Polari:
A sociohistorical study of the life anddecline of a secret language.

Heather Taylor
Undergraduate Dissertation 2007
The University of Manchester

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of B.A.
Hons. in English Language and Linguistics in the University of Manchester

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Aims & Introduction

The objective of the following investigation is to examine the history of the secret ingroup language Polari from a sociolinguistic perspective. This will include looking at thehistory and uses of this lexicon and the factors which led to its rise, and eventually to its
decline. A key question posed by this investigation is the extent to which Polari survives
today and the type of presence, if any, it has in contemporary gay culture. This will bedone through a critical review of the available data on the topic and also by investigating
the capacity in which Polari survives today (specifically focussing on whether it ispresent in the media and entertainment or in the internet community).
Secret languages are fascinating to linguists’ curiosity, and Polari is a particularlyinteresting subject because of the rich tapestry of interwoven sources which build thisunique lexicon, and the fact that it has been ‘off-limits’ to outsiders until very recently.
The variety discovered in the lexicon is indicative of the fascinating history of Polari – astory of different itinerant groups meeting and trading lexical items along the way. It isinteresting to trace how a language with its origins in the cant of thieves and travellingtradesmen, used to conceal criminal activity, came to be the exuberant carrier of gay
identity in the mid-twentieth century. All of these ideas will be considered in more detailin the following discussion.

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Literature Review

It in only in very recent times that Polari has come to be fairly well-documented. Due toits existence as a secret language, access to – and comprehension of – the language waslimited to a highly selective group, including the homosexual community, travellingentertainers and naval servicemen. This means that until the late twentieth century, there
has been very little in the way of linguistic study of Polari. Following the
decriminalisation and increased acceptance of homosexuality beginning in the late 1960s,
Polari lost its purpose as a secret language, and (though as a lexicon it became moribund)it then became accessible to the outside world. Since this time, there has been a
considerable increase in the documentation of Polari. Most of this literature isretrospective, based on accounts of a language which is no longer ‘living’, and there has
been very limited investigation of Polari in use, due to the fact that (as a lexicon) it has nofirst language speakers and has in the last fifty years has been suffering a process similar
to ‘language death’. However, some records of Polari in use have been gathered, and firsthand accounts by speakers of Polari have also been obtained, for a retrospective
examination of the functions and contexts of the language. In the following discussion, anumber of sources have been invaluable in constructing a sociohistorical picture of Polari– considering its background as a secret language, the context of a homosexual linguistic
subculture and a more specific analysis of Polari itself.

Jargons and Secret Languages
Peter Burke’s introductory chapter in Languages and Jargons (in Burke and Porter (eds.),
1995) gives an excellent overview of the historical and social factors in the formation of

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in-group lexicons, which Burke re fers to as ‘jargons’. This text has proved to beparticularly useful as it gives a background of the types of groups (itinerant tradesmen,
entertainers and criminals) who developed their own lexicons, and explains theirmotivations for doing so – namely for self-protection and to exclude outsiders. This text
is relevant in understanding the development of Polari because in order to study it, wemust first establish that it fits the criteria of an in-group language, rather than a language
proper.

Language and Sexuality‘Homosexual Slang’ by Julia Stanley (1970) gives an account of the social situations inwhich subculture jargons arise, with particular attention to American gay communities.
This article is based around the findings of a study conducted by Stanley, which involved
issuing a questionnaire to gay people from various major cities in America to determine
which items of ‘homosexual slang’ they were familiar with. From this investigation,
Stanley established that there is a ‘core vocabulary’ and a ‘fringe vocabulary’ known toand used by the gay community. Although many of the terms in Stanley’s investigation
were a more general – and American – gay slang, there were items of overlap with Polari,such as camp, butch, drag and cruise. Also, this study indicates that there is a great dealof variation in individuals’ comprehension and use of ‘gay slang’, which suggests that it
is unlikely that any one speaker would be familiar with all items in the Polari lexicon.
The article ‘Gayspeak’ by Joseph Hayes (1976) provides a linguistic analysis of the mostcommonly used items in the speech of gay men. From the findings of his study, Hayes
compiled a list of the types of communication gay men use most often, and also the social

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contexts in which ‘gayspeak’ is used (for secrecy, in socialising with other gay men, andalso to assert a gay identity). Although these texts are not specifically focussed on Polari,
they are nonetheless useful in investigating gay langua ge.

