THE IMPACT OF MODERNITY ON YOUTH CULTURE: THEIR LINGUISTIC CHOICES, THOUGHTS AND ATTITUDES

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY). The article is published with Open Access at www.alscjournal.com Abstract. The present study aims at investigating the impact of modernity on the youth culture. Generally, regarding the discernible changes in youth lifestyle, thought, attitudes, and language, it turned out to be paramount to query the driving forces responsible for such changes. Accordingly, this study is intended to inspect three significant issues connected with the topic at stake. First, it reveals how the status of females has changed as reflected in different feminine discursive practices, as well as some differences in the linguistic choices of young males and females and some of their implications. Second, it highlights the role of education in the empowerment of youth and the improvement of their attitudes towards their society. Lastly, it scrutinizes the impact of different social media on youth in the Moroccan context. In order for the study to have a sense of authenticity, a bundle of data was collated and studied in the light of the topic in question.


The impact of Modernity on the Empowerment of Males and Females
In point of fact, modernity has been a major force that has triggered off changes at different levels of the society. Its impact has been, as France puts it, "far-reaching and substantial, leaving no area of life untouched" (2007, p.9). During the last century, especially with the blooming of globalization, the entire world has witnessed a drastic change with respect to the hierarchical social structures, notably when it comes to the status of both males and females in patriarchal societies as well as the position of youth in the social setting at large. First and most evidently, modernity, with all its intricate dimensions, has not only brought to the surface the question of gender and the position of females in the modern society, but also contributed to the empowerment of females and effectuating their participation in different socioeconomic spheres. Interestingly, it is this very fact that has engendered a new type of discourse among women and given rise to new trends and systems of thought among youth. On top of that, modernity has also engendered changes on the linguistic level; that is, because of new insights into other cultures made available to them by the social media and the World Wide Web, the youth have embraced new social norms and personal styles, among which is the language they use to communicate.
Apparently, when the question of gender in its relation to modernity is mooted, incalculable numbers of issues prove problematic. Most, if not all, sociolinguistic studies view the issue of gender from a conventionally meager perspective. The language of females is, accordingly, seen to be naturally different from the language of males, and, if at all, scarcely any subsidiary factors are taken into account. Nevertheless, when we consider the general existing status quo, we come to realize that, with the advent of late modernity "described as an era of networks and flows rather than 'centres'" (Rampton, 2006, p.37), world-wide changes equally affect the general behavior of both males and females, of which language is a part and parcel. In the same vein, Rampton argues that "sociolinguistics has moved beyond its traditional focus on language use within very carefully specified cultural niches to analysis of the way linguistic texts and meanings get shaped, disembedded and then recontextualised as they travel across a range of different sites."Additionally, such substantial changes on the global scale also contribute to a new reading of the behavioral, and more importantly linguistic, variation that holds among youth of both genders. Below we will consider, in turn, the issue of females and power, that is, how the status of females has changed historically and the impact of this on the empowerment of females as relative to males; and the rise of modernity and its impact on youth culture, bringing into focus their linguistic behavior and gender differences.
Females and power: Evidently, the status of females had always been inferior to males' in all societies. The situation in Europe, for instance, was by no means better than its counterpart in the Arab world. According to France: Young women were expected to become involved in housewifery and domestic service, while young men entered occupations and apprenticeships that reinforced masculine roles. Marriage was also seen as the main transitional step for young women, while for men it was employment and a trade. Young women were also denied access to public office, work on commonwealth business and office in the church, and men dominated all areas of administrative and public life. A sexual division of labour was also already well established by the mid-sixteenth century. (2007, p.7) Accordingly, the prevailing conception of females back at that time played a determinative role of their position in the society, and by entailment of their discourse and language. Let us consider the discourse of an ordinary, yet fictional, female during the Victorian era, as delineated by the eminent author Charles Dickens, whose literature emanated from the heart of society and, by far, reflected the needs and aspirations of the rabble: Perhaps if I warn't the blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a slave with her apron never off I should have been to hear the Carols, […] I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the best of reasons for never hearing any (Great Expectations,18) As it is clear from the excerpt, females' position in the society was, by and large, subservient to that of males and their needs would never be fulfilled. This fact is heavily reflected in their language.
As time elapsed, especially at the advent of the era of late modernity, both males' and females' discourse has changed and been empowered. Males, on the one hand, maintained their control over multiple spheres, and they dominated the lion's share of media channels. This fact provided for the spread of and frequent changes in the masculine discourse. The status of females, on the other hand, has gone through a more serious change in different respects. Let us observe an excerpt from Hillary Clinton's eloquent speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1 : If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely -and the right to be heard.
Apparently, this excerpt makes a palpable example of a feminine discourse reflecting the powerful current position held by females and how they stand for their rights.
To that end, it manifestly seems that language is one significant facet in which females' positions in the modern world is reflected. Because of the circumstances brought to reality by the advent of modernity, women are capable of standing out for their rights and voicing themselves publically.

