About a week ago in the Groan:
"Polari (also spelt Palarie, Parlary, Palare and various other ways) is a
form of language that is most commonly associated with gay men (and to a
lesser extent lesbians), used in the first two-thirds of the 20th century in
British cities that had large and mainly underground gay subcultures."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/24/polari-language-origins
"In this way, Polari could be seen as a form of anti-language, a term
created by Michael Halliday in 1978 to describe how stigmatised subcultures
develop languages that help them to reconstruct reality according to their
own values. Halliday used "anti-language" to describe the language use of
Polish prisoners, but the concept applies equally well to Polari. A Polari
word like "bona" meant good. However, it wasn't a straightforward
translation of the English word "good" – it meant good according to the
values of a Polari speaker."
The article does tend to equate Polari with (only) gay speech,
ignoring the more generally showbusiness and the fairly distinct circus
versions of it, but then it's not unusual in that.
And there's a weird hotlink from "molly house culture" to an article
on Mollies in Shakespeare, rather than the more obvious place to direct
people towards, Rictor Norton's _Mother Clap's Molly House_.
But hey, no one's perfect! (And I was interested to get the
Shakespeare link. Though whether Rictor will exactly appreciate his book
being ignored yet once more is another matter.)
Robin
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