Subculture versus Macro Culture: Hipster Language
Subculture versus Macro Culture: Hipster Language

Summary/Abstract: New words are the carriers of new realities that circumscribe as many worlds, universes or realities. The word hipster (i.e. a relatively popular, familiar youth worldwide), opens a number of issues related to addressing the phenomenon from a linguistic, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and economic perspective. Thus, we are faced with a phenomenon, a product of subculture, which makes its presence felt through the macro culture by aspects of lexis, mentalities, attitudes and behaviour. In terms of linguistics, hipster language itself may present interest (because it generates a certain mentality), and so do the terms designating hipster speak, i.e. loans from English, entering the Romanian language, and other languages, their adaptation to the language system, their productivity and any stylistic values. This linguistic fashion indicates a social pattern that requires an analysis of the phenomenon from a cultural, linguistic and, last but not least, an economic point of view.

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