Anti-Languages Author(s): M. A. K. Halliday Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Sep., 1976), pp. 570-584 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/674418 Accessed: 12/09/2010 21:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist. http://www.jstor.org Anti-Languages M. A. K. HALLIDAY University of Sydney At certain times and places we come across special forms of language generated by some kind of anti-society; these we may call "anti-languages." An anti-language serves to create and maintain social structure through conversation, just as an everyday language does; but the social structure is of a particular kind, in which certain elements are strongly foregrounded. This gives to the anti-language a special character in which metaphorical modes of expression are the norm; patterns of this kind appear at all levels, phonological, lexicogrammatical, and semantic. The study of anti-languages offers further insights into the relation between language and social structure, and into the way in which text functions in the realization of social contexts. OF THE VARIOUS KINDS OF ANTI-WORD,s uch as antibiotic, antibody, antinovel, antimatter, and so on, the kind that is to be understood here is that representedb y anti- society. An anti-society is a society that is set up within another society as a conscious alternative to it. It is a mode of resistance, resistance which may take the form either of passives ymbiosis or of active hostility and even destruction. An anti-languagei s not only parallelt o an anti-society;i t is in fact generatedb y it. We do not know much about either the process or its outcome, because most of the evidence we have is on the level of travelers't ales; but it is reasonablet o suppose that, in the most general terms, an anti-languages tands to an anti-society in much the same relation as does a language to a society. Either pair, a society and its languageo r an anti-societya nd its (anti-) language, is, equally, an instance of the prevailings ociolinguistic order. It has commonly been found with other aspects of the human condition-the social structure, or the individualp syche- that there is much to be learnt from pathologicalm anifestations,w hich are seldom as clearly set off from the "normal"a s they at first appear.I n the same way a study of sociolinguistic pathology may lead to additionali nsight into the social semiotic. In ElizabethanE ngland, the countercultureo f vagabonds,o r "cursitors"i n Thomas Har- man's (1567) mock-stylish designation, a vast population of criminals who lived off the wealth of the established society, had their own tongue, or "pelting( = paltry) speech";t his is frequently referred to in contemporary accounts, though rarely describedo r even illus- trated with any detailed accuracy. The anti-society of modern Calcuttah as a highly devel- oped language of its own, substantially documented by BhaktiprasadM allik in his book Language of the Underworld of West Bengal (1972). The "second life," the term used by Adam Podg6recki (1973) to describe the subculture of Polish prisonsa nd reform schools, is accompanied by an elaborated anti-languagec alled grypserka. We shall take these as our three cases for discussion. What can be said about the characteristicso f anti-languages?L ike the early records of the languageso f exotic cultures, the information usually comes to us in the form of word lists. These afford only very limited possibilities of interpretation, although they are perhaps slightly more revealing here than in other contexts because of the special relation that obtains between an anti-language and the language to which it is counterposed. 570 Halliday] ANTI-LANGUAGES 571 The simplest form taken by an anti-languageis that of new words for old; it is a language relexicalized. It should not be assumed that it always arisesb y a process of fission, splitting off from an establishedl anguage;b ut this is one possibility, and it is easiert o talk about it in these terms. Typically this relexicalizationi s partial,n ot total: not all words in the language have their equivalentsi n the anti-language.( For an interesting case of total relexicalization, compare the Dyirbal mother-in-lawl anguage as described by Dixon a re- [1970]--perhaps lated phenomenon, since this is the languageu sed by the adult male to his affinal kin, who constitute a kind of institutionalized anti-society within society.) The principle is that of same grammar,d ifferent vocabulary;b ut different vocabularyo nly in certaina reas, typically those that are central to the activities of the subculturea nd that set it off most sharply from the establisheds ociety. So we expect to find new words for types of criminala ct, and classes of criminal and of victim; for tools of the trade; for police and other representativeso f the law enforcement structure of the society; for penalties, penal institutions, and the like. The Elizabethanc hroniclerso f the pelting speech list upwardo f 20 terms for the main classeso f members of the fraternity of vagabonds,s uch as