Boyno Polari

This website primarily aims to teach Polari. However, a challenge exists in the sense that Polari was not a single coherent system of slang, with terms differing depending on social group, the individual and the time period. In response to this, this website aims to ‘standardise’ Polari into a coherent system of slang. In this article, the way in which this ‘standardisation’ was undertaken will be elaborated upon. This will be done by elaborating on the 4 stages of ‘standardisation’ undertaken, as well as potential limitations of this process.

Stage 1 – Defining Polari

Before attempting to ‘standardise’ Polari, it is important to define what Polari actually is. In order to do this, three definitions – one from Collins Dictionary, one from lexicographer Eric Partridge, and another from linguist Paul Baker – of what Polari is will be contrasted in order to provide a broader picture.

Firstly, Collins Dictionary (cited in Farge, 2021) provides a rather concise definition of Polari, defining it as ‘a distinctive English argot in use since at least the 18th century among groups of theatrical and circus performers and in certain homosexual communities, derived largely from Italian, directly or through Lingua Franca’.

Whilst Collins Dictionary (cited in Farge, 2021) defines it as being used by both entertainers and homosexual men, Partridge (1937, p. 606) on the other hand defines the term Parlyaree as ‘the ‘Lingua Francal’ — but actually as to 90% of its words, Italianate — vocabulary of C. 18-mid-19 actors and mid-C. 19-20 costermongers and showmen’. In this definition, homosexual men are not defined by Partridge (1937, p. 606) as being amongst its users, assumingly due to the fact that this definition was published in 1937 – likely before homosexual men came to widely use it. Partridge (1937, p. 606) defines Parlyaree as vocabulary. Whether this is vocabulary by itself or vocabulary which forms an argot is unclear. Partridge (cited in Baker, 2002, p. 23) in a 1970 dictionary also notes Parlyaree’s similarities to Cant.

In contrast to this, Baker (2002, pp. 1-18 & 23) seemingly views Polari as an anti-language spoken in the UK primarily by homosexual men, differentiating it from Parlyaree which he views as potentially being a ‘bridge between Cant and Polari’. He notes Polari as being influenced by a variety of sources including Italian, Cant, Parlyaree, Sabir, Rhyming Slang and various others (Baker, 2002, pp. 19-38).

In this sense, a number of broad themes become apparent in these definitions of Polari (or Parlyaree). Namely, it appears that ‘Parlyaree’ and Polari were British argots or systems of vocabulary which were either the same or inherently linked, and that these argots/systems of vocabulary were together spoken by entertainers and homosexual men. It also becomes clear that these Cant and Romance languages (e.g. Italian) had an influence on these argots/systems of vocabulary. By using these commonalities in addition to conjectures, the working definition below was used in the ‘standardisation’ of Polari, despite its potential flaws.

Polari: An English-based argot which was historically spoken in the British Isles primarily in the context of homosexual subcultures and the entertainment industry, having a noticeable influence from Romance languages and Cant.

In this definition, whether something is Polari or not depends on a number of criteria. Firstly, it would need to be an English-based argot, meaning that it must be based on English but nonetheless be intended as a means of concealing meaning from ‘outsiders’. Secondly, it must have been spoken in the British Isles (Britain or Ireland). Thirdly, it needs to have been used either by homosexual men or entertainers, or otherwise have some connection to these groups of people. Finally, it needs to have a noticeable influence from both Cant and Romance languages.

Stage 2 – Defining Standardisation in the Context of Polari

The word ‘standardise’ is in quotations because the standardisation of fully-fledged natural languages like English involves fundamentally different processes to that of an argot like Polari. Particularly, the standardisation of natural languages involves the removal of variations in a language with regards to phonology, orthography, grammar and lexicon (Milroy & Milroy, 2012, p. 30). However, Polari generally consisted of a limited lexicon which was inserted into English, with Polari (with exceptions) having little to no grammar of its own (Baker, 2002, pp. 11 & 52). There is therefore arguably little to no need to standardise grammar when it comes to Polari. Furthermore, the standardisation of Polari would only require orthographic, lexical and phonological standards when it comes to the collection of words Polari uses but English doesn’t, with the English it uses as a base already being standardised.

For this reason, the ‘standardisation’ of Polari is not the same as the standardisation of languages in a general sense. Instead, it merely involves the promulgation of a confined lexicon, with orthographic and phonological standards attached to this confined lexicon. 250 words were therefore chosen for this process, with each term having specific meanings, pronunciations and spellings attached to them. How this was done is detailed further down.