Sexuality in context
Texts such as Heterosexual Dictatorship by Patrick Higgins (1996) are useful in placing
Polari in a social context, and in correlating its rise and decline with the changing
situation of gay rights. This text provided key developments in the history of gay rights,
at the pivotal moment in the twentieth century, around the time of the Wolfenden reportwhich led to the adoption of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. For a sociolinguistic
approach, historical context is absolutely necessary, as, in this case it gives us a greater
understanding of the need for a language in which the persecuted gay community could
freely communicate.

Early accounts of Polari
One of the earliest sources of information on Polari or ‘Parlyaree’, as it was sometimes
known, is the work of the twentieth century lexicographer Eric Partridge, who compiled agreat number of books and dictionaries on slang and the speech of ‘underworldcommunities. Partridge made numerous references to an early form of Polari, ‘Parlyaree’,in his slang dictionaries, and included a chapter entitled ‘Polari: Cinderella among
languages’ in his book Here, There and Everywhere: Essays Upon Language (1950).
This essay largely acts as a glossary of Polari lexicon and provides an overview of thecommunities in which it would be used – however, despite the article having been written

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at the peak of Polari’s use as a ‘gay slang’, Partridge notably glosses over Polari’s
affiliation with the homosexual community, and instead focuses on its presence in circus
and traveller communities. Some of Partridge’s definitions have proved to be somewhat
misleading, as they at times suggest that Parlaree, Parlyaree and Parlary are separate
varieties, when closer inspection (and historical perspective) suggests they are more
likely the same variety, simply accessed through different sources within overlapping
subcultures (such as travellers, showmen or prostitutes). However, it is certain that
Partridge’s accounts have been vital in the understanding of Polari we have today, andhave been the basis of many of the more recent studies of Polari.

General work on Polari
The major text on Polari is Paul Baker’s book Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men(2002). This is undoubtedly the most comprehensive account of Polari to date, withchapters detailing its origins, language system, usage, decline and revival. It also has adetailed glossary, explaining the histories of many Polari items. There is also a vast
bibliography, giving a huge range of sources which can be used to further investigate
Polari. In compiling this detailed overview of the subject, Baker located and interviewed
some of the small number of Polari speakers remaining, he collected examples of Polari
in use in the media (such as the characters ‘Julian and Sandy’ in the BBC radio comedy
Round The Horne) and researched the historical journey of Polari from Lingua Franca tothe underground language of the theatrical and homosexual communities. Baker’s text
deliberately focuses on Polari in the context of the homosexual community, whereas
other texts take a purely historical standpoint, and look at Polari in the context of

5

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travelling and theatrical communities, before it was adopted as the secret language of thegay community. One such text is Ian Hancock’s essay ‘Shelta and Polari’ (1984). Thisessay provides what is perhaps the most succinct historical account of Polari, its origins
and uses, appended by a short glossary of Polari terms. ‘Shelta and Polari’ focuses mainlyon establishing Polari’s Italian roots, and its presence in travelling communities. Because
it pays little attention to Polari’s importance to the gay community, the glossary islimited, and gives very few items specific to homosexuality. Cox and Fay’s essay‘Gayspeak, the linguistic frin ge: Bona polari, camp, queerspeak and beyond’ (1994) gives
an account of Polari’s place in the language of the gay community in the 1990s. Theirwork is based on a study conducted through questionnaires investigating which items of
Polari (and other lexical items associated with homosexual language) are still familiar to
speakers. Ian Lucas’ essay ‘The Color of his Eyes’ looks at a brief historical overview of
Polari, from cant to Julian and Sandy, supplemented by a look at how it is used today – inparticular in the context of ‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’, an order of gay male‘nuns’.