upright man, rogue, wild rogue,p riggero f prancers (= horse thief), counterfeit crank, jarkman, bawdy basket, walking mort, kinchin mort, doxy, and dell; numerous terms for specific roles in their often highly elaborate villainies, and names for the strategiest hemselves,w hich are known collectively as laws-for example lifting law (stealing packages)w hich involves a lift, a marker,a nd a santer (the one who steals the package, the one to whom it is handed, and the one who waits outside to carry it off); names for the tools, e.g., wresters (for picking locks), and for the spoils, e.g., snappings,o r garbage;a nd names for various penalties that may be suffered, such as clying the jerk (being whipped) or triningo n the chats (getting hanged). Such features belong to our commonsense picture of an argot, or cant (to give it its Elizabethan name). By themselves, they are no more than the technical and semitechnical features of a special register; they amount to an anti-languageo nly if we admit into this category something that is simply the professionalj argon associated with the activities of a criminalc ounterculture. It is noticeable, however, that even these purely technical elements seem to be somewhat largert han life. The languagei s not merely relexicalized in these areas:i t is overlexicalized. So in Mallik'sa ccount of the Calcutta underworldl anguagew e find not just one word for "bomb" but 21; 41 words for "police," and so on (1972:22-23). A few of these are also technical expressions for specific subcategories; but most of them are not-they are by ordinarys tandardss ynonymous, and their proliferationw ould be explained by students of slang as the result of a neverendings earchf or originality,e ither for the sake of livelinessa nd humor or, in some cases, for the sake of secrecy. But there is more to it than that. If we consider underworldl anguages in terms of a general comparison with the languages of the overworld, we find in them a characteristic functional orientation, away from the experiential mode of meaning toward the inter- personal and the textual modes. Both the textual orientation (the "set" toward the message, in Jakobson's terms) and the interpersonal( the "set" toward addresser/addresseea,l though as we shall suggestt his is to be interpretedr athera s a set toward the social structure)t end to produce this overlexicalization:t he former because it takes the form of verbalc ompetition and display, in which kenningso f all kinds are at a premium;t he latter becauses ets of words which are denotatively synonymous are clearly distinguished by their attitudinal compo- nents. Mallik's2 4 synonyms for "girl"i nclude the whole rangeo f predictablec onnotations- given that, as he remarks, "the language of the criminal world [with some exceptions] is essentially a males' language" (1972:27). Both of these are normal features of everyday language, in which textual and inter- personal meanings are interwoven with experiential meanings into a single fabric of dis- course. What characterizes what we are calling anti-languages is their relatively greater orien- 572 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [78,1976 tation in this direction. In all languages, words, sounds, and structures tend to become chargedw ith social value;i t is to be expected that, in the anti-languaget, he social values will be more clearly foregrounded.T his is an instance of what Bernstein (1974) refers to as the "sociolinguisticc oding orientation," the tendency to associate certain ways of meaningw ith certain social contexts. Any interpretation of the phenomenon of anti-languagesi nvolves some theory about what kinds of meaninga re exchangedi n different environmentsw ithin a culture. Let us try and answer more specifically the question why anti-languagesa re used. Mallik in fact put this question to "a large number of criminalsa nd anti-sociale lements"-400 in all; he got 385 replies (including only 26 "don't know"), of which 158 explained it as the need for secrecy, and 132 as communicativef orce or verbal art. In Podg6recki'sa ccount of the second life both these motifs figure prominently: one of the ways in which an inmate can be downgradedt o the level of a "sucker"i n the social hierarchyi s by breakingt he rules of verbal contest, and another is by "sellingt he secret languaget o the police" (1973:9). But the fact that an anti-languagei s used for closed communicationa nd for verbala rt does not mean that these are what gave rise to it in the first place. It would be possible to create a languagej ust for purposeso f contest and display;b ut this hardlys eems sufficient to account for the origin of the entire phenomenon. The theme of secrecy is a familiaro ne in what we might call "folk anti-linguistics"-in members'a nd outsiders' explanations of the use of an anti-language.N o doubt it is a part of the truth: effective teamworkd oes depend, at times, on exchanging meanings that are inaccessible to the victim, and communication among prisoners must take place without the participation of the