Stage 3 – Building a Corpus

Using the definition of Polari defined in Stage 1, 16 sources which included Polari were selected to be part of a corpus. In other words, these 16 sources were where individual words were derived. In some cases, these were dictionaries and glossaries, and in other cases they were written texts or videos involving Polari speech. For more information on which sources were used in the corpus, please refer to the ‘Details of Primary Sources’ section of the dictionary on this website.

Stage 4 – Deriving Terms and Meanings from the Corpus

Finally, terms were derived from the corpus with the aim to find common meanings to various terms. In some cases, the meaning of a term was the same between sources. However, as Baker (2002, p. 11) notes in his research, the meaning of terms in Polari can conflict from person to person. In order to overcome this, three strategies were used to derive coherent meanings which are detailed below.

Use of Multiple Meanings: Whereby a term had multiple meanings, the different meanings were included within the same dictionary entry with exception to rare meanings (details on that are below). For example, the term ‘striller’ meant both ‘musician’ and ‘musical instrument’ in the corpus (Fairbairn & Eccleston, 2015; Baker, 2002, p. 191; O Haodha, 2006, p. 40; Milward, 2023, p. 19). As these were not rare meanings, they were both included.

Exclusion of Rare Meanings: Whereby a term had a meaning which appears only in one source, it was excluded from the dictionary of this website. For example, the term ‘lag’ had the meaning of ‘urinate’ in three sources and ‘prisoner’ in two sources, but had an isolated meaning of ‘arrest’ in one source (Baker, 2002, p. 178; Milward, 2023, pp. 39 & 306; O Haodha, 2006, p. 31). In this case, the meaning of ‘arrest’ was not included.

Integration of Meanings: Whereby meanings were different but had a hypernym, they were integrated into a more general meaning in some cases. For example, the term ‘vacaya’ had the meaning of ‘any mechanical or electrical device that emits sound… but has evolved to include mobile phones’ in one source, and the meaning of ‘a record player’ in another, with another source referring to a sewing machine (O Haodha, 2006, p. 41; Baker, 2002, p. 194; Milward, 2023, p. 37). In this case, these three meanings were integrated into the meaning of ‘machine, device’.

As for phonology and orthography, these were sometimes chosen at random. The pronunciation of words was based on the IPA transcripts in the glossary of Baker’s (2002, pp. 162-195) published PhD dissertation or audio from Julian and Sandy sketches or Putting on the Dish if available, but were otherwise guessed due to a lack of material. The spelling of specific words was also chosen at random, with alternative spellings being noted in the dictionary.

Limitations of this Process

There exists a number of limitations in the way Polari has been standardised on this website.

Firstly, the corpus used by this website is based off of sources which have intentionally not been checked to see if they are ‘authentic’ in their use of Polari terms. This is because there seems to be conflicting ideas on what terms mean even between people who used Polari regularly before its decline (Baker, 2002, p. 11). Therefore, it would be difficult to have any way of knowing if a given source uses Polari ‘authentically’, or if Polari can be classed as either being used ‘authentically’ or ‘inauthentically’. This however does hypothetically carry the risk of this website’s dictionary containing meanings for terms which do not reflect the usage of Polari speakers to any extent. This is also a risk when – for example – integrating the meaning of terms.

The definition of Polari used by this website also runs the risk of being either too restrictive or broad, with a number of assumptions being used in its formation. For example, the assumption that Parlyaree and Polari can be classed as varieties of the same language influenced the definition of Polari used. This blending of the two varieties could – for example – mean that the standardised form of Polari on this website wouldn’t make much sense to the people who historically spoke it, due to a large amount of words from the homosexual variety of Polari not being understood by entertainers or vice versa.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this article details how this website created a ‘standardised’ form of Polari. In particular, 4 stages – the definition of Polari, the definition of what a ‘standardisation’ of Polari would involve, the establishment of a corpus, and the derivation of terms and meanings from the corpus – were involved. As mentioned in the final section, the way in which the ‘standardisation’ was undertaken is not without limitations.

Sources

Baker, P. (2002). Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men. Routledge

Fairbairn, B. & Eccleston, K. (2015, June 25). How gay men used to speak – A short film in Polari . Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yEH8TZUsk&t=35s

Farge, H. (2021, June 22). The language of the fairground community: secrets of Parlyaree. University of Sheffield. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/news/language-fairground-community-secrets-parlyaree

Milroy, J. & Milroy, L. (2012). Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. Taylor & Francis Group. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uql/detail.action?docID=956969

Milward, R. (2023). Man-Eating Typewriter. White Rabbit.

O Haodha, M. (2006). Parley With Me: A Compendium of Fairground Speech. A. & A. Farmar.

Partridge, E. (1937). A Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.