Principle of pithiness in US prison slang

Alicja Dziedzic-Rawska

Abstract


The present paper introduces ‘the principle of pithiness’ in US prison slang, which assumes that, in order to communicate successfully, prisoners need to use language that is terse and vigorously expressive. Such function is served by figurative language as it is rich in meaning, emotional content, and, simultaneously, is economical in form. Using prison-specific metaphors and metonymies, prisoners provide new quality: without the thorough study of the prison context prison slang is esoteric to the outsider. Therefore, the paper is also a voice for integrating linguistic analysis with that of the context (cf. Kövecses 2015).

Keywords


prison slang; principle of pithiness; metaphor; metonymy

Full Text:

PDF

References


https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR51/035/1998/en/

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/advocacy/prisons/u-s.htm

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=WIC&division=5.&title=∂=1.&chapter=2.&article=1

Cambell, G. 1868. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Cowley, S. J. 2004. Contextualizing bodies: Human infants and distributed cognition. Language Sciences, 26, 565-591.

Davison, D. 1981. What metaphors mean. In: M Johnson (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 200-220.

Dumas, B. K., Lighter, J. 1978. Is slang a word for linguists?. American Speech, 53(1), 5-17.

Gibbs, R. W. 1992. Categorization and metaphor understanding. Psychological Review, 99(3), 572-577.

Gibbs, R. W. (ed.). 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge/New York: CUP.

Green, J. 2010. Green’s Dictionary of Slang. London: Chambers Harrap Publishers.

Halliday, M. A. K. 1976. Anti-Languages. American Anthropologist, 78(3), 570-584.

Halliwell, S. (transl.). 1995. Aristotle Poetics. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.

Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture’s Consequences. Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations across Nations. Thousand Oaks/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Irwin, J., Cressey, D. R. 1962. Thieves, convicts and the inmate culture. Social Problems, 10(2), 142-155.

Johnson, M. 1981. Introduction: Metaphor in the philosophical tradition. In: M. Johnson (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 3-47.

Kecskés, I. 2008. Dueling contexts: A dynamic model of meaning. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 385-406.

Kecskés, I. 2015. Language, culture, and context. In: F. Sharifian (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 113-129.

Kövecses, Z. 2006. Language, Mind, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kövecses, Z. 2015. Where Metaphors Come From. Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford/New York: OUP.

Kravchenko, A. V. 2007. Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code. Language Sciences, 29, 650-671.

Kroskrity, P. V. 2001. Identity. In: A. Duranti (ed.), Key Terms in Language and Culture. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 106-109.

Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. 1980. The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cognitive Science, 4(2), 195-208.

Love, N. 2007. Are languages digital codes? Language Sciences, 29, 690-709.

Ogden, C. K., Richards, I. A. 1946. The Meaning of Meaning. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Richards, I. A. 1936. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Risager, K. 2014. The language-culture nexus in transnational perspective. In: F. Sharifian (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 87-99.

Salzmann, Z. 2007. Language, Culture, and Society. Boulder: Westview Press.

Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E. 1994. Intercultural Communication. A Reader. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Sapir, E. 1929. The status of linguistics as a science. Language, 5, 207-214.

Van Dijk, T. A. 2009. Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge: CUP.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2017.41.2.12
Date of publication: 2018-01-02 15:01:02
Date of submission: 2017-04-22 10:30:10


Statistics


Total abstract view - 1140
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 682

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Alicja Dziedzic-Rawska

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.