Caygodayged layganguagage (coded language).

If you could speak Pig Latin, Backslang or Aigy Paigy (as noted in the title) at school when you were little, or at least some other kind of coded language, you were definitely one of the cool kids right? That pressure to be in on the 'in' crowd makes us do strange things when we're young, including making ourselves sound like blubbering infants talking a language nobody else can understand; most importantly – your teachers, and at the time, it's the coolest thing around. But why do we not use these variants of English in our adult lives when we're trying to talk about how much of an arse the Boss was this morning? Or when we point out how badly dressed that woman over there is? Through a bit of digging online, literary research and a few of my own theories, I have comprised an answer…

As children, between the ages of about six and twelve we're extremely concerned with our popularity and how others see us. We've probably just grasped the concept that our Mum dressing us is a bad idea, and that the type of person we become friends with can influence how we ourselves are seen by others. The evil idea of popularity has wormed its way in to our innocent minds – throughout our school years we will strive to be 'popular'. A common way to do this, although we don't know about it at the time, is to use covert prestige – a term coined by Labov, explained in the link. Another strategy for coming across as popular is using restricted code, this shows a close relationship between the speakers and hints at popularity. However, to speak a whole different language to mock one's peers who cannot understand is a whole different way of gaining popularity through linguistics.  There has been research by David Crystal (found in his book The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language) into the private languages between twins which is very interesting – he notes that they create whole new languages between themselves and use them to make sense of standard English, rather than to gain popularity. He does also go on to say however, that these private languages tend to end at the age of around five years old. In the world of non-twin language though using covert prestige, restricted code and, in many young cases, coded language, all give children the popularity between their peers that they crave.

Though, through my experience and the experiences of others I've spoken to, this need for popularity does lessen as we grow older. We feel more integrated into society and we interact with a more diverse range of people. The apparent need to be adored by groups of 'popular' people submerges, and in fact we often ridicule those groups, or create subcultures with purposefully opposite styles to them – the hipster and indie subcultures are good examples of this at the time of writing.

It is my belief that this is why children commonly use coded language and adults seem to grow out of it; the change in priorities and responsibilities leads adults to not feel the need to impress their peers as much as children do, and so they do not, as a rule, use secret languages in everyday speech. There are of course exceptions to every rule; perhaps further research into this language trend is needed.

(And yes, I do speak Aigy Paigy.)

 

Rachel Ledner.