jailer. But while secrecy is a necessary strategic property of anti-languagesi,t is unlikely to be the major cause of their existence. Secrecy is a feature of the jargonr athert han a determinanto f the language. What then lies behind the emergence of the anti-language?Y et another way of being "suckered down" is by "maliciously refusing to learn the grypserka";a nd it is clear from Podg6recki's discussion that there is an inseparablec onnection between the "second life" and the anti-languaget hat is associated with it. The grypserkai s not just an optional extra, servingt o adorn the second life with contest and display while keepingi t successfullyh idden from the prison authorities. It is a fundamentale lement in the existence of the "second life" phenomenon. Here is Podg6recki'si nitial summingu p: The essence of the second life consists in a seculars tratificationw hich can be reduced to the division of the inmates into "people" and "suckers.".. . The people are independent and they have power over the suckers. Everydays econd life is strongly ritualized. The body of these rituals are called grypserka( from grypa-a slang word designatinga letter smuggled secretly to or from a prison); S. Malkowski defined this as "the inmates' language and its grammar." In this language, certain ... words. . . are insulting and noxious either to the speakero r to one to whom they are addressed[ 1973:7 ]. The language comes to the investigator'sa ttention in the context of the familiar twin themes of ritual insult and secrecy. But Podg6recki'sd iscussion of the "second life" shows that it is much more than a way of passing the time. It is the acting out of a distinct social structure;a nd this social structurei s, in turn, the bearero f an alternatives ocial reality. On closer scrutiny, the Polish investigatorsf ound that the division into people and suck- ers was only the principal division in a more elaborate social hierarchy. There were two classes of "people" and three of "suckers," with some degree of mobility among them, though anyone who had once reached the highest or lowest category stayed there. There were a number of other variables, based on age, provenance (urban/rural), type of offense, and prison standing (first offender/old lag); and the place of an individual in the social structure was a function of his status in respect of each of these hierarchies. Account was also taken of his status in the free underworld, which, along with other factors, suggested Halliday ] ANTI-LANGUAGES 573 that "second life" was not a product of the prison, or of prison conditions, but was im- ported from the criminal subculture outside. Nevertheless, ... the incarcerated create in their own social system a unique stratification which is based on the caste principle. The caste adherence in the case of "second life" is based not on a given social background or physical features, but is predominantly determined by a unique link with magical rules which are not functional for the social system in which they operate. The only function which these rules have is to sustain the caste system [1973:14]. Comparative data from American sources quoted by Podg6recki show the existence of a similar form of social organization in correctional institutions in the United States, differing mainly in that each of the two anti-societies appears as a distorted reflection of the structure of the particular society from which it derives. Podg6recki cites explanations of the "second life" as resulting from conditions of isola- tion, or from the need to regulate sexual behavior, and rejects them as inadequate. He suggests instead that it arises from the need to maintain inner solidarity under pressure, and that this is achieved through an accumulation of punishments and rewards: "Second life" is a system which transforms the universal reciprocity of punishments into a pattern of punishments and rewards, arranged by the principles of stratification. Some members of the community are in a position to transform the punishments into rewards. It might be said that this type of artificial social stratification possesses features of collective representation which transform the structure of existing needs into an operat- ing fabric of social life which tries to satisfy these needs in a way which is viable in the given conditions [1973:20]. The formula is therefore: free (+) people (+) peopincarcerated (-) suckers (-) ANTI-SOCIETY SOCIETY which is the Levi-Straussian proportion b, : b2 :: a: b (cf. Bourdieu 1971). At the individual level, the "second life" provides the means of maintaining identity in the face of its threat- ened destruction: In a world in which there are no real things, a man is reduced to the status of a thing.... The establishment of a reverse world (in which reducing others to things becomes a source of gratification by transforming a punitive situation into a rewarding one) can also be seen as a desperate attempt to rescue and reintegrate the self in the face of the cumulative oppression which threatens to disintegrate it. Thus "second life". . . can be interpreted as a defence and a means of reconstruction, to which the self resorts just before total disruption by means of mutually enhancing oppressive forces [1973:24 ]. The "second life" is a reconstruction of the individual and society. It provides an alterna- tive social structure, with its systems of values, of sanctions, of rewards and punishments; and this becomes the source of an alternative identity for its members, through the patterns of acceptance and gratification. In other words, the "second life" is an alternative reality. It is in this light that we can best appreciate the function of the "second-life" anti- language, the grypserka. The grypserka serves to create and maintain this alternative reality. 