The Image of Young People in Discourse about Juvenile Criminality in the Textbooks of Civic Education at the Upper Secondary Level

Abstract

The aim of this paper is showing how the image of youth and criminality is constructed within the discourses relating to juvenile criminality contained in the textbooks of civic education. Application of the method of critical discourse analysis allowed the identification of a number of discursive strategies and to highlight the most important argumentative schemes. It concluded that the image of young people resulting from the analyzed discourses has the features of depersonalization, and the discourse operates stereotypes, unwarranted generalizations and it is negative evaluative. The problem of youth criminality seems to be a phenomenon of enormous size, much larger than it is indicated by the data. Arguments which creates a semblance of objectivity and reliability is fraught with many mistakes in fact, and among specific argumentation schemes are identifiable those that refer to the argumentum ad populum. Discourse is a highly adaptive with an emphasis on self-interested motivation to obey the law. These conclusions are important in the context of education. Because discourses are some resources for the representation of reality, create a framework for meaning of this reality, so the question about the shape of school legal education seems to be important in this context. Citizenship activity, strongly emphasized and stressed in the context of civic competence, does not seem to relate to legal education. Here the threatening, frightening are present and the opportunist attitude towards the law is exposed.