Portuguese youth in a changing society: from an inquiry to high-school pupils

Abstract

The present article presents an analysis of a part of the data collected through an inquiry to young people from both sexes, between 16 and 19, all of them belonging to the last year in the high-school curriculum. One has chosen the data more directly related with the family life and the social relations between sexes. «Young people as to their family of origin», «young people as to their future family and the social relations between sexes» are the issues dealt with in the two main chapters. The analysis was made under the principle that «when I say something, the way I say it and what I don't say and could have said are some aspects inseparable from what I say» (Eliseo Verón). The use of this principle in the interpretation of the answers given by those young people shows to be fruitful mainly in the second of the chapters referred to and it renders possible to catch, from the «speech» of the inquired young people, not only its explicit elements but also some of its hidden ideological components. Under this perspective the ideologies concerning the social relations between sexes and the social discriminations with a sexual basis are specially dealt with here.