Principle of pithiness in US prison slang

• Authors: Alicja Dziedzic-Rawska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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).

DE

Der Band enthält die Abstracts ausschließlich in englischer Sprache.

FR

Le numéro contient uniquement les résumés en anglais.

RU

Том не содержит аннотаций на английском языке.

Keywords

EN

prison slang; principle of pithiness; metaphor; metonymy

DE

FR

RU

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej
• Journal: Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 2

Dates

published

2017

online

2018-01-02

Contributors

author

Alicja Dziedzic-Rawska

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.17951/lsmll.2017.41.2.12