A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group. It may also be called a cryptolect , argot , pseudo-language , anti-language or secret language . Each term differs slightly in meaning; their uses are inconsistent. Richard Rorty defines cant by saying that "'Cant', in the sense in which Samuel Johnson exclaims, 'Clear your mind of cant,' means, in other words, something like that which 'people usually say without thinking, the standard thing to say, what one normally says'." In Heideggerian terms it is what "das Man" says.
24-607: Cafundó ( Portuguese pronunciation: [kafũˈdɔ] ), or Cupópia ( [kuˈpɔpjɐ] ), is an argot ("secret language") spoken in the Brazilian village of Cafundó, São Paulo , now a suburb of Salto de Pirapora . The language is structurally similar to Portuguese , with many Bantu words in its lexicon. Cafundó was at first thought to be an African language, but a later study (1996) by Carlos Vogt and Peter Fry showed that its grammatical and morphological structure are those of Brazilian Portuguese , specifically
48-414: A suffix to coin names for modern-day jargons such as "medicant", a term used to refer to the type of language employed by members of the medical profession that is largely unintelligible to lay people. The thieves' cant was a feature of popular pamphlets and plays, particularly between 1590 and 1615, but continued to feature in literature through the 18th century. There are questions about how genuinely
72-895: A means to prevent outsiders from understanding their communication and as a manner of establishing a subculture that meets the needs of their alternative social structure. Anti-languages differ from slang and jargon in that they are used solely among ostracized social groups, including prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, and teenagers. Anti-languages use the same basic vocabulary and grammar as their native language in an unorthodox fashion. For example, anti-languages borrow words from other languages, create unconventional compounds, or utilize new suffixes for existing words. Anti-languages may also change words using metathesis , reversal of sounds or letters (e.g., apple to elppa ), or substituting their consonants. Therefore, anti-languages are distinct and unique and are not simply dialects of existing languages. In his essay "Anti-Language", Halliday synthesized
96-635: A name or term commonly used to identify a person or thing in non-specialist language, in place of another usually more formal or technical name. In the philosophy of language , "colloquial language" is ordinary natural language , as distinct from specialized forms used in logic or other areas of philosophy. In the field of logical atomism , meaning is evaluated in a different way than with more formal propositions . Colloquialisms are distinct from slang or jargon . Slang refers to words used only by specific social groups, such as demographics based on region, age, or socio-economic identity. In contrast, jargon
120-433: A number of African-derived words. Rather, the passages in which Cupópia is used comprise specific grammatical features, suggesting that the variety has its own grammar. The name cafundó means "a remote place" or "a hard-to-reach place", referring to the quilombo of Cafundó. The Brazilian film Cafundó also takes its name from the same location. The speaker community is very small (40 people in 1978). They live in
144-608: A particular language, with a part of its vocabulary replaced by words unknown to the larger public; argot used in this sense is synonymous with cant . For example, argot in this sense is used for systems such as verlan and louchébem , which retain French syntax and apply transformations only to individual words (and often only to a certain subset of words, such as nouns, or semantic content words). Such systems are examples of argots à clef , or "coded argots". Specific words can go from argot into everyday speech or
168-476: A rural area, 150 km from the city of São Paulo , and are mostly of African descent . They also speak Portuguese, and use cafundó as a "secret" home language . Argot There are two main schools of thought on the origin of the word cant : An argot ( English: / ˈ ɑːr ɡ oʊ / ; from French argot [aʁɡo] ' slang ') is a language used by various groups to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot
192-400: Is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, occupation, or hobby, in which sense it overlaps with jargon . In his 1862 novel Les Misérables , Victor Hugo refers to that argot as both "the language of the dark" and "the language of misery". The earliest known record of the term argot in this context was in a 1628 document. The word
216-423: Is most commonly used within specific occupations, industries, activities, or areas of interest. Colloquial language includes slang, along with abbreviations, contractions, idioms, turns-of-phrase, and other informal words and phrases known to most native speakers of a language or dialect. Jargon is terminology that is explicitly defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. The term refers to
240-400: Is not necessarily connected to the difference between formal and colloquial. Formal, colloquial, and vulgar language are more a matter of stylistic variation and diction , rather than of the standard and non-standard dichotomy. The term "colloquial" is also equated with "non-standard" at times, in certain contexts and terminological conventions. A colloquial name or familiar name is
264-565: Is often referred to as an argot, but it has been argued that it is an anti-language because of the social structure it maintains through the social class of the droogs. In parts of Connacht , in Ireland, cant mainly refers to an auction , typically on fair day ("Cantmen and Cantwomen, some from as far away as Dublin, would converge on Mohill on a Fair Day, ... set up their stalls ... and immediately start auctioning off their merchandise") and secondly means talk ("very entertaining conversation
