The Prison Dictionary Illuminates a Private, Institutional Language
"[W]hen a group of inmates put their private language under a microscope, they realized the way they use language reflects years of institutional history and serves as a unique window onto their experiences of prison life," writes Leon Neyfakh for Slate about The Prison Dictionary, a project started by inmates at Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri.
Neyfakh heard about the dictionary thanks to reporter Willis Arnold at St. Louis Radio. And it will be available to the public June 27 through July 25 at poetry, art, and community stronghold Fort Gondo as part of their exhibit "A Glimpse Inside the Box: Work from St. Louis University's Prison Arts and Education Program."
"The dictionary came about as part of a prison education program operated by Saint Louis University and was conceived by English professor Paul Lynch," writes Neyfakh. More:
Lynch said he introduced his students to the idea of creating their own dictionary by having them read part of Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything, a book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. The idea, Lynch told me, was to show the inmates that a dictionary is not a book of rules but a description of language as it is used in real life at a particular moment in time. “The goal was to make the students see language as something more fluid and evolving than they’re probably accustomed to,” he said.
Step one was to distribute a bunch of index cards to everyone in the class and ask them to write down any words they used on a regular basis that they thought outsiders wouldn’t understand. Lynch asked that each word be accompanied by a definition and an example of how it might be used in a sentence; at the end of the exercise they had a master list of several hundred words. In order to make their task more manageable, they whittled the list down to about 60 words by identifying the ones that were most specific to life at Bonne Terre. That meant more generic terms like shank or the hole were discarded. “Anything that you learn from watching Shawshank Redemption we threw out,” as Lynch explained.
Neyfakh also included some gems:
The completed Bonne Terre dictionary now sits in the prison library. And while Lynch declined to share a copy of it with me, he did offer some of his favorite entries, which you can read below.
kite, n.: An informal message sent by a prisoner. According to Lynch, this is a word that has been picked up by correctional officers at Bonne Terre as well. “It’s not uncommon for a supervisor to say, if you have an issue with something, ‘just send me a kite.’ ”
two-for-three, n.: Used in bartering, as in “Let’s do a two-for-three: I’ll give you three bags of chips later if you give me two now.”
convict, prisoner, inmate, n.: These three words are used to distinguish between people based on how long they’ve been incarcerated and what level of respect they’ve earned. A convict is someone who’s been around the block, knows how to carry himself. An inmate is someone who’s new and green. Prisoner is neutral.
Read all about this language experiment at Slate.