Youth culture, modernity, and gender:
Before we delve into the discussion of the impact of modernity on youth culture and the linguistic choices of both males and females, we find it very convenient to draw attention to the close relationship between culture and language. However, the fact " [t] hat there should be some kind of relationship between the sounds, words, and syntax of a language and the ways in which speakers of that language experience the world and behave in it seems so obvious as to be a truism." (Wardhaugh, 2006:221). Why we need to look at the relationship between language and culture is because the choices and the changes that happen at the level of the language reflect the changing and the enduring characteristics of culture. Sapir (1929, p. 207) addressed this point when he stated that: 'Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.' As has been discussed earlier, youth 27 culture is seen to have been heavily affected by the impact of modernity. Yet, having raised the issue of gender, the question that arises is the following: how is the (linguistic) behavior of both male and female youngsters is affected by modernity? Evidently, the question raised seems to necessitate an abundance of research in order to, at the minimum, cover a very limited part of it; that is to say, what's offered in the present section is not intended to provide an all-inclusive picture of the impact of how modernity affects the linguistic behavior of the young of both genders; but rather we will herein attempt to proffer a general observation of the state of play that holds among youth, and how we can ascribe some of the changes in their linguistic behavior, as pertaining to either sex, to modernity. Basically, we will touch on a number of linguistic nuances, and more importantly we will test out some sociolinguistic theories by conducting a survey, investigating youth's opinions at one of the local universities.
In the first place, modernity has largely influenced the degree of vulgarity in youth communication. However, this degree of vulgarity varies among males and females. This, in fact, pushed us to investigate the use of vulgar and taboo language among the two genders. The questionnaire distributed contained the following question: which one of the two genders do you think curses the most? And we came up with the following results: Table 1: Vulgar and taboo language Generally, the question was mainly asked to enquire into Coates's (2003) claims that males use swears words more often than females do. Subsequently, both the male and female informants who answered that males curse the most were asked why males curse so frequently. The answers included the following: • To prove one-self and to show their dominance and masculinity 52% • To show anger 21.7% • Due to culture 17.3% • Out of habit 8.6% It follows from this that cursing and vulgar language among youth is not only a way of expressing one's feelings and attitudes, but also a sort of culture that follows the general modern trends in the society. It is legitimate also to say that there constantly arise new expressions and ways of cursing that become rampant among youth owing to a number of sociological factors. The fact that males curse and use vulgar language more than females has much to contribute to the issue at hand. In accordance with Coates' claim that "swearing and taboo language have historically been used by men in the company of other men as a sign of their toughness and of their manhood" (2003, p.46); our small-scale, but effectual, survey makes clear that the situation in the Moroccan society is by no means unique, but rather it is the outcome of a substantial ongoing process of give-and-take influences held among different nations in the world. Having briefly discussed one sociolinguistic aspect where we can observe some interesting distinction between males' and females' language. And we have also seen some global implications that bear on the topic at issue. The question we will address at this juncture relates to Tannen's (1990) claim that females' speech mainly prioritizes solidarity and expresses similarity and intimacy whilst that of males focuses on status and dominance and establishing power relations. The investigation generally was addressed to roughly two dozens of young university students, and the question was formulated as follows: Which one of the two values (Solidarity and dominance) do you aim to attain through conversations? The results we came up with are, contrary to Tannen's assumption, charted in the table below: Table 2: Solidarity and dominance As it stands, it appears, though we cannot venture to draw sweeping generalizations, that the issue of the speaker's intention to either exert dominance or show solidarity is not much a question of gender in the social setting among youth in Morocco, or probably at least within the confines of universities. The majority of both males and females seem to have opted for the choice that they aim to show solidarity and support in conversations with others rather than to manifest dominance and superiority. This can reasonably be attributed to the ethical standards and the culture of the subjects.
To wrap up the discussion, modernity has had a far-reaching impact on both the positions of males and females on the global scene as well as the linguistic behavior of either gender. It suffices to have a general observation at the prevalent feminine discourse at different intervals, before and after the rise of the modern age, in order to have a clear vision of the status of females pre-and post-modernly. Also, the effect of modernity touched the linguistic aspect of both male and female youngsters on a global scale; thus, new styles of talking have been adopted by the young, giving rise, together with a number of other things, to the concept of youth culture.

