This article was written by Luisa Martín Rojo, MIRCo-UAM Director, in the 21st issue of La voz del patio, the journal of the Burgos Penitentiary.
In the same way that in a society there are social classes, ethnic groups, regions or countries that dominate the geopolitics – the economy that dictates what is in good taste and fashionable, the same happens with languages. While some are considered cultured languages, other receive names that are charged with disdain – fala, chapurreo, bable (spanish terms for babble, broken language, dialect) – that are associated with “broken language” and aim to discredit those who use them. These labels reproduce a fictitious border between “good” and “bad” languages and work as indicators of classicism and linguistic racism.
The case of caló (romaní language) clearly demonstrates this: for centuries this language has been treated as an unintentional slang, a way of speaking deliberately created for concealment. This interpretation does not stem from linguistic reasons, but rather from the historic rascism against the romaní people, whose marginalization was projected onto their language. It was only in the 19th century that its romani origin was recognized – a family of Indo-European languages from the northeast of India – yet prejudices remain and the mocking imitations of their speech continues to be a form of discrimination.
Prison slang offers another similar example. The very term “slang” carries a negative connotation – implying babbling or incomprehensibility – and it has been used to criminalize ways of speech of working-class people, minorities, and marginalized groups. In the 19th century, early criminologists interpreted these forms of speech as signs of moral degeneration, as if speaking differently posed a threat to social order. Yet this association between linguistic difference and social danger is purely prejudice.
And this is what I discovered when, between 1986 and 1988, I began my doctoral thesis and visited the old prison Burgos prison, Alcalá-2 and Valencia Women. A close examination of slang shows that it is not a deformed form of speech, but rather a complex, organized and creative system. In these contexts of surveillance and inequality language becomes a survival mechanism: it serves to construct identity, protect oneself, negotiate with power and create a world of one’s own.
Subjecting a language to variation, as happens with slang, may seem excessive, an outburst of creativity, intentional deformation, play or even chaos, but that is precisely where its strength lies. Moreover, there is no single form of slang, but rather a living, ever-changing set of forms. For decades, prisons served as hubs of creativity, genuine spaces of linguistic exchange: what was said within them would later extend throughout working-class neighborhoods and among youth groups. Today this process has slowed down, displaced by global influences like English, but the logic remains: a mosaic in which Caló, colloquial Spanish and regional and class-based varieties coexist, along with what is borrowed from other slangs around the world.
The lexical richness is tremendous. For one action, for example looking, there are multiple words: “dicar” (to see), “clisar” (too see), “junar” (to look/see), “pipear” (to observe) or “comprar” (to look). This proliferation of vocabulary is not redundant, but rather a precise form of expression to describe experiences and indicate belonging. The prestige of verbal display reinforces this tendency: those who say “fusca” (caló) instead of “pipa” (Spanish) indicate a greater degree of immersion in the slang.
The creativity is also displayed in the process of word formation. THey are not different from those applied in common language: morphological alternations (“tenelar” to have; “sifielar” to be; “recafif” for fence), transformations of meaning (“torna” for drill), metaphors (“palomas” for sheets), metonymies (“rodante” for car). Some creations are necessary to name specific practices; others are born from the desire to differentiate oneself. Slang vocabulary tends to develop internal variants before spreading to other areas of the lexicon.
This creativity is not, as has been suggested, related to crime and the desire for concealment. We find it in numerous domains, such as the parts of the body associated to relevant actions: feet (“pinreles”, “pinrés”), legs (“calicatas”, “gambas”), hands (“lomas”, “bastas”), fingers (“bastes”, “bastos”, “dátiles”), eyes (“acais”, “cequeis”, “clisos”), head (“cholla”, “chima”), sexual organs. It is also applied to internal social categories: age-sex, group membership, activity-profession, loyalty to the group. And to socially condemned domains, like violence: “marar” and “atasabar” (matar), “mojada” (puñalada), “buchante” (tiro), “quitapenas” (navaja).
Slang not only names reality: it also confronts it. Powerful language describes the prison with technical and supposedly neutral terms: inmate, prison staff, block, prison earnings, protocol. This bureaucracy softens and conceals institutional violence. In contrast, slang restores the rawness of experience: it calls the staff “boquis” or “boqueras”, the prison “talego” or “trullo”; the cell “chabolo”; and transfer, “cunda”; alert “agua”. The harshest spaces receive names that speak for themselves “el búnker”, (bunker) “la perrera” (the dog house), “el infierno” (hell). These are words that reclaim the individual experience that legislation attempts to erase.
Creating one’s own speech is much more than irreverence. It’s a form of resistance: an anti-language, an alternative symbolic world that deactivates the disciplinary gaze and protects those living under its control. In a state of constant vigilance, controlling words is controlling information. Slang draws boundaries: it defines who belongs and who is excluded, who understands and who doesn’t. It works as a password, as a refuge, as an affirmation of identity.
It also organizes the internal life of the group. It not only classifies actions, but also people: “bujarrón”, “pardillo”, “acorcaho”,”chivato”. Each label marks a moral role, a space in the community, and rules of coexistence rules that have nothing to do with the dominant moral code.
In contexts where naming certain things is dangerous, euphemisms turn into strategies. “Cantar”, “irse de la lengua”, “quitar de en medio” or “hacer un marrón” allow one to avoid literal meaning and reduce risk. Protecting oneself is also a matter of words.
And throughout this system there is a deep memory: that of Caló language. Voices such as “parné”, “chungo”, “birlar” or “payo” remind of centuries of marginalization of the Romani community and demonstrate the continuity of different forms of exclusion.
Viewed closely, slang is neither a linguistic residue nor a speech disorder. It’s a tool of social imagination. A form of reconstructing the world when the world refuses to let you be part of it. Understanding it demands setting aside prejudice, listening to those who are speaking and recognizing in them a full exercise of creativity, identity and resistance.
To understand slang is to grasp how, even under the harshest conditions, people create language as a means to continue existing and to construct themselves as subjects, both individually and collectively.
