Jargon

Luisa Martín Rojo
Table of contents

Jargon is an ill-understood linguistic phenomenon, despite a number of sociolinguistic studies and despite the use of the term ‘jargon’ in common parlance to refer to a wide variety of ‘substandard’, ‘deviant’ and ‘closed’ forms of language usage. In this contribution, a clarification of the phenomenon will be attempted by means of a discussion of a paradigmatic case: delinquent jargon (l’argot du milieu; see Martín Rojo 1993, 1994). This discussion will extend over Sections 2, 3, and 4. In Section 5, I will consider some other phenomena which can be included under this label: varieties of jargon – jargons of professions, as well as other closely-related linguistic varieties – in particular, juvenile slang, and the argot géneralisé ‘common slang’ (François 1968; 1990). The panorama presented in the first part focuses especially on the study and explanation of the dichotomies ‘normal’/‘abnormal’, ‘correct’/‘incorrect’ and will contribute to the understanding of all these varieties, and to some insight into the ‘sociolinguistic order’.

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