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Examining the relationship between linguistic practices and younger generations by the means of a homogeneous “youth” category would contradict the finding that languages are affected by a sociohistorical context which gives their speakers a variety of social identities. These social identities result in variation in both linguistic practices and representations. It is assumed that young speakers’ symbolic practices are also concerned with this finding. Therefore, the symbolic practices of younger generations might be affected by their social identities in different ways. The purpose of this paper is to report some results of a qualitative research on linguistic representations developed by young people in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. These results suggest that their social identity of speakers living in a peripheral area – vs. central area – of the francophonie has a significant influence on their representations of “youth language(s)”.