Mobspeak is a language that grows out of secrecy, and who can be more
secret than the Mafia? The anti-social nature of the Mob is the perfect
breeding ground for an "Antilanguage," which is, according to M. A. K.
Halliday, a language that develops out of an antisociety which stands as a
mode of resistance' to the society within which it exists (in Butler 1).
In his 1976 article, Halliday suggests that in these societies, a type
of language forms in an effort to exclude outsiders for various reasons.
One striking reason for the existence of an antilanguage is to hide the
activities of the group. Halliday gives evidence for this claim through
the existence of Elizabethan thieves cant, a form of communication derived
in the Calcuttan underworld that thieves use to speak to one another
without fear of incriminating themselves. Similarly, the Mafia —
which is often the target of FBI wire-taps — requires its own
"thieves' cant." The Mob tries to hide its activities from the
authorities. One way to accomplish this is to use cryptic vocabulary. For
instance, there are over twenty words for the verb "to kill." If someone
were to disrespect The Family somebody might do a piece of work on
him. He could get whacked, erased, burned, clipped, iced, or
hit.
How the Mafia Operates
In order to have a full understanding of the Mafia's unique use of
language it is necessary to realize the context in which it is used. The
Mafia's major business is providing "protection" for merchants in their
territory. Basically, they insure that no other criminals will give any
of their clients trouble. However, when anything comes under mob
protection, the Mafia considers itself its "owner." They do not offer it
protection from themselves. They force restaurants, nightclubs, and bars
under their protection. Once they "own" an establishment they immediately
run it into the ground, often by frequenting the restaurant, etc., and
running up tabs they have no intentions of paying. The actual owners are
held in check by intimidation. In Wiseguy, a non-fiction account
of Mafia life, Nicholas Pileggi quotes Mafia member Henry Hill describing
the manner in which the Mafia treats those they "own":
"Then, after a few weeks, when the tabs got to be a few grand, the owner
would come over. He'd try to be polite. But no matter how nice he tried to
be, we'd always make it into a war. `You fuck!' we'd scream. `After all the
business we brought you! You got the nerve to embarrass me in front of
my friends? Call me a deadbeat? You fuck, you're dead. You miserable
bastard cocksucker....' And so forth and so forth. (xx)
However, the protection from others the Mafia provides is absolutely
unequaled. This is accomplished through the systematic intimidation of
everyone who would be prone to harassing their protected businesses. The
Mafia is extremely rough with people that they perceive as a "problem",
often using "hits" as a solution. If they are not going to "whack" the
"problem", they will often hospitalize them to guarantee no future
transgressions.
Physical Intimidation is Matched by Language Intimidation
These are incredibly tough individuals, and their uniform use of
profanity is a reflection of their lifestyle. Most of the Mafia's
intimidation is through their use of language. It is a rare occasion for
anyone to have a talk with a mob member and continue to give them trouble.
Their use of language is their first and foremost means of keeping people
in their respective places. They can normally instill enough fear in
people that physical violence becomes unnecessary. In this sense, they
have evolved their way of speaking into a means of intimidation. This is
the major reason for the Mafia's overuse of expletives. It is not unusual
in FBI wiretap transcriptions of Mafia conversations for the word "fuck"
to appear up to five and six times in a single sentence. This is due to
the fact that profanity is so rampant in the Mafia's vernacular that it
has lost its impact. Therefore, they overuse these words in an attempt to
give them some semblance of meaning.
The Mafia utilizes excessive profanity just as exaggerations are used
to give a sense of an extreme. A similar diminutive effect can be seen in
the mainstream overuse of words such as very, really, and so (for example
the vocabularies of kindergarten pupils are very limited). Without the
introduction of a new or stronger expletive, repetition of the existing
profanities are necessary. In a sense, the same words become their own
intensifiers.
Silence is golden to the Mafia. It is often what protects them most.
If one does not talk about what he is doing, then no one will know. The
Omerta, which is the Mafia's vow of silence, is strictly upheld. An
example of the tight-lipped Mafia style was the 1961 Congressional Hearing
concerning gambling, layoff betting, bribery, and the Mafia in which Frank
"Lefty" Rosenthal was forced to testify:
THE CHAIRMAN: Are you known as Lefty?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I respectfully decline to answer the question, as I honestly
believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.
SENATOR MUNDT: Are you left-handed?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I respectfully decline to answer the question, as I honestly
believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Rosenthal, according to this transcript of your testimony
on the sixth day of January this year, 1961.... you were asked
one question that says, `you are also known as Lefty.'
And your answer was, `Yes, sir, it is a baseball nickname.'
Is that correct?
MR. ROSENTHAL: I respectfully decline to answer the question, as I honestly
believe my answer might tend to incriminate me. (Pieggi, Wiseguy xx)
In a testimony to the silence of the Mafia, Lefty exercised his Fifth
Amendment right thirty-seven times. However, when matters must be
discussed, Mafia members make sure that no one but them will be able to
decipher it. They achieve this through the use of extensive coding.
