Abstract

This paper attempts to uncover the interpretive models underlying the construction of social representations about the identity of young people associated with crime by El Salvador's written press. To achieve this goal, I explore the ways in which these young people are categorized and characterized and the metaphors used to represent them and their actions as well as the consequences of the latter. My research has been carried out from the interdisciplinary perspective I call ‘sociological and linguistic discourse analysis’. This examines the resources and strategies used in oral and written texts to impose, maintain, justify, or propose certain interpretive models seeking to make sense of social reality.