Blessed music (“Jargon of the prison”) by F. V. Trakhtenberg and criminal jargon. “Blessed Music”. The general collection of thief’s speech words by W. Ludwikowski, H. Walczak (comparative analysis)

Abstract

This paper is devoted to a comparative analysis of two important lexicographic works in the jargonology, i.e. “Blatnaya muzyka” by F.V. Trakhtenberg and “Żargon mowy przestępców. “Blatna muzyka”...” by W. Ludwikowski, H. Walczak. The aim of the study is to identify similarities and differences in the lexic and phraseology of the criminal Polish and Russian jargon from the beggining of 20th century. Criminal jargon has been described in the works of well-known linguists (see H. Walter, Literature-Dictionaries on the Russian Sub-Standard, Bibliographic Index, Greifswald, 2002). It passed an etymological analysis (see Larin, Bondaletov, Horbatsch, Mokienko, Grachev, Shapoval etc.). In this article, the linguistic material extracted from the two dictionaries is presented in the tables, thanks to them it is possible to compare Polish and Russian criminal jargon and began the project of bilingual dictionary of the Sub-Standard.