Abstract EN:

The social spaces the adolescents in Guadeloupe evolve in are at the core of this study. It reveals all at once how complex theses spaces are, how diverse these island youths can be, and emphasizes the fracture lines which transform the society in Guadeloupe. Investigated through "ordinary" practices of "ordinary" teenagers, light was shed on these spaces thanks to several analysis tools. Questionnaires, mental schemes, pictures and interviews allow us to multiply the viewpoints on these youths' social spaces. So the process of territory can constructions be understood and the way they gain sense for the protagonists as well. Synthesized and shaped into "spatio-relational schemes", they show at once the diversity of the groups and the variery of the strategies and logics displayed to take hold of the space. Mobility, identity constructions, apprehensions of time and future, are some of the tracks along which these insular spaces are also deciphered. Semiotics and, more specifically, the theoretical frames delivered in Peirce's works and in Lakoff and Johnson's researches on metaphors, which will permit to understand more thoroughly these territories and the issue of conceding them signifiance. The metaphors extracted from the interviews led with the youths confirm the idea that the meanings attributed to these spaces results from a link which ties a subject with its environment, and founded on predominantly corporeal experiences. Thus, the metaphor collected enables us to seize some key elements structuring the view of the world held by the adolescents in Guadeloupe.