Relations between the adolescent process and one’s relationship with language are played out through a certain « remodeling » of language, by way of adolescents’ graphic inventions and their new investment of written forms. In the invention of his signature we posit an essential act of rewriting of the adolescent by himself, in other words, the acquisition of a style. It is a question of investigating the changing status of the subject in relation to the signature joined to his proper name. This no doubt involves specifying the monstrative function of the signature and the effects of its displacements. We would suggest as a line of research a study of the signature-value of the marks of the subject in their actual formations: inscriptions on one’s own body.

Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°4, pp. 1013-1021.