Polari in use
Finally, it has been important to this investigation to look at examp les of Polari in use.
Some helpful resources are the scripts for the ‘Julian & Sandy’ sketches from the Roundthe Horne radio comedy programme, a number of which have been collected in The Bona
Book of Julian and Sandy (1976), compiled by the Round the Horne writers Marty
Feldman and Barry Took. This is a key text in the study of Polari, as it shows thelanguage in use at its most high profile stage. These scripts were broadcast nationwide

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throughout the 1960s, spreading Polari to the public across the United Kingdom. Roundthe Horne is still broadcast today on BBC Radio and is also available in reissued audio
cassettes and CDs.
A number of television programmes, films and music also show Polari in use, and are
discussed in this study, such as Channel 4’s A Storm in a Tea-Cup (1993), Todd Haynes’
Velvet Goldmine (1998) and Morrissey’s album Bona Drag (1990). A number of online
resources have been very useful in establishing the presence of Polari in the modern
world. The BBC Voices website has an excellent audio recording of a recent conversation
between gay male speakers of a variety of ages, in which only the oldest speaker is able
to speak Polari. There are also a number of articles online which have been featured innational newspapers, which illustrates how Polari does surface from time to time into the
public consciousness.

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Chapter One: Polari - A ‘Secret Language’
Secret languages emerge from situations in which a community feels the need to conceal
the content of their utterances from the outside world. Such communities are usuallysocially marginalised or ‘underworld’ communities, or those who are threatened by othercommunities. These languages are therefore often employed by travellers, gypsies, ethnic
minority groups or criminals. Therefore, a secret language is a survival tactic in somecases. Polari is one such secret language which was a product of a variety of marginalised
groups who used the lexicon for coded communication. Polari draws from the ‘cant’ of
travelling showmen and criminals, Italianate Lingua Franca picked up by men serving in
the navy, the Romani language of gypsies, and the jargon of the theatrical community(amongst many other potential historical sources). The most common type of secretlanguage is that which uses the overall structure of a larger language, with a coded
lexicon. Polari is an excellent example of this, as it is purely a lexicon, with the syntactic
structure of English. Despite being labelled a ‘secret language’, Polari is more accurately
described as a type of lexicon – a jargon used by a number of socia l groups to supplement
English, ‘not a constructed language, but a secret vocabulary… which uses the grammar
and syntax of English as well as most of its core vocabulary’ (Quinion, 1996).
Not all jargons are ‘secret’ (take, for example, the ‘technical jargon’ of computing or the
medical ‘jargon’ of doctors) but they do all serve to allow group members to‘communicate more quickly and effectively than otherwise to the initiated’ (Burke 1995:
13-14). ‘Jargon’ is also a more technically accurate label for Polari than ‘language’.
‘Jargon’ has long been used to refer to ‘the language of the underworld, a kind of slang…

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9which helped to keep the activities of beggars, thieves, confidence tricksters and so on
secret from ordinary citizens… an ‘anti- language’ of a counter culture or a marginal
language for marginal people’ (Burke, 1995: 2). Furthermore, as Cox and Fay
commented in their essay ‘Gayspeak, the linguistic fringe: Bona polari, camp, queerspeak
and beyond’ (1994: 87) ‘in and of itself, Polari could only be a glossary, a collection ofwords and phrases that could be strategically employed either to create a sense of
belonging’ or to exclude others (other linguists have suggested the existence of somePolari-specific grammatical rules, but it seems that for the great majority of Polari
speakers, what they were using was a modified form of English, slotting in lexical items
according to the syntactic rules of English). Although not a ‘language’ in the way that
French, Chinese or Arabic would be classed, Polari could at times be as incomprehensible
to outsiders as Chinese would be to a monolingual English speaker. Inherent in thisexclusive language is the sense of ‘mystery’ the language has to outsiders, which allows
the group to operate in secrecy. The purpose of such secret languages is most often to
establish the boundaries of group membership - to identify fellow group members and to
exclude outsiders, functions which Rijkho ff (1998) refers to as ‘bystander deixis’. Secretlanguages can also allow speakers to defy the usual conventions of conversation – they
can pass dangerous or cr iminal information, for example, or discuss present (uninitiated)company without their knowledge. Speakers may use the bulk of one language, replacing
words with other words which come from ‘one or more foreign and/or minority
languages’ which are known by the community of speakers but not outsiders (Bakker,
1998: 74) This is a common practice in societies around the world. In the case of Polari,
English is the primary language with many borrowed words to conceal words which need

