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When there were no safe spaces to be gay, Polari allowed gay men to identify and communicate with each other, and to keep things secret from outsiders.
Professor Paul Baker, author of the Polari dictionary and the upcoming book Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language, explains how Polari emerged from criminal cant and London’s theatres and docks to be used a code language for gay men in the oppressive 1950s - and then, not long after, it entered the slang lexicons of the general public, via popular sketch comedy and the mouth of an annoyed princess.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:
More from Paul about Polari in linguistics mag Babel.
Find out more about the Polari Bible, how it was translated, and Paul’s participation in a world record with it.
Learn Polari and add to the language with the Polari app.
If you want to listen to Round The Horne, it’s available on Audible and Amazon (and ahem there are a lot of Julian and Sandy sketches on YouTube eg here).
Princess Anne may have said something stronger than “naff off”??
Thanks to this year’s Met Gala theme there has been a lot of discussion of ‘camp’ this week, and what constitutes camp. Here’s Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp’ that inspired the Met, and a rebuttal; attempts to define camp from Teen Vogue, Vox, W and the New York Times; exhausted and exhaustive Met Gala camp assessments from Tom and Lorenzo; and if that’s all too much, a fugue on camp.
What’s the Future of Gay Slang? ‘It Will Probably (Continue To) Be Used To Sell Us Stuff.’
Gay languages in the Philippines - Swardspeak - and Indonesia - Bahasa gay.
A mean but linguistically interesting prank, hacking Tinder.
The transcript of this episode is at theallusionist.org/transcripts/polari.
Several other Allusionists relate to this one: LGBTQ history in Queer and Pride; Soho, about the London district where a lot of Polari-speaking would have been taking place; on the topic of language of online dating, there’s WLTM part 2 and Hey.
The Allusionist’s 100th episode impends! If you’d like to celebrate this landmark with me, use phone voice memo or something record yourself saying the best thing you’ve learned about language from the Allusionist. Then email the recording to allusionistshow@gmail.com by 15 May. Thank you!
I’m on a couple of new episodes of Potterless podcast, examining chapters 23 and 24 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in detail. DETAILED detail. Caution: these episodes are, somehow, only suitable for adults; and they contain spoilers for the Harry Potter books up to that point.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
scytale
CREDITS:
Paul Baker is a professor of English language at Lancaster University. His new book, Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language, is extremely interesting about slang and LGBT history, and goes into a lot more detail about what you hear in the episode. Preorder it now, and follow Paul on Twitter @_paulbaker_. Information about his other articles and papers is here.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick makes the music that you hear in every episode. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his new podcast Year of the Bird about the songs he writes.
Find me online at twitter.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/allusionistshow.
