Patois and Power: Inmate Argot in Modern Penal Histories

• In Event: Ethnographic engagements: Insiders and outsiders in diverse criminological sites

Abstract

In recent years, academics have made a conscious effort to bring the convict experience to the center of American penal history. Inspired by the work of Erving Goffman, historians have increasingly used dramaturgical theory as the lens through which to capture the sub rosa social ecology of the penitentiary, framing the idiosyncrasies of prisoner-administrator and inter-prisoner relations in the language of theatrical performance. As useful as it is, however, dramaturgy is moored in a conception of play-acting that is largely alien to prison communities. Carny, the language which the inmates themselves often used to describe the élan of prison life, is comparatively fitting. A derivative of carnival and criminal underworld cants, carny drew significant mid-century ethnographic attention from Gresham Sykes, Donald Clemmer, and other prominent social scientists. Present-day researchers, however, have demurred from framing the dynamics of twentieth century prisoner communities through the nuanced, evocative language of their subjects, relying instead on the more rigid “front stage/back stage” binary of dramaturgy. This paper will discuss the relative merits of dramaturgy and carny as descriptive languages and will propose that the latter terminology heavily augment the former as the normative means of reconstructing twentieth-century inmate social communities.

Author

• Alexander Tepperman, University of Florida