Axiology of Bikers’ Group Identity (based on the Internet Communication)

Abstract

The paper presents the results of discourse analysis of bikers’ communication. The authors aim to reveal key axiological values in biker subculture, as well as discovering linguistic features in discourse of this social group and characterizing its members’ identity. The study takes a close look at how values are actualized through their linguistic forms in discourse. The research is innovative in that it attempts to employ discourse analysis in order to explore youth subcultures, specifically biker subculture. The paper offers a literature review focusing on biker subculture and covering some aspects of youth discourse in general. The authors provide a theoretical background for using the category of topos to reveal values in biker subculture. The findings include a list of principal topoi that provide a frame for the construction of bikers’ collective social identity. The authors argue that the social category ‘biker’ is constructed through the topoi of ‘bike’, ‘pleasure’, ‘danger’ and ‘brotherhood’. The conclusion is drawn that the biker is discursively constructed as a person who loves life, respects and appreciates peers, treats riding a bike with all responsibility, but who at the same time takes а risk to get excitement. Linguistic resources used in bikers’ communications are various and embrace lexical units of evaluation, references to feelings and emotions, metaphors, a vast number of jargonisms and elements of folklore.