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to be hidden from outsiders. This occurs most usually in domains such as crime, sex, andmoney. References to the outside world may also be coded, so that speakers are at liberty
to voice their thoughts and opinions, no matter how unfavourable they may be to others.
This can be achieved through borrowing from external language sources, and Polariborrows heavily from Italian (e.g. bona, ‘good’, is a direct loan from Italian). Anotherway of creating a secret language is cryptolalic language formation – disguising words bydrawing on language internal resources. Cryptolalic techniques include the formation of‘backslang’ (pronouncing words as if spelled backwards), productive suffixing (such asadding –ette to create novel diminutives), metaphorical compounding (e.g. in Polari, ogle
riahs, literally ‘eye hairs’ means eyelashes), figurative and camouflaged words (thesefeatures will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters).

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Chapter Two: The History of Polari

As one would expect, the very nature of secret languages means that they are elusive andoften completely unattainable subjects for linguistic study. For this reason, the history of
Polari, due to its covert existence and its ‘slang’ status, is not extensively documented. A
key factor explaining the small amount of literature on Polari is the fact that theindividuals who used the language in the past were not comfortable exposing their‘secret’ code to outsiders. It is necessary for the survival of a secret language to keep thecode secret, and only in the days since Polari has fallen out of use in the gay community
have speakers co-operated with researchers and linguists to explain the way theirlanguage works. Besides the historical difficulty of obtaining first-hand evidence of
Polari in use, another disadvantage for those who wish to study Polari is that (like many
minority language varieties) it was perceived as a ‘low- life’ jargon of thieves,traditionally considered unworthy of study, and only received attention as part ofunderworld glossaries. Because of these reasons, and because Polari (like most in- group
languages and slang) has functioned largely for oral communication, there exists very
little in the way of a written record of it, pre-twentieth century, which can be used for adiachronic study of the language. Furthermore, there is a complete lack of standardisationin the spelling system of Polari, with lexicographers providing a vast variety of different
spellings for single lexical items – even the name of the language itself ranges from
Parlaree, Parlyaree, Polari, Palare and so on. In the absence of any detailed records,
linguists have attempted to trace back to the potential beginnings of Polari through thelikely etymologies of the lexical items and have found a wide range of sources for this‘linguistic mongrel’ (Quinion, 1996).

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2.1 Cant
Cant is believed to be one of the earliest sources from which Polari grew. This was the ingroup language of travellers, vagabonds and criminals, used in the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries. Cant was derived from Elizabethan ‘pelting slang’, which was ‘concerned withthe business of crime and its over- lexicalisation of criminal terms attests to this’ (Baker,
2002: 21). Similar to Polari, Cant had a wide range of words for body parts, bodilyfunctions, and particularly genitalia. Though there is little trace of cant vocabulary in
Polari’s lexical reservoir, one shared feature is the compounding process. In cant,compounds would, for example, use a noun such as cove, meaning ‘man’ and prefix it tocreate novel nouns such as ‘cross cove, flash cove, leary cove’. Polari uses a similar
technique, which is evident in instances such as charpering omee ‘policeman’ andcharvering donna ‘prostitute’.

2.2 Lingua Franca
Hancock asserts that Polari’s origins are firmly in the Mediterranean Lingua Franca,
which was similar to a pidgin, in that it was a simplified ‘mid-point’ between languages.
It emerged as a ‘medium of communication between sailors and traders from widelydifferent language groups’ (Quinion: 1996) and was picked up by British sailors andenriched with ‘nauticisms’. The language of sailors has traditionally been ‘a semiinternational one’ due to the likelihood of overseas travel and also because ‘crews were
so often composed of men from different places’ (Burke, 1995: 17). Coelho (1880, citedin Baker, 2002: 28) asserts that ‘Lingua Franca was almost certainly known to sailors,
who most probably brought it back to England with them’. When injured or retired sailors

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returned home in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many had difficulty settlingback into regular employment, and took work in travelling groups and circuses, where
they came into contact with other itinerant groups. In these circumstances, the pool of
Lingua Franca words were carried with the retired sailors, and then showmen’s cant wasadded to the register. This formed an ‘anti-language’, which created a veil of secrecy forthe group from the establishment and the outside world. This collision of sailor’s slangwith traveller’s slang is evident in showmen’s cant, which exhibits the influence of
Italian, an element which is likely to have appeared through the Lingua Franca. It isthrough the showmen and circus groups that Polari forged its lo ng-standing affiliation
with the theatre.