574 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [78,1976 An anti-language is, in this respect, no different from a language "proper": both are reality- generating systems. But because of the special character of the "second-life" reality-its status as an alternative, under constant pressure from the reality that is "out there" (which is still a subjective reality, but nevertheless stands always ready to be reaffirmed as a norm)- the reality-generating force of the anti-language, and especially its power to create and maintain social hierarchy, is strongly foregrounded. At this point we should quote at some length a critically relevant passage from Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality: The most important vehicle of reality-maintenance is conversation. One may view the individual's everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality. Conversation means mainly, of course, that people speak with one another. This does not deny the rich aura of non-verbal communication that surrounds speech. Nevertheless speech retains a privi- leged position in the total conversational apparatus. It is important to stress, however, that the greater part of reality-maintenance in conversation is implicit, not explicit. Most conversation does not in so many words define the nature of the world. Rather, it takes place against the background of a world that is silently taken for granted. Thus an exchange such as, "Well, it's time for me to get to the station," and "Fine, darling, have a good day at the office," implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense. By virtue of this implication the exchange confirms the subjec- tive reality of this world. If this is understood, one will readily see that the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality. Indeed, its massivity is achieved by the accumulation and consistency of casual conversation-conversation that can afford to be casual precisely because it refers to the routine of a taken-for-granted world. The loss of casualness signals a break in the routines and, at least potentially, a threat to the taken-for-granted reality. Thus one may imagine the effect on casualness of an exchange like this: "Well, it's time for me to get to the station." "Fine, darling, don't forget to take along your gun." At the same time that the conversational apparatus ongoingly maintains reality, it on- goingly modifies it. Items are dropped and added, weakening some sectors of what is still being taken for granted and reinforcing others. Thus the subjective reality of something that is never talked about comes to be shaky. It is one thing to engage in an embarrassing sexual act. It is quite another to talk about it beforehand or afterwards. Conversely, conversation gives firm contours to items previously apprehended in a fleeting and un- clear manner. One may have doubts about one's religion: these doubts become real in a quite different way as one discusses them. One then "talks oneself into" these doubts: they are objectified as reality within one's own consciousness. Generally speaking, the conversational apparatus maintains reality by "talking through" various elements of ex- perience and allocating them a definite place in the real world. This reality-generating potency of conversation is already given in the fact of linguistic objectification. We have seen how language objectifies the world, transforming the panta rhei of experience into a cohesive order. In the establishment of this order language realizes a world, in the double sense of apprehending and producing it. Conversation is the actualizing of this realizing efficacy of language in the face-to-face situation of indi- vidual existence. In conversation the objectifications of language become objects of indi- vidual consciousness. Thus the fundamental reality-maintaining fact is the continuing use of the same language to objectify unfolding biographical experience. In the widest sense, all who employ this same language are reality-maintaining others. The significance of this can be further differentiated in terms of what is meant by a "common language" --from the group-idiosyncratic language of primary groups to regional or class dialects to the national community that defines itself in terms of language [1966:172-173]. An individual's subjective