Invisible women: a sociolinguistic analysis of the use of slang by inmates in a Bahian prison

Abstract

Language allows, through communication, human beings to express themselves, interact and leave their marks on their experience in the world and, at the same time, to reflect their experiences in/through language. A community of practice formed by people marginalized by society will use language as a way of responding to the process of oppression, and language, in turn, will present traces of this precarious and suffering experience. Given this, considering incarcerated women as a marginalized and invisible group by society, we sought, through this research, to study the language of women deprived of liberty in a prison in the interior of Bahia, specifically, in the Conjunto Penal Advogado Nilton Gonçalves, located in city of Vitória da Conquista, Bahia, Brazil. As a focus for a study on language, we chose Group Slang, one of the resources available in the language, a linguistic variation characterized by its cryptological nature that performs the function of self-protection and identification of the group in which it arises. Therefore, in order to understand the object of study and analyze it in its particularities, we anchor ourselves theoretically in the assumptions of Sociolinguistics, approaching it in the light of Variationist waves (LABOV, 2008, [1972], 2010 [1994]), Interactional (GUMPERZ, 1982) and Stylistic (ECKERT, 2003, 2008, 2012). Furthermore, we used, as a source to describe our object, the studies of Preti (1984, 2006 [2004]) and, during the analysis, we sought theoretical support from Lakoff and Johnson (2002), among others, in order to contribute for our analysis. Thus, through this research, we aim to identify whether Group Slang is used by inmates of the chosen prison and, from there, answer how this form of language is used, what is the relationship between the experience in the prison environment and the individual aspects of each of the inmates with the use of these slang words and, also, whether these slang words tend to be part of the popular vernacular. Thus, we hypothesize, initially, that there is the use of slang words by the studied community of practice, with training linked to the metaphorization process, constituting one of the elements that make up the culture and communication of the inmates. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the popularization of slang terms may face linguistic prejudice as an obstacle to its implementation. In view of the research, we obtained, in our results, the observation that slang words are used in the prison environment studied, which are part of the inmates' vernacular, composing a set of linguistic elements necessary for the organization of rules in the prison environment. Finally, we seek, through this study, to produce material that contributes to sociolinguistic studies in order to provide support for a reflection on the situation of incarcerated women, to (re)think about the form of resocialization and education in Brazilian prisons and to assist entities that work alongside the prison team to defend the fundamental rights of inmates and promote resocialization.