Rinconete y Cortadillo

Argot, jargon and slang

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(iii) Argot, jargon and slang

These thieves and caterpillars in the commonwealth . . . have devised a language among themselves which they name 'canting' but others 'peddlers' French, a speech compact . . . of English and a great number of odd words of their own devising, without all order or reason, and yet is such that none but themselves are able to understand.

Regional and social class dialects are the most widely investigated forms of intra-societal differentiation. But at all levels of analysis, from the nation to the small group, common ways of speaking serve to unite and to demonstrate unity, and Sapir deplored linguists' neglect of those sub-forms of a language current among occupational and other groups held together by ties of common interest. The complete absence of linguistic indices… is obscurely felt as a defect or sign of emotional poverty. The extraordinary importance of minute linguistic differences for the symbolisation of psychologically real as contrasted to politically or sociologically official groups is intuitively felt by most people. He talks like (one of) us is equivalent to saying, He is one of us (Sapir 1949, p. 16). The language of special 'interest groups' serves both to conduct its particular business and to symbolize its separate identity; it is partly the instrument of effective common action, and partly the means and symbol of group loyalty. . . it is zealously fostered as the outward expression of the unity of thought, feeling and action (Lewis 1949, p. 49).

Slang is distinguished from argot by being less secret, more public, more generally available and, of course, more 'respectable'. As the language of deviant groups, argot is itself a mode of deviance, a gesture of defiance against the straight world. Its contents are highly specific to the group and its activities, and no generalized knowledge of 'deviant sub_culturs' will be sufficient to reveal them. The Elizabethan Thomas Harman felt it his duty to uncover the variety of villainies among the idle vagabonds, and so identified 'three and twenty sorts of wicked people'. They included priggers of prancers (horse_thieves), freshwater mariners (beggars posing as ship_wrecked seamen), demanders for glimmers (females pretending to have lost all their goods through fire), doxics (the later gangsters' molls), and the enticingly named bawdy baskets (female pedlars). Though his industry is commendable, Harman's list of categories could only have been the tip of the lexical iceberg without prolonged participant observation in these subcultures of roguery. The apparent lack of 'order and reason' in their specch was an intended opaqueness, reinforcing solidariq within and separation without. More than three centuries later, Arthur Morrison's novel of East London low life describes the Sunday morning parade of the 'High Mobsmen'. Swaggering along in their check suits, gold chains, lumpy rings and billycocks, thay were pointed out by name or exploit:

Him as done the sparks [diamonds] in from Regent Street for nine centuries of quids. Him a's done five_stretch for a snide [forged] bank bill, and they never found the 'oof [takings]. Him as maced [swindled] the bookies in France, and shot the nark in the boat

The modern edition of the novel provides a glossary of nefarious activities as finely discriminating as that of 1567 e.g. busters are burglars, magsmen are confidence tricksters, and fags, hackers and dippers are subtle varieties of pick-pocket.

It is mainly lexical items like these that characterize argot, and all rackets develop their own. From them flows a rich supply of innovations into more general slang, prostitutes especially being said by Maurer (1939) to act as linguistic entrepreneurs because of their double contacts with the under- and upper-world. This is a field of enquiry rich in the exotic and the bizarre, and it was studied with enthusiastic intensity by David Maurer. Though he was a professor of English, his purpose was often explicitly sociological. He saw in argot a powerful reinforcement of group rapport, and a defensive reaction to the hostility of the 'outside' world. Rarely used merely to conceal critical meanings, it was nevertheless a sort of union card (Maurer 1950). And among the various rackets, prostitution alone seemed to lack verbal inventiveness. This was attributed mainly to a lack of group solidarity and professional pride, and a certain striving for conventional respectability which made its practitioners ambivalent towards their trade compared with the 'braggadocio' apparent in others. Nor did they need the shrewd psychological approach of those 'grifters' who lived on the quickness of their wits and their facility with words (Maurer 1939). The con-men, who lived by words, might be expected to display especial verbal skills. And this is what Maurer found. They seemed to derive a creative pleasure from toying with language:

They love to talk . . . and their proclivity for coining and using argot words extends much beyond the necessary technical vocabulary. They like to express all life-situations in argot, to give their sense of humour free play, to revolt against conventional usage. Thus they have a large stock of words and idioms for expressing ideas connected with travel, love-making, the creature comforts, recreation, money, the law . . . And one may rest assured that they will use good, rich, roistering, ribald words which will radiate connotations for the initiate.

