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This study addresses itself to the problems of "cultural difference" through a semantic feature analysis of the lexicon of the hard-core poor. The hard-core poor are an internally organized, often highly resourceful, deviant subculture, the members of which do not share common societal values and do not wish for social mobility. They have their own ideology concerning the middle-class striver, considering him "sick" and his values inimical. Although other types of slum residents appear to lack integrated social systems for surviving in conditions of economic marginality, the hard-core poor do not. Their neighbors refer to them as "the self-contained society." They have developed their own adaptive institutional forms, including those for religious expression, economic survival, and social aid. This subculture has its own economic strata (not all of the hard-core group are economically poor), as well as its own elites, its own methods of communication, and highly efficient system maintenance and group insulation mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the trade-off strategy in community research. Most recently, some of the more sophisticated and highly organized low-income communities have developed a modus operandi with outside researchers. It is rooted in the very capitalistic system in which both the poor and the professional live. The human service professions have not been unresponsive to this emerging characteristic of low-income communities. Professional service programs involving low-income people as assistants to professionals and as links between the professional service and the recipients of these services are rapidly being developed. Traditionally, the researcher's approach to the community process has been objective, detached, silent-striving for invisibility. The researcher's model of work has been based on at least the following two values: maximizing the gathering of relevant data and minimizing the contamination of the processes being observed. The immediate objective of this strategy is to set up a symbiotic relationship between the two parties--researchers and the low-income community--which will result in mutual gain.