FILM

‘Backslang’, a coded form of English which is mostly used by the British working classes in major cities, was developed as a linguistic disguise to protect speakers, especially from the ears of the law. A well-known example is that of Curtis “Cocky” Warren, a notorious Liverpudlian drug baron, who was arrested in the 1990s after the police finally managed to decipher his phone conversations. Backslang shapes a secret space and, like all languages, a space for identification. In this sense, Backslang shouldn’t be understood only as an expression of social and economical conditions, but as a form of resistance.