The phenomenon of violence worries the society and events involving young people lead to necessity to understand the problem and to develop public politics to prevent or minimize its incidence. In this context, this study investigates how two young men under juditial social-educative measures, one literate and other illiterate, assimilated the violence concept participating on a discussion group about the theme. The group integrated ten-one-hour meetings of maximum 20 people. A cooperative psychologist researcher coordinated and recorded the meetings according to a plan previously delineated. The analysis according to Peirce's referential theory used clippings of the transcribed audio-recorded registers that evidenced the assimilation of the violence concept. The two participants reached a level of abstraction and symbolic generalization and there was no significant difference on symbolic elaboration of the concept of violence between the participants despite their level of schooling.