reality is created and maintained through interaction with others, who are "significant others" precisely because they fill this role; and such interaction is, critically, verbal-it takes the form of conversation. Conversation is not, in general, didactic; the "others" are not teachers, nor do they consciously "know" the reality they are helping to construct. Conversation is, in Berger and Luckmann's term, casual. Berger and Luckmann do not ask the question, what must language be like for casual conversation to Halliday] ANTI-LANGUAGES 575 have this magic power. They are not concerned with the nature of the linguistics ystem. For linguistics, however, this is a central problem; and for linguistics in the perspective of a generals ocial semiotic, it might be said to be the centralp roblem: how can we interprett he linguistic system in such a way as to explain the magicalp owers of conversation? Let us consider the anti-languagei n this light. As Berger and Luckmann point out, subjectiver eality can be transformed: To be in society already entails an ongoing process of modificationo f subjectiver eality. To talk about transformation,t hen, involves a discussion of different degrees of modifi- cation. We will concentrate here on the extreme case, in which there is a near-total transformation;t hat is, in which the individual "switches worlds."... Typically, the transformationi s subjectively apprehendeda s total. This, of course, is something of a misapprehension.S ince subjective reality is never totally socialized, it cannot be totally transformedb y social processes.A t the very least the transformedi ndividualw ill have the same body and live in the same physical universe. Neverthelesst here are instances of transformationt hat appear total if comparedw ith lesser modifications.S uch transforma- tions we will call alternations. Alternationr equiresp rocesseso f re-socialization[ 1966:176]. The anti-language is the vehicle of such resocialization. It creates an alternative reality: the process is one not of construction but of reconstruction.T he success condition for such a reconstructioni s, in Bergera nd Luckmann'sw ords, "the availabilityo f an effec- tive plausibility structure, that is, a social base servinga s the 'laboratory'o f transformation. This plausibility structure will be mediated to the individualb y means of significanto thers, with whom he must establishs trongly affective identification"( 1966:177). The processes of resocialization, in other words, make special kinds of demand on lan- guage. In particular,t hese processes must enable the individualt o "establishs trongly affec- tive identification" with the significant others. Conversationi n this context is likely to rely heavily on the foregroundingo f interpersonalm eanings,e specially where, as in the case of the second life, the cornerstoneo f the new reality is a new social structure- although, by the same token, the interpersonale lements in the exchange of meanings are likely to be fairly highly ritualized. But it is a characteristico f an anti-languaget hat it is not just an ordinaryl anguagew hich happens to be for certain individuals a language of resocializing.I ts conditions of use are different from the types of alternation considered by Bergera nd Luckmann,s uch as forms of religious conversion. In such instances an individual takes over what for others is the reality; for him it involves a transformation,b ut the reality itself is not inherently of this order. It is somebody's ordinary,e veryday,u nmarkedr eality, and its languagei s somebody's "mother tongue." An anti-language,h owever, is nobody's "mother tongue"; it exists solely in the context of resocialization,a nd the reality it creates is inherentlya n alternater eality, one that is constructed precisely in order to function in alternation.I t is the languageo f an anti-society. Of course, the boundary between the two is not hard and fast. The early Christian community was an anti-society, and its language was in this sense an anti-language.B ut neverthelesst here are significant differences. Alternation does not of itself involve any kind of anti-language,m erely the switch from one languaget o another. (It could be said that, in the perspectiveo f the individual,t he second is in fact functioning as an anti-languageT. hus for example in Agnes' reconstruction of an identity, as described by Garfinkel [1967] in his famous case history, the language of femininity, or rather of femaleness, was for her an anti-language, since it was required to construct what was in the context a counteridentity. But a language is a social construct; Agnes did not, and could not by herself, create a linguistic system to serve as the medium for the reconstruction. Indeed to do so would have sabotaged the whole effort, since its success depended on the new identity appearing, and 576 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [78,1976 being accepted, as if it had been there from the start.) The anti-languagea rises when the alternativer eality is a counter-reality,s et up in