Slang and cant in Jerome K. Jerome's works

A STUDY
BY OLOF E. BOSSON
CAMBRIDGE W. HEFFER & SONS, LTD. 1911
LUND 1911 PRINTED BY HÅKAN OHLSSON




The object of this essay is to examine vulgarism and slang in the works of Jerome K. Jerome (b. 1859).
Jerome gives us very good specimens of the ordinary language of the Victorian era. His style is not surprisingly original, but he shows a remarkable talent in rendering with perfect accuracy the characteristic talk of different classes of society. The persons he introduces to us need only utter a few words, before we are able to form a conception of their social position, their degree of culture, etc.; very often we get in this manner a clue also to their character. The author has led an exceptionally varied life—in his early years he was at different times a clerk, a teacher, an actor, a journalist. He had, accordingly, frequent opportunities of communicating with individuals of different social position and different culture, and of studying their language. He does not aim at grammatical peculiarities, elaborate phrases, or rare expressions; his language is the average language of his own time, acutely observed and faithfully rendered. Giving us thus a true and varied image of the talk of different classes and trades, his writings are specially suited to form the material for a study of slang and cant .
Concerning a subject so changeable as cant and slang, it is evidently of importance to know the acceptation of every expression at every period of the development of the language. As a matter of course, therefore, I have tried to discover, in the language of our author, the exact shade of sense of the different slang and cant-expressions, especially in cases where it does not coincide with the common usage, or where it concerns rare expressions.