مجلة الرسالة للدراسات الإعلامية
Volume 10, Numéro 2, Pages 69-79
2026-07-31

Linguistic Deviance As Social Resistance: Youth Speech And Delinquent Subcultures In Algeria



Authors : Sid Hassane . Lamouri Asma .

Abstract

When Algerian youth say harga instead of "leaving," or guirra instead of "conflict," they are not making a linguistic mistake they are making a statement. This article takes their words seriously. It explores how the everyday speech of urban Algerian youth functions not as slang, but as a language of resistance a way of naming what official discourse cannot or will not name. The study draws on content analysis following Mucchielli's framework of youth everyday vocabulary, street expressions, and folk music lyrics, with a focus on urban Algeria, tracing linguistic shifts that emerged from the 1980s onward. Through this analysis we trace four recurring responses to social exclusion: escape through drugs, confrontation through violence, flight through illegal migration, and survival through informal trade. Each of these "solutions," we argue, is already written into the words young people choose. The paper suggests that understanding linguistic deviance in Algeria is not a matter of linguistics alone —it is a way of reading a generation that feels unheard, and a society whose institutions have struggled to respond.

Keywords

Algeria ; code-switching ; delinquency ; linguistic deviance ; social exclusion ; social resistance ; youth subculture

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