A Study of Reformatory Argot
1951; Duke University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/453078
ISSN1527-2133
Autores Tópico(s)Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics
ResumoTHIS STUDY is based on the writer's experiences and observations at a reformatory during a period of eighteen months. The writer was employed as a caseworker and teacher, lived on the grounds, and had a remarkable opportunity to gain an acquaintance with the manifold expressions of inmate life. Inmate slang was the key which unlocked many esoteric features of the elaborate underground life which the inmates cultivated. This reformatory is of the medium-security type, includes a farm, and houses approximately three hundred inmates between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, with the mean age about eighteen. The institution is located about sixty-five miles from New York City, but its inmate population is made up almost exclusively of delinquents from New York City. Reformatory argot is vivid, racy, and irreverent; it reflects the personality of'the inmates who employ it, as well as the conflicts and tensions inherent in the institutional setting. It is the language of the dispossessed, tinged with bitterness and marked by a self-lacerating humor. As H. L. Mencken points out, prison language is related to 'thieves' cant' and to the argot of tramps and hoboes.1 It can be demonstrated that all groups which operate on a submarginal social level and which have an underlying sense of being socially rejected, tend to adopt a vigorous, crude coterie-language. This specialized parlance becomes a means of identifying oneself with a group and also of expressing hostility toward society. This tendency is intensified in a reformatory where bravado and exhibitionism are the norm. The unsophisticated reformatory inmate between sixteen and eighteen will quickly assimilate the local jargon in order to 'belong.' The argot, moreover, enables him to project his feelings of rebellion and estrangement from society. The reformatory terminology which the writer had an opportunity to study has a variety of sources. Much of it derives from the various slum milieus of New York City. Many of the specific prison terms are imported from other penal institutions by inmates with a varied institutional background. Some terms-coinages in some cases, semantic variations of existing words in others-are indigenous to the particular institution. It is interesting and somewhat disconcerting to note that the argot of the in-
Referência(s)