How can education improve youth thoughts and attitudes towards our society?
It is generally acknowledged that education is indispensable to our societies. It goes without saying that it is a key factor to youth empowerment 2 , and to promoting their effective participation in socio-economic and cultural development of our societies. Whether or not education can improve the status of the younger generations; their attitudes towards 2 This term is used in the sense given within the framework of the Empowerment Theory (see Zimmerman, 2000) themselves and their own communities and their ways of thinking and viewing the world; is thus unquestionable. What remains to question are the ways education improves and seeks to improve the general condition of youngsters in a given society.
Our understanding of the question at hand is as follows: If we are to look at how education can improve youth thoughts and attitudes towards our society, we have, at first, to look at what education has to offer to these individuals and whether or not it takes into account the psycho-social realities associated with them. Then, we have to see whether and to what extent they react to educational input they receive.
Education is an activity that imparts knowledge to people. One form of the knowledge transmitted to young people in educational settings is culture, whether it is the culture of the community to which they belong or a different culture. It was argued that youth, in one way or another, possess a shared set of norms and behaviors and a unique culture with which they identify as a way of 'standing out from the crowd'. Goodenough (1957, p. 167) gives the following definition to culture: A society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.
At this point, we can clearly identify the crucial relationship between the knowledge the youth possess and their culture. So what it is that they know (about the world and themselves) will naturally determine how they act upon themselves and the world. However, a person's knowledge does not only shape their culture, but is also shaped by their culture. There are two possible ways for how such culture is constructed: Rejection of certain aspects of the 'original' culture and adoption of certain others from a different culture. Our main concern here is the understanding of the reasons behind such behaviors and its implications in the field of education, as well as the finding of the ultimate approach to education which will monitor and optimize the knowledge given to these individuals.
Having previously identified the close relationship between knowledge, culture and education, we can now tackle the issue with regard to these three dimensions and we begin by formulating the following questions: What is the nature of the knowledge transmitted to youngsters in educational settings? How much culture is and should be integrated therein? What is the optimal approach to education in our society and how can it be implemented within educational systems?

Education empowers youth
Education gives power to younger generations, or rather, it gives them more power. Being young is synonymous with having power and great ambition towards self-realization. The psycho-social features that characterize this period of life make of it a crucial phase in the lives of young individuals. Inner drives, desires and motives that push the youth to self-development are all aspects of the power they possess. However, not every young man or woman is capable of fulfilling his or her ambitions. Everyday life confronts them with obstacles and threatens their self-image. Some succeed to overcome the hindrances; others end up in role-confusion and lose motivation. One major function of education is to equip these individuals with the skill and the ability that facilitate achievement.
Education propels the youth in the right direction towards fulfilling their potentials. Educators around the globe have begun to realize how much important it is to provide youngsters with the suitable conditions that foster intellectual growth. In an educational setting such as a classroom, teachers employ certain strategies and materials that address themselves to various intellectual skills, social and moral values. In other words, the youthwhen provided with opportunities and proper conditions of education -can learn about themselves, the society and the environment. With the knowledge they receive, the youth can then shape their views on the world and all of what is going on around them. In that way, their general understanding, which is the basis of their cultural behaviors, is broadened and is manifested in better attitudes towards their environment.
Having previously identified the aim of education as simply being the proper transfer of knowledge to young individuals, we bring now into question the nature of this knowledge. Bourdieu (1990) argued that the most crucial factor in education is "not so much what is known (the content of knowledge) but the manner in which it is presented". We must then not overlook this fact while attempting to determine the nature of knowledge the young learners acquire. Anyone who has been taught at schools has noticed at some point certain aspects of their own culture or a foreign culture within their courses. Almost no school subject is culture-free; in fact, some of them are all about culture. It is then of paramount primacy that educators look at the cultural aspects in learning materials and the amount and length of exposure to those cultural forms that might infiltrate the knowledge structure of young learners. Tomalin & Stempleski (1993:7-8) state that one of the major goals of cultural instruction is "to help learners develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture". By the time young learners develop those skills, boundaries between their own culture and foreign cultures will have been clearly set, and thus it will be clear which aspects of the foreign culture are most suitable for them to adapt to, and which are most socially acceptable in their own culture. The strong self-awareness that results from maintaining cultural identity is certainly a form of youth empowerment. The empowerment at the level of identity seems more crucial than ever, with the increasing impact of modernity and globalization on the cultures of the world, youth culture appears to be fragile in the face of such strong external influences.
To sum up the point discussed earlier, education plays the following major roles: • Education shapes youth thought, knowledge and culture, • It provides them with skills of proper usage and practice of their knowledge and culture, • It provides them with opportunities to effectively engage in social action.

