Palestinian Inmates’ Jargon in Israeli Jails: A Pragmatic Account.

Résumé

The purpose of this study is to pragmatically examine cryptic language Palestinian inmates employ on daily basis to communicate coded, secret messages among themselves and to mislead Israeli jailers. The pragmatic meaning of this special language reflects the harsh conditions of Palestinian security prisoners in all aspects of their routine social, military, and security life inside Israeli prisons. The data of the study have been collected from interviews with five newly freed Palestinian prisoners who served long sentences in the Israeli jails. For a better analysis, the data have been classified into metaphoric and non-metaphoric based on their situational use in the prison environment. The study found that although these terms have drifted from their original semantic usages and acquired new pragmatic applications initiated by Palestinian prisoners' needs for socializing, maneuvering, and security concerns, they still exhibit strong connection between their literal and pragmatic meanings. Put differently, in some cases, the pragmatic meaning of the terms used inside the prison conceptually maps their literal meaning outside the prison context. The study also has revealed that these terms convey different (indirect) speech acts of warning, threatening, command, and request in the prison context. We recommend other researchers to focus on the cryptic language of Palestinian female prisoners who might have needs and concerns that are different from those of the males’.