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#1732780838234288-638: Is preferred in formal usage, but this does not mean that the colloquial expression is necessarily slang or non-standard . Some colloquial language contains a great deal of slang, but some contains no slang at all. Slang is often used in colloquial speech, but this particular register is restricted to particular in-groups, and it is not a necessary element of colloquialism. Other examples of colloquial usage in English include contractions or profanity . "Colloquial" should also be distinguished from "non-standard". The difference between standard and non-standard
312-413: Is termed a colloquialism. The most common term used in dictionaries to label such an expression is colloquial . Colloquialism or general parlance is distinct from formal speech or formal writing . It is the form of language that speakers typically use when they are relaxed and not especially self-conscious. An expression is labeled colloq. for "colloquial" in dictionaries when a different expression
336-522: Is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversation and other informal contexts . Colloquialism is characterized by wide usage of interjections and other expressive devices; it makes use of non-specialist terminology, and has a rapidly changing lexicon . It can also be distinguished by its usage of formulations with incomplete logical and syntactic ordering. A specific instance of such language
360-405: The grypsera of Polish prisons, thieves' cant , Polari , and Bangime . Anti-languages are sometimes created by authors and used by characters in novels. These anti-languages do not have complete lexicons, cannot be observed in use for linguistic description , and therefore cannot be studied in the same way a language spoken by an existing anti-society would. However, they are still used in
384-574: The anti-language was first defined and studied by the linguist Michael Halliday , who used the term to describe the lingua franca of an anti-society . An anti-society is a small, separate community intentionally created within a larger society as an alternative to or resistance of it. For example, Adam Podgórecki studied one anti-society composed of Polish prisoners; Bhaktiprasad Mallik of Sanskrit College studied another composed of criminals in Calcutta. These societies develop anti-languages as
408-419: The language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest. Similar to slang, it is shorthand used to express ideas, people, and things that are frequently discussed between members of a group. Unlike slang, it is often developed deliberately. While a standard term may be given a more precise or unique usage amongst practitioners of relevant disciplines, it is often reported that jargon
432-499: The literature reflected vernacular use in the criminal underworld. A thief in 1839 claimed that the cant he had seen in print was nothing like the cant then used by gypsies, thieves, and beggars. He also said that each of these used distinct vocabularies, which overlapped, the gypsies having a cant word for everything, and the beggars using a lower style than the thieves. Colloquialism Colloquialism (also called colloquial language , everyday language , or general parlance )
456-730: The other way. For example, modern French loufoque 'crazy', 'goofy', now common usage, originated in the louchébem transformation of Fr. fou 'crazy'. In the field of medicine, physicians have been said to have their own spoken argot, cant, or slang, which incorporates commonly understood abbreviations and acronyms, frequently used technical colloquialisms , and much everyday professional slang (that may or may not be institutionally or geographically localized). While many of these colloquialisms may prove impenetrable to most lay people, few seem to be specifically designed to conceal meaning from patients (perhaps because standard medical terminology would usually suffice anyway). The concept of
480-491: The research of Thomas Harman, Adam Podgórecki , and Bhaktiprasad Mallik to explore anti-languages and the connection between verbal communication and the maintenance of a social structure. For this reason, the study of anti-languages is both a study of sociology and linguistics. Halliday's findings can be compiled as a list of nine criteria that a language must meet to be considered an anti-language: Examples of anti-languages include Cockney rhyming slang , CB slang , verlan ,
504-427: The rural hinterland Southeastern variety, caipira . Whereas its lexicon is heavily drawn from some Bantu language(s). It is therefore not a creole language , as it is sometimes considered. In contrast to Vogt and Fry (1996), Álvarez López and Jon-And (2017) suggests that when speakers code-switch from Cafundó Portuguese to Cupópia, they produce something different from a contemporary regional variety of Portuguese with
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#1732780838234528-464: The study of anti-languages. Roger Fowler's "Anti-Languages in Fiction" analyzes Anthony Burgess 's A Clockwork Orange and William S. Burroughs ' Naked Lunch to redefine the nature of the anti-language and to describe its ideological purpose. A Clockwork Orange is a popular example of a novel where the main character is a teenage boy who speaks an anti-language called Nadsat . This language
552-541: Was often described as 'great cant'" or "crosstalk"). In Scotland, two unrelated creole languages are termed cant . Scottish Cant (a mixed language, primarily Scots and Romani with Scottish Gaelic influences) is spoken by lowland Roma groups. Highland Traveller's Cant (or Beurla Reagaird ) is a Gaelic -based cant of the Indigenous Highland Traveller population. The cants are mutually unintelligible. The word has also been used as
576-402: Was probably derived from the contemporary name les argotiers , given to a group of thieves at that time. Under the strictest definition, an argot is a proper language with its own grammatical system. Such complete secret languages are rare because the speakers usually have some public language in common, on which the argot is largely based. Such argots are lexically divergent forms of
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