Abstract

This essay traces the changing status of cant and vulgar languages in eighteenth-century Britain. Earlier in the century, collections of cant and slang language drew from seventeenth-century predecessors, using substandard language as a means of marking off a criminal class from laboring people. By the end of the century, particularly in the work of Francis Grose, cant language is re-named as vulgar language and comes to be seen as a sign of the freedom of Britons. Print collections revaluing these substandard languages as popular culture become one means of making a rhetorical space for "the people" within British national discourse. This "language of the people," however, is haunted by earlier criminal associations, the actual criminalization of many customary labor and property relations throughout the eighteenth century, and the exclusion of women from cross-class male communities trading in newly fashionable vulgar language.

pdf

Share