship between social status within the lower class, and delinquency. 1. Within the 21 gang sample of the Midcity study, crime was both more prevalent and more serious among those whose social status, measured by occupational and educational indexes, was lowest. 2. Relatively small differences in status were associated with relatively large differences in patterned behavior; as lower status levels were approached, delinquency incidence increased exponentially r ther than linearly; this indicates the necessity of making refined intra-class distinctions when analyzing the social location of criminal behavior. 3. Groups of lower social status showed the least reduction in