Raver Subculture Research Paper

Raver Subculture in Young America Over the past few years, an interesting focus has developed among our youth subculture in American society today. I have been interested in how the raver subculture has come into existence, and how they are able to maintain their unanimity and cohesiveness. This subculture mainly consists of people who go to "raves," also known as, underground dance parties where people go to hear "techno" (electronically produced) music and have intense experiences, which they feel are self-transforming. The ravers use an emotionally laden jargon to attempt to explain the intensity of their experiences to the unconverted. I felt that by researching the rave subculture I could come to a conclusion as to why ravers are choosing to use ecstasy as their choice of drug and the effects of it. There has been a great deal of research into how the rave subculture came into being from organization around music, to drugs, and countercultural norms and deviant practices in society. While there have been efforts to look at the interrelations between language, culture, and identity, most of this
research in these areas has not looked into the process of language formation and the ways in which existing languages are altered to fit new constantly changing roles, perceptions, and identities. However, my research will put emphasize on how in this subculture there is a constant presence of innovation and experimentation involved in language as well as, the illegal use of ecstasy. I will also focus on how the use of ecstasy is shifting the direction of social change. (Discuss 2 Articles-Jstor) In the U.S. the subculture has been branded by the mainstream media and law enforcement agencies as a purely drug-centric culture similar to the hippies of the 1960s. As a result, I suspect that ravers will be effectively run out of business in many areas in the years to come. Furthermore, the rave subculture is aware that in rejecting existing linguistic practices, they are also challenging the norms and worldviews that they are suppose to. Linguistic innovation is a way of testing pathways of development for linguistic systems, attempting to find vectors which may meet future cultural demands and point to new directions of social change. To accurately asses this subculture I will be using participant and observation methods. I started my research by going out to a rave, with a well known DJ playing, at Light Lounge. The night started late at around 11:00p.m. I enjoyed a few drinks while I was observing how ravers interact with one another. The first thing I noticed is how this subculture dressed in bright colored child-like clothing. Ravers use pacifiers in their mouth to fight off the sensation given to them by taking the drug ecstasy. Light shows intensify how the ravers interact with one another, allowing them to hit the dance floor and express themselves by dancing with others. Ravers that I spoke with at the club said they liked techno music more because "it lets your mind fill in the blanks". Ravers also claimed that when they danced in large groups, listening to techno, taking "XTC", they were able to see the "true meanings" behind the music through intense synaesthetic experiences. In turn, it created a separate stimulation in conjunction with the visual displays (lasers, holograms, strobes, videos, etc.) at rave. The ravers felt that the music has a deep psychological and emotional impact on the listener, and that each of the different kinds of techno "resonates" with different aspects of a person's being. Ambient is cerebral, aimed at the mind, hardcore techno is kinetic and aimed at the feet, compared to club and jungle music being instead more "soulful", aimed at the spirit. Although, much of the raver jargon revolves around identifying the various subgroups found at rave parties (zippies and goths) and the subgenres of techno music, as well as "code words" revolving around "rolling" or the use of "XTC" or MDMA and other drugs at raves. But more importantly, I observed ravers language revolving around artfully crafted slang's to describe the sublime emotional status ravers feel they experience at raves. "Raving", after all, is the way most people refer to as forms of exhilarated, uncontrolled, modes of speech found in fanatics of all forms. However, the ravers demonstrate that this is how the rave party makes them feel by dancing all night long. Claiming that ordinary language is far too impoverished, raver talk uses a series of imaginative adjectives and nouns referring to things that the "outsider" couldn't possibly comprehend.
Ravers talk about each person having a unique vibration or frequency that is transformed by the music, and how groups of people gather in synchronous dance forms a "self-iterative fractal" of harmonious motion. The rave is supposed to take people of all races, colors, and nationalities and unite them into a consciousness synchronized around the pulsating rhythm of techno music. However, rave music is said to be able to breakdown boundaries and those of self-limitation, and of alienation from others. Most importantly, ravers constantly are at work innovating new elements of language for creating a subcultural identity at odds with dominant self-images and
norms. What I have been trying to emphasize throughout this paper is the fact that, just as a certain element of creativity and artifice might be involved in a techno song, there is an element of playfulness and experimentation in the design of language among youth. New subcultural jargons don't just appear out of the unconscious without prompting the earlier youth subculture. To these appropriations, there is a constant process of innovation, in which people are adding terms out of a need to describe their feelings within their subculture sentiments, behaviors, and fluctuating identities. The subcultural jargons don't exist merely to alienate the outsider, they are there to be able to explore and probe new possibilities and options for the larger mainstream culture as a whole. Furthermore, this causes social change in its entirety. People are self-aware of their own languages, and what they may see as its limitations or insufficiencies, depending on their self-concept. The subcultural jargon is a linguistic laboratory because inevitably subcultural terms are filtering out to the culture at large and in a sense shape the worldview and perceptions of societies.