opposition to some establishedn orm. It is thus not the distance between the two realitiesb ut the tension between them that is significant. The distance need not be very great;t he one is, in fact, a metaphoricalv arianto f the other (just as grypserkai s clearly a varianto f Polish and not some totally alien language). Moreover, unlike what happens in a transformationo f the religious conversion kind, the individualm ay in fact switch back and forth between society and anti-society, with varying degrees of intermediates tanding: the criminals ubcultureo utside the prison is in that sense intermediateb etween the second life and the establisheds ociety. LikewiseM alliki dentifies three distinct groups of people using the underworldl anguage of Bengal: criminals,n ear- criminals, and students; and he notes significant differences among them, both in content and in expression: "while the criminals speak with a peculiar intonation, the students or other cultured people speak normally"( 1972:27). There is continuity between languagea nd anti-languagej, ust as there is continuity between society and anti-society. But there is also tension between them, reflecting the fact that they are variantso f one and the same under- lying semiotic. They may express different social structures;b ut they are part and parcelo f the same social system. An anti-languagei s the means of realizationo f a subjectiver eality: not merely expressing it, but actively creatinga nd maintainingi t. In this respect, it is just another language.B ut the reality is a counter-reality, and this has certain special implications. It implies the fore- grounding of the social structure and social hierarchy.I t implies a preoccupation with the definition and defense of identity through the ritual functioning of the social hierarchy.I t implies a special conception of information and of knowledge. (This is where the secrecy comes in: the languagei s secret because the reality is secret. Again there is a counterparti n individualv erbal behavior,i n the techniqueso f informationc ontrol practicedb y individuals having something to hide, which they do not want divulged[ cf. Goffman's( 1963) study of stigma].) And it implies that social meanings will be seen as oppositions: values will be defined by what they are not, like time and space in the Looking-Glassw orld (where one lives backwards,a nd things get furthera way the more one walks toward them). Let us enumerate here some of the features of the Calcutta underworldl anguage de- scribed by Mallik. Malliks tates that it is "a full and complete language,t hough mixed and artificial to some extent" (1972:73); it is "primarilyB engali, in which strains of Hindi infiltrationa re discernible"( 1972:62). He considerst hat the languageh as its own phonology and morphology,w hich could and should be describedi n their own terms. But these can also be interpretedi n terms of variation within Bengali,a nd Mallikr elates the underworldf orms to standardB engaliw hereverh e can. In phonology, Mallik distinguishess ome 30 different processes-for example, metathesis: e.g., kod-n (shop) from dokan, karca (servant) from cakar; back formation: e.g., khum (mouth), from mukh; consonantal change: e.g., kona (gold) from sona; syllabic insertion: e.g., bituri (old woman) fom buri; and variation involvings ingle features, such as nasality, cerebrala rticulation,o r aspiration.M any words, naturally,h ave more than one such process in their derivation: e.g., chappi (buttock) from p5ch; aski (eyes) from aksi; makrR(j oke) from maskari. In morphology also, Mallik identifies a number of derivationalp rocesses-for example, suffixing: e.g., kotni (cotton bag) from English cotton; dharin (kidnapper)f rom dharR (hold); compounding: e.g., bilakh~mn (brothel) from bile (general derogatory term) + khani (-orium, place for); simplifying; shift of word class; lexical borrowing: e.g., khills (murder) from Arabic xalis (end), replacing khun. Again, we find various combinations of these processes, and very many instances that are capable of more than one explanation. All these examples are variants, in the sense in which the term is used in variation theory (Cedergren and D. Sankoff 1974; G. Sankoff 1974). Labov (1969) defines a set of variants as Halliday ] ANTI-LANGUAGES 577 "alternativew ays of 'saying the same thing' "(his quotation marks);a nd while the principle behind variation is much more complex than this innocent- soundingd efinition implies, it is true that, in the most generalt erms, we can interpreta varianta s an alternativer ealizationo f an element on the next, or on some, higher stratum. So, for example, kodan and dokan are variants (alternativep honological realizations) of the same word, "shop." Similarlyk otni and its standard Bengalie quivalent are variants (alternativel exicogrammaticalr ealizations) of the same meaning, "cotton bag." Assuming the semantic stratum to be the highest stratum within the linguistic system, all sets of variants have the property of being identical semantically;s ome have the property of