Some remarks on a linguistic predator: Foreign influences upon prison slang

Abstract

Prison slang may be considered to be a language variety with great creativity, which is manifested in its inherent tendency to draw on and borrow from other languages and language varieties. As a result, in the linguistic repertoire used by inmates in British and American prisons we observe a strong tendency to apply vocabulary items which derive from many different linguistic backgrounds, such as, among others, Yiddish, Spanish, Italian and Cockney Rhyming slang. Unfortunately, this aspect of prison slang seems to be sadly neglected, if not altogether ignored. This paper provides an analysis of the subject of borrowings in the linguistic repertoire used by Englishspeaking inmates.