2.3 Italian
The largest source of Polari lexicon is Italian in origin, with the name Polari derivingfrom the Italian parlare ‘to speak’. Ian Hancock’s essay on Polari gives a detailed
etymological overview of this link. Polari is ‘lexically Romance-based’ (especially
Italian) and this is evident in much of the vocabulary and even the pronunciation of manyof the words (Hancock, 1984: 391).The numerals of Polari closely resemble those of
Italian – there is a noticeable likeness between Polari una, dooey, trey and the Italian uno,due, tre. Also, references to money or currency: Polari dinarly comes from Italian denaro‘money’. Italian niente ‘nothing’ or ‘not at all’ becomes Polari nanty or nantee, as innanty polari ‘don’t say anything’, and nanty dinarly ‘no money’ (Partridge, 1950: 125).
Words referring to people come from Italian, such as omi ‘man’ (from It. uomo) anddonah ‘girl’ (from It. donna). Two of the most well-known Polari words are Italian in

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origin: vada ‘see’, comes from Italian vedere ‘to see’, bona ‘good’ comes directly fromthe Italian also. It is believed that, besides the sailors bringing Lingua Franca, an influx of
Italian immigrants in the 1840s brought much of this romance-based lexicon. Many
Italians found work in England as entertainers, which is where they would have comeinto contact with other actors and travelling entertainers. Parlyaree probably thenemerged as a lingua franca between the Italian and English speaking showmen (Baker,
2002: 27, Hancock, 1984: 395).

2.4 Parlyaree
A closer relative to modern Polari was Parlyaree, the language of travelling actors, andparticularly circus people, who were once such a despised and marginalised group thatthey would routinely be denied Christian burial (Burke, 1995: 8). Parlyaree was
employed for this very reason. This variety ‘acted as a bridge between Cant and Polari’(Baker, 2002: 23) in the historical development of Polari, and included influences from
Romani gypsy lexicon, backslang and rhyming slang. Parlyaree was the first ‘close
relative’ of Polari to be documented in the numerous slang dictionaries of Eric Partridge,
the prolific 20th century lexicographer. His most detailed definition reads:

The ‘Lingua Francal’ – but actually as to 90% of its words, Italianate –vocabulary of C. 18- mid-19 actors and mid -C. 19-20 coster-mongers
and showmen: (orig. low) coll. Verging, after ca. 1930, on S.E. (Howlong the word itself has existed, I do not know: prob. not before ca.
1850, when the vocabulary was much enlarged and the principal users

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15changed so radically, though itinerant and inferior actors supply thelink.) Ex It. Pargliare, to speak. Cf. palarie and see Slang, passim, andat ‘Circus Slang,’ and P. Allingham’s Cheapjack, 1934. E.g. donah,
letty, madza, mungarly, nantee, omee, saltee, say tray, qq.v.
(Partridge, 1948: 606 )This small clutch of examples shows Parlyaree’s lexicon includes words for people(donah ‘woman’, omee ‘man’), money (saltee ‘penny’) and food (mungarly).
Partridge’s reference to Allingham’s Cheapjack (1934), a novel about the life of a
travelling pedlar, was one of his recurrent sources of reference from Parlyaree. This is
one of the only written records of the speech of circus people and the travelling groups
they associated with. A number of Parlyaree words used by Allingham have clearly been
carried into Polari, such as munjary, ‘food’ which is commonly spelled in modern Polari
lexicons as manjaree (closer to magiare, the original Italian), bono ‘good’ anddeaner/dener ‘shilling’, which widened in meaning to dinarly, ‘money’ (Baker 2002: 2627). It seems that through Parlyaree, the reliance on Italianate forms in modern Polari wasconsolidated.