Working on changing the attitudes of youth towards education
In order for education to have greater impacts and better outcomes, educators must make sure that there is no or at least little resistance to education from those they address it to. That is, educators must be able to detect and prevent any sort of negative attitudes in young learners towards education. In a review of research on young people who drop out of school before graduation, Mortimore (1991:19) states that 'there is evidence from several studies of secondary age pupils of their negative attitudes towards teachers' and 'Similarly, negative attitudes are expressed towards school rules'. And as a result to these attitudes, young learners 'develop their own counter-culture in opposition to the dominant school culture'. Educators must then be aware of the presence of this kind of subculture, its manifestations and its effects. Furlong (1991:306) argues on the latter: '...give pupils a rationale, a philosophy, a way of exploring and dealing with their experience of schooling. By taking part in a subculture they may be able to find legitimate reasons for valuing different knowledge, for aspiring to different futures, and for valuing different ways of behaving. The problem for the school is that once pupils have evolved subcultures, once they have a rationale for rejecting school, then they are much more difficult to bring back on line.' Young students must receive an engaging education. Students are most engaged in the process of learning "when instructional activities are interesting, relevant to their lives, and affirm their competences" (Hardre and Reeve 2003:353).
A small-scale survey was conducted in a local high school in an attempt to identify the attitudes of young learners towards education in general, the education they receive and whether and to what extent they feel the impact of education on their personal and social lives. The subjects were from different school levels and were all below the age of eighteen. The results were that 97.7% of the subjects were in favor of education in general, only 34% were in favor of the education they receive and only 36% acknowledged the impact of education on their social and personal lives.
At a first glance, the results seem to have a somewhat clear interpretation: Almost all the subjects have a positive attitude towards education in general, but had less positive attitudes towards the education they received in their local school. Although in fact the survey did not address the factors contributing to such discrepancy in the data collected, such as why these learners had less positive attitudes towards the education they received locally, it is by no means possible to refute the given interpretation, since the questions in the survey were stated clearly in a way to elicit authentic feedbacks.
In the course of the same survey, subjects were asked to mention other parallel activities they engage in within their local school, such as music shows, theatre plays and art workshops. The number of those activities according to the subjects was extremely small if not equal to zero. One possible assumption that can be formulated from such a finding is that the lack of the said parallel activities reflects a possible factor contributing to negative attitudes towards the education the learners receive. From this point, we go on to argue on the importance of providing opportunities for young learners to voice themselves in order for education to impact harder and serve its ultimate purpose. The next part of the research will address this point.

Providing opportunities for younger people to voice themselves
What is intended to be the outcome of education is the creation of opportunities for the youth to voice themselves. Education can also serve as a platform for young people to voice their opinions and engage in the development and decision-making. In the classroom, for example, young learners are given opportunities to write, to create and to produce accounts of their ideas and experiences. Outside the classroom, young learners can bring the knowledge of previous experiences in the classroom into practice and thus experience more authentic learning. These experiences will affirm the youth's sense of self and boost their confidence and ultimately improve their attitudes towards their environment and the society.
We argued that culture is a common form of the knowledge youth receive in educational settings. Whatever the nature of the aforementioned culture is, it contributes to shaping and enriching the youth culture. The beliefs and values that pertain to youth culture influence their attitudes and ways of thinking, such influence is of great importance and for that reason, we endeavored to stress on the importance of monitoring the nature and the amount of knowledge; namely culture; given to youth in educational settings. In addition to that, we set out to understand how education can change and improve youth attitudes, that is, first, by beginning to work on changing their attitudes towards education itself, and providing opportunities to voice and to empower their potentials.

