The adolescent passage is paradoxical. On the one hand, the young person positions himself as a subject by and for the rupture with the domestic cultural universe ; on the other hand, he will often return to repressed cultural elements of the preceding generation in order to construct his future. This is a sharp and very visible paradox when we are dealing with contexts of migration, but it is inherent to every adolescent process, whether « migrant » or « native ». This article uses C. Lévi-Strauss’ notion of « mythopoetic language » to explore the translations of this paradox in adolescents’ particular way of modeling language and of speaking.

Adolescence, 2014, 32, 1, 101-110.