 |
 |
Ha, yes, Harrison of course. And if we extend this back from "V", to The School of Eloquence, you get poems there where, in contrast to "V", Harrison, channeling his younger self, uses not code switching but register jumping within the poem -- part of it is in the older Cultured Harrison voice, part in the Younger-Harrison-talking-to-his-mates. But varieties within the system rather than a completely (or majorly) different system. I hadn't thought about this before in relation to Harrison, or that the two things could be found within the one poem but in different areas. Partly, I suppose, because I prefer his earlier work, and can't really get on with "V". God, I must be tired, if I haven't the energy to dig my Collected Harrison off the shelves and check what I'm remembering. Anyway, I'm glad you agree that there is at least the possibility of a valid distinction, since I really need to be able to make the case. This would come down to something like, "Slang is an extreme of a register of Informal Colloquial English Speech; Cant involves a variety of English which is neither Slang nor dialect but shares with dialect a sufficient distinctiveness and specialised structuring of the lexis to differentiate it." Fuzzy as hell, but that's about as far as I can go at the moment in articulating the difference. Alternatively, no matter how extreme the lexical substitution is in Slang, it's still limited by lexical substitution, whereas in Cant, distinctively so in the early period, but even as late as the nineteenth century, maintaining a different lexical system as well. Or something. I wish this particular thing hadn't come up just at the point when I'm about to fall off the edge of the world with tiredness. And apologies to everyone for what must seem a singularly irrelevant jump from Graveyard Harrison to Slang and Cant, but given how I feel at the moment, beyond sleepy and all, I (self-indulgently) wanted to get the words down while they were passing through my head, and before I forgot that particular formulation of them. :-( (And thanks again, David, both for kicking me into mentioning the idea with your post, and agreeing that it wasn't wholly to be ruled out at first blush. R.) On 26 October 2016 at 22:43 David Latane <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I'd agree with that distinction. I just showed my class Harrison's "V" and > when the voice of the skinhead-Harrison breaks in (especially as Harrison > performs it) I would call that a code switch, but when educated-Harrison > starts using potty words it's a shift of register from his more "poetic" > language. > > > David Latane > http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds) > > > > --------------------------------------------- > From: Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> > To: [log in to unmask] > Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 3:33 PM > Subject: Re: a bit much > > So that's why you call it code-switching in America. Less chance of being > shot. > But I'd want to draw a distinction between the two: register-jumping > involves a switch between a variety of registers already available as part of > the speaker's idiolect(s?), whereas code switching involves the adoption of a > form of speech native to another group (or the same person wearing a different > identity, in a different context). > Dunno. I've been told there's no difference between the two, but my gut > tells me there is. > Something like that. I'm still thinking my way through it. > But now you've warned me, I'll be sure to avoid register-jumping when I'm > in God's Own Land. > Or have I just jumped the shark? > TTFN > Robin > >