The Impact of Social Media on Moroccan Youth Culture
Social media can be defined as a digital community people create to construct a wide cocoon within which the world becomes a set of accessible websites. It has reached outrageous proportions of use and access in the modern Moroccan society. It is undergoing a remarkable use among Moroccan youngsters. Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn are few examples that are witnessing a wide turnout to serve financial, personal or social needs. For some Moroccans, social media is the only source to make a living. YouTube, as a case in point, is considered a manufacturer of a solid estate for the Moroccan youth. It is a paramount source of achieving an independently-burgeoned wealth. Hence, the role of social media, mainly, lies in fleeing the mediocrity and poorness of the Moroccan job market; So it is exploited to fill in the hiatus caused by the rarity job opportunities within the territory.
Youth culture can be seen as the association of a set of variables, such as language, clothing 'appearance', attitudes and behaviors whereby youngsters are recognized and differentiated from older generations within a community. Those variables can be identified as subcultures by which these age groups are characterized. According to recent statistics of Morocco demographics (2018), the youth population -aged between 15 and 24 -represents 18% of the whole Moroccan population -which is estimated to be 35,989,359. 3 Considering the fact that social media are designed and run by westerners, mostly Americans, it is worth mentioning that the Moroccan youth might, to some extent, be influenced by the ponderous weight of culture these networks carry. The impact of this culture can be double-faceted; either positive or negative. From one side, it might be manifested in the hourly-used social networks that gradually lessen our face-to-face conversations. In this regard, the function of social media is revealed through transforming what is written or spoken into digital. On the other side, Media can serve as a magical gate through which human lives are driven to illumination and civilization. Therefore, these new enlightening social networks may have a significant impact on the Moroccan youth culture.
Since there are no accurate data that demonstrate the number of Moroccans who use the various social media that almost everyone has free access to, we decided to investigate with a small group of university students aged between 19 and 23 at the University of Mohamed V, Rabat.
First, it was necessary for us to be aware of the most used applications among the three networks we have illustrated.

Frequency of use of the social media among students
In the course of the survey conducted, students were asked to specify how much of their time they spend on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Since the latter is commonly used for professional networking, none of the participants (students) seemed to be interested in the website. Nevertheless, they showed a good deal of interest in the use of Facebook and YouTube. Interestingly, all of the participants shared a mutual interest in using Facebook on a daily basis without any touch of boredom caused by the everyday routine. Finally, the vast majority (63%) utilize YouTube daily with a proportion of 37% of students who claim to use it oftentimes, meaning that it is not an everyday routine for them. Since the use of these social networks varies from a person to another, we felt the need to dig deeper in the study by conducting a new enquiry about the domains of use of these social networks. Table 3: Frequency of use of the social media among students.

Domains of Use
With a general observation of the infrequent use of LinkedIn, it can be deduced that most, if not all, of the subjects show a weak interest and alienation of social networks from their professional and academic lives. Henceforth, the results indicate that the large number of Facebook users, when again interviewed about their almost hourly use of this network, tend to communicate and share their emotional and mental states with people they either personally or virtually know. This minority of participants presume to exploit Facebook for the sake of creating utilitarian groups in which bundles of different individuals share their problems and concerns to reduce the stress and anxiety they might be undergoing. Thus, scrutinizing these two functions of Facebook, it can be deduced that its use is mainly considered as a means of communication: production (10%) and consumption (90%). On the other side, there is a balance between the production and consumption of YouTube. Some students (53%) presume to use it for broadcasting tutorial and motivational videos… This whole new world of social media has opened gates to youngsters to orient themselves to what is referred to as "Youth Culture." The creation of a different lifestyle has reshaped certain communities in Morocco and their people's mentalities and attitudes. There is no doubt about the communicative nature of the use of social media. As resulted in the second chart, 90% of the participants claim to use these networks as a medium of expressing themselves. Facebook, for instance, is the home of a large number of Moroccan youth within which cultural trepidation is exhibited, whether through personal posts, discussions, pictures or videos. This might signify the lack of authentic individual conversations, or perhaps the preference of communicating feelings within the virtual world.
The same subjects were asked about where most of their communication takes place and the results were as follows: This tremendous shift in the mediums of communication among youth charted above, in fact, has given rise to an increased tendency to use a more reserved kind of language. In this respect, we can legitimately refer to Bernstein's distinction between the elaborated and the restricted code. The former is defined by Bernstein as "a language use which points to the possibilities inherent in a complex conceptual hierarchy for the organizing of experience." (1961, p. 169) whereas the latter is said to "employs short, grammatically simple, and often unfinished sentences of poor -in the sense of nonstandard -syntactic form" (Wardhaugh, 2006, p. 337) Notwithstanding the fact that most Moroccan youngsters are known by their socialization and daily interactions with one another, the findings promote a totally different picture in which the participants confess the reduction of one-to-one real conversations and the influence of social media, especially Facebook, on their daily lives, and therefore their culture. This unfortunate shift is followed by the dominance of the use of the elaborated code through which a blatant touch of formality is mostly expressed to hide the real identities and personalities of each affected individual.
Overall, social media contributes to the creation of a whole new culture that the majority of the Moroccan youth are tacitly in adherence to. As demonstrated above, this whole new concept has its pros and cons. But to some extent, its predominant drawbacks might jeopardize the concept of identity, culture, and mutual interactions among the Moroccan youth.