“He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers
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Roxanne But
Abstract
This paper investigates how cant is used to represent the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers. Cant refers to the special vocabulary that is associated with and used by people living on the margins such as thieves and prostitutes. Little work has been conducted on the use of this language in courtroom texts. Using a historical pragmatic framework, evidence of the actual occurrence of cant as well as metalinguistic evidence was generated through lexical keyword searches in the Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Then the use of marginal vocabulary was examined more closely in extracts from the Sessions Papers using historical discourse analysis. This paper argues that cant is enregistered and that the courtroom recorder and the editor of the Session Papers reproduced the cant language to highlight and draw attention to the maliciousness and culpability of those who were accused in court. Linguistic techniques such as glossing and metalinguistic commentary were inserted to foreground the cant terms in the text. In addition, this historical discourse analysis sheds light on how the witnesses in the courtroom make strategic use of cant terms to portray the defendant in a negative light.
References
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Appendix
Overview frequencies keyword searches List 1 and List 2.
List 1
| Keyword | Frequencies in Sessions Papers |
|---|---|
| bilk | 22 |
| bob | 7 |
| boned | 7 |
| buck | 2 |
| bulls | 7 |
| buttons | 1 |
| calm | 0 |
| clacking | 1 |
| dubbs | 3 |
| father | 0 |
| fence | 24 |
| flat | 6 |
| gambler | 2 |
| gammon | 5 |
| jew | 1 |
| knowing | 0 |
| lay | 3 |
| lobster | 1 |
| lock | 3 |
| mark | 1 |
| Mary Cut and Come Again | 0 |
| monisher | 1 |
| ooro | 1 |
| pastry-cook | 1 |
| pattern measure | 1 |
| prad | 1 |
| quid | 4 |
| Sall | 1 |
| scamp | 16 |
| scout | 10 |
| shade | 6 |
| sham | 100 |
| Sophia | 1 |
| stag | 11 |
| stamp | 1 |
| tale | 2 |
| thrums | 2 |
| toge | 0 |
| traps | 13 |
| wack | 3 |
| wedges | 5 |
List 2
| Keyword | Frequencies in Sessions Papers |
|---|---|
| academy | 17 |
| adam’d | 0 |
| ballooning | 0 |
| beak | 0 |
| bit | 2 |
| blowen | 0 |
| blue pigeon flying | 1 |
| bobstick | 0 |
| bub | 0 |
| chaunt | 0 |
| cligh | 0 |
| clink | 3 |
| clout | 0 |
| cockabrass | 0 |
| copper clinking | 0 |
| cove | 0 |
| crap | 2 |
| crooks | 0 |
| cull | 25 |
| daddles | 0 |
| darkey | 0 |
| did him over | 1 |
| ding | 13 |
| dish | 3 |
| dobbin | 0 |
| dorsed | 0 |
| drop | 0 |
| fam | 0 |
| fawny | 0 |
| flag | 0 |
| flash | 10 |
| frisk | 7 |
| glanthem | 0 |
| glim | 1 |
| gropers | 0 |
| grub | 1 |
| hobbled | 13 |
| hop the twig | 1 |
| hornies | 0 |
| hot | 113 |
| ken | 6 |
| kid | 3 |
| kilter | 0 |
| knuckle | 0 |
| lap | 0 |
| leer | 0 |
| lightning | 0 |
| lip | 0 |
| lully | 2 |
| lumber | 0 |
| mag | 3 |
| mizzle | 0 |
| mosque | 0 |
| nap | 8 |
| ned | 2 |
| nicks | 0 |
| noggin | 2 |
| pals | 0 |
| patter | 1 |
| prigg’d | 3 |
| queer | 4 |
| reader | 0 |
| rig | 5 |
| roue | 0 |
| rum | 5 |
| screen | 0 |
| sharp | 12 |
| shove the trunk | 2 |
| sky larking | 6 |
| slang | 7 |
| slim | 0 |
| smiters | 0 |
| snack the bit | 11 |
| snitch | 6 |
| snoozed | 1 |
| squeeze | 0 |
| spell | 5 |
| tick | 5 |
| trunk | 2 |
| twang | 0 |
| wipe | 4 |
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Linguistic representations of the social margins in Early and Late Modern English
- “He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers
- Referential NPs as subtle expressions of attitude in infanticide trials, 1674–1775
- The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – a corpus based view
- Representations of prostitutes and prostitution as a metaphor in nineteenth-century English newspapers
- The language of “Ribbonmen”: A CDA approach to identity construction in nineteenth-century Irish English threatening notices
- People as property: Representations of slaves in early American newspaper advertisements
- Book Reviews
- Russi, Cinzia: Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics
- Early Germanic Languages in Contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27):
- Bunčić Daniel:Biscriptality. A sociolinguistic typology
- Walsh, Olivia: Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec
- Letras del desierto. Edición de un corpus epistolar para su estudio lingüístico. Región de Tarapacá, Chile:
- Historische Mündlichkeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte der gesprochenen Sprache (Kieler Forschungen zur Sprachwissenschaft 7):
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Linguistic representations of the social margins in Early and Late Modern English
- “He said he was going on the scamp”: Thieves’ cant, enregisterment and the representation of the social margins in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers
- Referential NPs as subtle expressions of attitude in infanticide trials, 1674–1775
- The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – a corpus based view
- Representations of prostitutes and prostitution as a metaphor in nineteenth-century English newspapers
- The language of “Ribbonmen”: A CDA approach to identity construction in nineteenth-century Irish English threatening notices
- People as property: Representations of slaves in early American newspaper advertisements
- Book Reviews
- Russi, Cinzia: Current Trends in Historical Sociolinguistics
- Early Germanic Languages in Contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27):
- Bunčić Daniel:Biscriptality. A sociolinguistic typology
- Walsh, Olivia: Linguistic Purism. Language Attitudes in France and Quebec
- Letras del desierto. Edición de un corpus epistolar para su estudio lingüístico. Región de Tarapacá, Chile:
- Historische Mündlichkeit. Beiträge zur Geschichte der gesprochenen Sprache (Kieler Forschungen zur Sprachwissenschaft 7):
