The « langue des cités » constitutes a contemporary myth. This paper, with particular reference to a corpus of newspaper articles, presents the main frame of this myth and then gives a contribution to its release. To this end, this paper presents the results of a research on language practices of young speakers attending training centers for their social and professional insertion, on the outskirts of Paris. It stresses the characteristics of their speech and reflects the social complexity of their language use in the interactional process during training sessions.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°4, pp. 873-885.