Anaconda, Jet Fuel, White Robes, and Miaow Miaow: The Argot of Women Prisoners
Date | 01 December 2019 |
DOI | 10.1177/0032885519877380 |
Author | Tomer Einat,Keren Dagan Moshe |
Published date | 01 December 2019 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885519877380
The Prison Journal
2019, Vol. 99(6) 683 –705
© 2019 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0032885519877380
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Article
Anaconda, Jet Fuel,
White Robes, and Miaow
Miaow: The Argot of
Women Prisoners
Keren Dagan Moshe1
and Tomer Einat2
Abstract
This qualitative study based on research conducted in a prison facility for
women in Israel aims to establish the existence of an argot among women
prisoners and to analyze how it reflects their subculture. This research found
that the argot focuses on seven different aspects of prison life: same-sex
sexual relations, loyalty, prisoner status, drugs, relations between mentally
stable prisoners and mentally ill prisoners, attitudes toward the prison staff,
and threats and violence. The argot concerning gender-oriented distresses
was found the most common, and the authors concluded that this aspect is
the most stressful and threatening in the prisoner subculture.
Keywords
women, prison, subculture, argot
Introduction
One of the most significant trends within the social sciences is an increased
focus on language (Sobran, 1994). In disciplines such as sociology and cul-
tural anthropology, researchers have been rethinking and reclaiming their
1University of Haifa, Israel
2Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Corresponding Author:
Tomer Einat, Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.
Email: einatt@mail.biu.ac.il
877380TPJXXX10.1177/0032885519877380The Prison JournalMoshe and Einat
research-article2019
684 The Prison Journal 99(6)
various topics from both textual and linguistic perspectives. They have sug-
gested that societies, social institutions, identities, and even cultures may be
understood as discursively constructed ensembles of texts (Delaney, 2010).
Words define concepts, and their combination in sentences creates and
interprets the world (Force, 2009). Language is acquired for communication
as an instrument, a tool, a key component in socialization and in the develop-
ment and perpetuation of behavioral codes, and, ultimately, a means of sur-
vival as a member of the human race (Srivastava & Goldberg, 2017).
“Languages are the mirrors of the souls of the societies in which they are
born, reflecting the history of their contacts” (Encinas, 2001, p. 4). They are
micro-translations of social structures that reaffirm and recreate cultural
myths and social life patterns (Fought, 2006) and are not only essential parts
of our cultural heritage but also the irreducible expressions of human creativ-
ity and diversity. In showing this diversity, different social groupings exhibit
significant differences in their language. In fact, the divisions between social
subgroups may be identified precisely by the unique characteristics of their
language (Rampton, 2014). The language in which a group thinks and com-
municates serves to organize the experiences of its members, formulate their
world and social reality, and record their experiences through time (Harley,
2014). In addition to having particular ways of arranging words (syntactical
structure), each language has its own unique terminology that serves to
classify, identify, modify, and indicate action (morphology). According to
Cardozo-Freeman (1984), the language a community speaks serves as a
sociocultural index of that community. These qualities, which together make
up the form of any language, are unique to the particular speech community.
People react, observe, and express themselves through the instrument of the
given language, conveying in the process their worldview and their interpre-
tation of reality without knowing it.
The language of subgroups, subcultures, or speech communities
(Thompson, 2013) may include idiosyncratic expressions that do not exist in
the formal language of the larger society or “borrowed” words that are
assigned new meanings or are used in novel contexts (Coates, 2016). These
unique combinations of formal language and contrived meanings adopted by
subgroups are termed “argot.” Nowhere is the understanding and immersion
of oneself in a particular argot as important as in prison. In this context, two
main complementary models have been proposed to explain the unique fea-
tures of prison argot: the endogenous model and the import model (Marcum,
Hilinski-Rosick, & Freiburger, 2014).
In the endogenous model, a novel language is created that assigns names
and tags to behavioral patterns and roles pertaining to the prison situation
(Crewe, 2009). According to this model, prison subculture and argot are
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