Anna Ciechanowska PWSTE Jarosław and Grzegorz Andrzej Kleparski Uniwersytet Rzeszowski “On the semantic features of prison slang.”
ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of prison slang has raised much controversy, and there have been various attempts by scholars of different periods to treat the matter comprehensively. Nevertheless, many of the linguistic features of this particular language variety have been neglected or ignored. As a result, widely and unequivocally accepted conclusions regarding this variety of slang have yet to be drawn. This paper provides an overview of significant lexico‑semantic features of prison slang, and makes special reference to its ephemerality and creativity, its anti‑normative character, its metaphorical variation, its relexicalisation and overlexicalisation, and its inherent tendency to draw on the lexical resources of other varieties, and even other languages.