L'argot de la police et de la prison

Slang about the police and slang spoken in prison

• Auteur / Autrice : GENEVIEVE FURET DOMINOIS FURET
• Direction : Jean-Louis Tritter
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Linguistique
• Date : Soutenance en 1992
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 4

Résumé

Etude de l'argot. Langue des malfaiteurs, a partir du vocabulaire qui sert a designer les policiers, leurs lieux et techniques de travail, les differentes etapes que parcourt le repris de justice (arrestation, condamnation, detention, transportation). Mise en evidence des procedes de formation (series synonymiques, poles metaphoriques, emprunts populaires) et des champs lexicaux majeurs, pour tenter de cerner la mentalite des gens du milieu, a travers leurs aspirations, leurs plaisirs, leurs craintes et leurs ressentiments. Exploitation de citations, attestations pour la plupart contemporaines, d'une transgression expressive et affective des regles du langage conventionnel.

This is a study of slang, the language of evil-doers, from the vocabulary used to name the police, their working places and techniques, together with the various stages the old offender goes through, from arrest to transportation through sentence and detention. I will also make more obvious the formation process (i mean the synonymic series, the metaphorical poles, the lexicon of popular origin) and the main lexical fields so as to attempt to grasp the mentality of the underworld through their desires, pleasures, fears and ressentments. I will make the best of quotations and testimony, most of which belonging to present-day language, of an expressive and affective infringement of the rules of conventional language.