being identical lexicogrammaticallya s well: semantic "shop" "cotton bag" lexicogrammatical shop bag1 bag2 phonological dokdn kodin kotni bastg Now the significant thing about the items that are phonologically or morphologically distinctive in the underworldl anguagei s that many of them are not, in fact, variantsa t all; they have no semantic equivalent in standardB engali. This does not mean they cannot be translatedi nto standardB engali (or standardE nglish, or standarda nything else); they can. But they do not function as coded elements in the semantic system of the everyday lan- guage. Herea re some examples from Mallik: Item Definition Source ghot to swallow a stolen thing to dho'k( swallow) avoid detection logim theft in a moving goods train mil girl (goods train) okhrdn one who helps the chief operator oprano (uproot) in stealing from a goods train bhappar outside disturbancea t the time bhir bhappar( crowd) of a theft ulti underworldl anguage ulat (turn down) cukru kidnappero f sleeping child curi (theft) bilihalat serious condition of a victim bil5 (queer)& halat (condition- in an assault Hindi) bidhobd boy without girlfriend bidhobd( widow) rutihd to shareb reads ecretly with a ruti (bread) convict detained in a prison basti person promisede mployment basti (sack) but cheated pancabaj one who leaves victim at cross- panca (five), bij (expert) roads after a snatch boy prostitute (seven and three paune-n.ttl paune-l.tti quarters) khim thigh of a girl th~m (pillar) guani hidden cavity inside the throat gahan (secret) to hide stolen goods nicu-clkk(cid:127) pick pockets by standing on nicu (low), caiik (wheel) footboard of train or bus 578 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [78,1976 Intermediateb etween these and the straightforwardv ariantsa re numerousm etaphorical expressions of the type that would most readily be thought of as typical of inner city ganglands peech, such as: Item Definition Source sginbord-oli marriedw oman (referencet o vermilionm arko n foreheado f marriedw oman) & oli (owner) k c -kali young girl (unripe,b anana) sardi-khisi notes and coins (cold, cough-in reference to noises made) cok-kha-I spectacles (eye, pocket) itap widow (sunbaked)f rom itap ca-l( sun- baked rice, eaten by widows) thunki casual (client of prostitute) portmanteauo f thunko (fragile)a nd thiuko (small-scale,r etail) dabal-dekir plump woman (Englishd ouble decker) chimia girl mich (fish) reversedt o chim + suffix -i + suffix -4 sutd cigarette sukh (happiness)+ tin (puff) aeri-mara impotent ara (testicles) + mara( strike;d ead) obhisir-ieni seductivee yes abhisir (tryst) + 5yng (mirror) Thomas Harman'sa ccount of the Elizabethanp elting speech contains many similar exam- ples: crashing-cheats (teeth) (cheat = general element for "thing which. . ."), smelling-cheat (nose; also garden, orchard), belly-cheat (apron), Rome-booze (wine), stalling-ken (house that will receive stolen ware [stall = make or ordain, i.e., order + ken = house]), queer-ken (prison-house[ queer = nought, i.e., generald erogatorye lement, cf. Bengalib ili]), darkmans (night), queer cuffin (justice of the peace). There is no way of deciding whether such metaphoricalr epresentations" have the same meaning" as everyday forms or not, i.e., whether they are or are not variantsi n Labov's definition. (To say "same denotation, different connotation" is merely to avoid deciding;i t means "both yes and no.") Nor is there any need to decide. We can call them all "metaphori- cal variants,"s ince it is helpful to relate them to variationt heory; what is most importanti s the fact that they are metaphorical.I t is this metaphoricalc haractert hat defines the anti- language. An anti-languagei s a metaphor for an everyday language;a nd this metaphorical quality appears all the way up and down the system. There are phonological metaphors, grammaticalm etaphors-morphological, lexical, and perhapss yntactic-and semantic meta- phors; for example, see Table I (not a complete list of types). As we have pointed out already, many instances can be interpretedi n more than one way, and many are complex metaphors,i nvolvingv ariationa t more than one level. By interpretingt he total phenomenon in terms of metaphor we can relate the semantic variants to the rest of the picture. The notion of a semantic varianti s apparently contra- dictory: how can two things be variants ("have the same meaning")i f their meaningsa re different? But this is the wrong way of looking at it. The anti-society is, in terms of Livi-Strauss's distinction between metaphor and metonymy, metonymic to society-it is an extension of it, within the social system; while its realizations are (predictably) metaphori- cal, and this applies both to its realization in social structure and to its realization in language. The anti-society is, in its structure, a metaphor for the society; the two come together at the level of the social system. In the same way the anti-language is a metaphor for the language, and the two come together at the level of the social semiotic. So there is no