This is a description of language use in which denotation (simple reference, or naming) is far less important than connotation, the associations a word has for the initiated. Argot was seen as reflecting a way of life, as the key to attitudes, evaluations and modes of thinking. Its use could therefore be used as an indicator of parrticipation in the particular sub-culture. Using it this way, Lerman (1967) emphasized that the most detailed preliminary study was necessary to find the 'correct' words for that group at that time, the instability of argot being strong evidence of its mainly symbolic funchon. Once a word is taken over by outsiders, its in-group value is lost and a replacement will probably be found. In less deviant form, the jazz musicians described by Becker (1963) used many esoteric words, like riff, because they were technically indispensable. But they also used many others, like bread for money, for which conventional synonyms were readily available, but which expressed their sense of separation from the world of the squares.

More respectable occupations use language in similar ways, though perhaps without that sinister vivacity which Maurer attributed to deviant groups. It can then be called jargon. Modern students might well sympathize with Samuel Butler's complaint of a Babylonish dialect that learned pedants much affect, and academic jargons mixture of intellectual necessity, mere convention and trade solidarity will be discussed in Chapter 5. All learned professions have terms for which Standard English provides no equivalents or only vague ones, and which therefore make possible condensed and unambiguous communication between fellow-professionals. Such terms also keep laymen at a respectful, or at least uncomprehending, distance and so enhance the majesty and the mystery. This double function is also apparent in the jargon of less time-honoured occupations, e.g.:

Wow. More downtime on the lay barge roughnecks in the dog-house. A telex to that effect from the North Sea might conjure up visions of riotous offshore highjinks. Like same other aspects of the oil business, however, the message is more prosaic than it sounds. It simply means 'Waiting on weather. Work on the barge laying submarine pipelines has been held up again, and the drilling crews are taking shelter.' The translation . . . is provided by courtesy of the Bank of Scotland, who publish today a glossary of oil jargon that is increasingly sweeping into business conversation.

That glossary is intended so to remove the mystification of the jargon that ordinary businessmen could start talking the same language as the oilmen. And in so far as the jargon is only a matter of techrnical terms, it may achieve its purpose. But in so far as it expresses a strong sense of identity in a self-consciously pioneering branch of technology, then no glossary could guide the outsider through all the meanings it conveys.

The last example is again of language largely unintended for outside ears. Until the Opies' book was published in 1959, the language of school-children was one of the least recorded of all varieties of speech in Britain. Linguistically, it offers a constant welcome to innovation and reflects a delight in the sheer sound of words. But the strength of tradition is striking too. As nowhere else in the language, words and rhymes, repartee and ritual, survive substantially unchanged from earlier centuries. Though the Opies give many examples of the speed of oral transmission, a topical jingle being recorded hundreds of miles apart within weeks of the event it commemorates, it is this continuity which they emphasize most. A rhyme known to be 130 years old will have passed through the keeping of not less than twenty successive school generations. Though sharp regional and even local variations remind us of the intensely local life of the past, much of the traditional lore and its formulation can be found all over the country.

This continuity may make us lose sight of an essential function of the jokes, rhymes, songs and formulas. They are intended to protect many activities from adult understanding and control. Grown_ups have outgrown the schoolchild's lore. If made aware of it they tend to deride it, and they actively seek to suppress its livelier manifestations . . . And the folklorist and anthropologist can, without travelling a mile from his door, examine a thriving unselfconscious culture (I. and P. Opie 1959, pp. 9_4). It is the culture of the greatest of the savage tribes, and its language is for intra-tribal communication. A child has to learn the right forms. When he has done so, they provide ready-made phrases for fun, for licensed obscenity, for defusing hostile situations, and for mocking the adult world. And if the correct word for a good thing is super or (as in my children's school) ace, then nothing else will do. A referential equivalent will merely betray ignorance or non-affiliation. The ritual declarations too have to be exact promissory notes, affidavits, deeds of conveyance, receipts and notices of resignation, are verbal, and are sealed by the utterance of ancient words which are recognised and considered binding by the whole community (I. and P. Opie 1959, p. 121).

To remake the point in more sociological form, the child achieves his purposes through his use of communal and habitual words and sequences. There are forms for every time and purpose in peer-group life. Their use makes transactions possible, and also proclaims and maintains the group. Through his successful use of these verbal resources, the child shows his knowledge of his sub-culture, and his adherence to its norms. He demonstrates his similarity to others, not his difference from them.

Language in Culture and Class. The Sociology of Language and Education, A.D.Edwards, London.