The article deals with axiologically marked symbolic associations related to the sociocultural phenomenon of youth. The research is conducted on the basis of social novels by British and American authors of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The symbolic meaning of the concept is formed in a textual context and motivated by cultural images, ideas and values. It does not cause an internal semantic change but complements the range of meaning in the process of discourse implementation. The study of the symbolic embodiment of the concept of YOUTH in English literary discourse is not limited to the analysis of individual words but requires conducting an interpretative-textual analysis of the coherentdiscourse situation, indicating the formation of an associative chain during concept actualization. Chain elements are linked internally into a single unit, forming an associative group. The symbol, carrying the axiological potential of its culture, operates in inseparable unity with the axiological component of the concept under study. The data clarify the relationship between positive and negative axiological representations of the concept