The Linguistic Coding of Mobspeak
Perhaps the most interesting facet of Mobspeak is its coding. This is
what qualifies their language as an antilanguage as defined by Halliday.
It is vital in the Mafia that no one understand what they are not intended
to. Since virtually everything they engage in is illegal, the
ramifications of someone overhearing and comprehending their conversations
would be disastrous. Therefore, they have evolved their own vernacular to
deal with illicit subjects, such as the aforementioned variations of the
verb "to kill." Their oftentimes bizarre syntax, especially that which
they employ in phone conversations (rule number one in the mafia: Don't
talk about anything on the phone), is evident in this FBI transcription of
a phone tap of Henry Hill's line:
MAZZEI: You know the golf club and the dogs you gave me in return?
HILL: Yeah.
MAZZEI: Can you still do that?
HILL: Same kind of golf club?
MAZZEI: No. No golf clubs. Can you still give me the dogs if
I pay for the golf clubs?
HILL: Yeah. Sure.
(portion of conversation omitted)
MAZZEI: You front me the shampoo and I'll front you the dog pills...
What time tomorrow?
HILL: Anytime after twelve.
MAZZEI: You won't hold my lady friend up?
HILL: No.
MAZZEI: Somebody will just exchange dogs. (Pieggi, Wiseguy xx)
What this actually represents is a drug deal between Henry Hill and his
"man in Pittsburgh." This conversation was so abnormal that it was almost
admitted as evidence, even though there is no mention of drugs, etc. At
the time of the recording, officials had no real idea of what these
individual codes meant, except that they referred to contraband. Other
eavesdropping efforts would yield more jargon. Hill often used words such
as "opals", "stones", "buds", "karats", "OZ", "whole", "quarter", "half",
and "one-for-two" in his dealings to guard himself against prosecution
(Pileggi, Wiseguy 244). The Mafia knows the letter of the law, and
these codes reflect that knowledge. They can not be implicated for
discussion of "dog pills" and "golf clubs." In this sense, the Mafia's
unique linguistic characteristics have evolved out of a certain necessity.
All aspects of their language are the immediate result of their lifestyle.
Mafioso have developed their own specialized language for their own
self-contained world. Mafia members seldom deal with anyone outside of
The Family.' Therefore, their language reflects its limited contact with
standard English, because they never really need use it. Not that most of
them are well versed in standardized English. The average education of a
Mafia Family member rarely exceeds the fourth grade level. Many have no
formal training in English at all. They are assimilated into the life of
the Mafia very early, and none ever leave it, barring murder. All ranking
members of the Mob must be able to trace their entire family to Italy, and
this close tie to their homeland makes their language heavily influenced
by Italian. In fact, all officers positions in the Mafia are referred to
by their Italian equivalent; capo, Capo di tutti capi, goomba, Don, and
concigliere are all Italian terms for offices (see Mobspeak Glossary). Other Italian
lexical items include:
babania: Heroin, as in dealing.
babbo: A dope, idiot, useless underling.
Borgata: A crime Family
comare: A Mafia mistress; "goumada" (slang pronunciation)
compare: close friend, buddy. Literally, "godfather" in Italian
Cosa Nostra: Italian for "this thing of ours," the Mafia
Omerta: the code of silence and one of the premier vows taken
when being sworn into the Family. Violation is punishable by death.
(Le Vien and Papa xx)
This Italian that is a functional part of Mobspeak further separates the
Mafia from those which are not of the Family. Their specialized language
allows Mafia to almost immediately recognize their own, thereby deterring
infiltration of their ranks. Here again, Mobspeak reflects the fact that
it is and was born out of necessity.
As a rule, members of the Mafioso have horrendous grammar. Subject/verb
agreement is normally overlooked in the average goodfella's speech
patterns (nothing really exists to refute this claim on paper, since rule
number two in the mafia is never write anything down). Mainly this is a
reflection of their overall lack of any kind of formal education. In
Wiseguy, Pileggi makes note of the fact that Henry Hill spoke
"fairly grammatically," which came as a surprise to Pileggi, as this was
not common of Mafioso. However, this is probably due to the fact that
Hill did not enter the Mafia until he was fourteen and had already
developed a respectable grasp of standard (non-Mafia) English.
Mobspeak as an 'Anti-Language'
Virtually everything the Mafia does has an impact on its language.
Many defining characteristics of Mobspeak spawn from the illegal
activities of the organization. They speak in codes due to a requisite
for secrecy. The same applies in their unreserved overuse of profanity --
another way of expressing power. Their linguistic characteristics are a
reflection of their roguish behavior and lifestyle. Overall, the language
of the mafia is unique in that employs Halliday's ideas of an antilanguage
in a modern sense.
Works Cited
- Butler, Todd. Exploring the Antilanguage of Gangster Rap. The
Secol Review V. 19 (Spring 1995): 1-24
- Le Vien, Douglas Jr., and Juliet Papa. The Mafia Handbook. New York:
Penguin Books, 1993
- Pieggi, Nicholas. Casino. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995
- - - - . Wiseguy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986