2.5 Romani
Romani ‘gypsy’ language is another source that has been cited as a contributor to Polari’s
lexicon. Partridge (1950) noted instances such as gajo ‘stranger’, derived from the
Romani gajo or gaujo, and the now widely-used chavvie, ‘child’, which was transmitted
from Romani to Polari lexicon. The first potential account of British Romani dates back

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to 1542 (Matras, 2002: 10), but it is more likely that the Romani contact with the earlyforms of Polari occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through Parlyaree andthe circus travellers, as there are examples of Romani words such as chavvy ‘child’ inCheapjack (1934). The Roma are another marginalised peripatetic group, traditionally ofitinerant tradesmen, musicians and salesmen, and were considered by many to be part ofthe ‘underworld’, along with travelling actors and salesmen. It seems likely that Romani
travellers would have encountered the various other groups of travellers, and according to
Jan Rijkhoff, ‘many jargons, trade varieties, secret languages and other more or less nonstandard speech varieties have borrowed extensively from the Romani lexicon’ (1998:
51). Burke is more specific, suggesting that ‘some of the jargons of beggars and thieves
drew on Romany and Yiddish’ (1995:16), which fits in with the idea of Polari comingfrom the language used by travelling thieves. Like Polari, by the 20th Century, Romani
existed only as a lexicon in Britain, and had become a way for the Roma to supplement
English to suit their own purposes of identity and secrecy. As Matras (2002: 246) writes,
the in-group lexical items used by the Roma serve the purpose of both ‘secretcommunication in the presence of Gadžos (non-Romani people) ’, but they also act as ‘asymbol which helps consolidate and flag separate ethnic identity’. Despite the evidenceof social similarities between the Roma and speakers of early Polari varieties, however,the similarities in lexicon between Polari and Romani English are ‘slight at best’ (Baker,
2002: 32).

2.6 Yiddish

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Another, less prominent possible source for Polari lexicon is Yiddish, which is likely tohave come into contact with Polari from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth
century, when there was a large Jewish community in East End London, and particularlyin the theatre. Polari terms such as such as schvartzer ‘black man’ and schinwhars‘chinese man’ (both somewhat derogatory) are from Yiddish. Once again, the Jewish
community was a marginalised group, with a second language source to draw on, namely
Hebrew.

2.7 Rhyming slang , Backslang, Acronyms and Compounds
Rhyming slang, is a feature present in Polari, particularly that associated with ‘Cockney’.
Cockney rhyming slang, according to Franklyn (1960: 7) was created by Cockney
navvies in the early nineteenth century as a secret code to exclude Irishmen who werefellow dockworkers. Many of these low-status labourers would ‘come into contact withthe criminal underworld’ through unemployment, which was the likely source of
Cockney rhyming slang’s integration into Polari (Baker, 2002:30). London is an area towhich Polari was closely tied, and much of the Polari that has entered everyday slang hasdone so through Cockney slang. For example, karsey ‘toilet’, savvy ‘to know’ andscarper ‘to run away’ are more associated with Cockney than Polari, even though this is
the earlier source. Rhyming slang which has come from Cockney into Polari, however,includes barnet ‘hair’, which derives from Barnet Fair and minces ‘eyes’ from mince
pies (Baker, 2002: 30). Rhyme is also seen in other forms in homosexual slang,particularly in ‘rhyme compounds’ such as fag hag (Stanley, 1970: 53).

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Polari also involves a number of phrases formed through ‘backslang’. Backslang is thecreation of coded lexical items by reversing the sound or spelling of words. This practiceis also found in Shelta, the cant of Irish travellers (Hancock: 1984).The most commonlyused items of Polari backslang are riah, ‘hair’ and ecaf, meaning ‘face’. Ecaf is usuallycoded even further, truncated (after Julian and Sandy – see Chapter Four) to eke (or eek).
Backslang, or ‘reverse talk’ was ‘very popular between the late 19th century and the endof the second world war’ (Rijkhoff, 1998: 55), particularly in marginal groups, but it has
since gone into decline.
Other common in-group slang techniques include the formation of acronyms , which areused in Polari to classify different types of potential sexual partner. The most commonlyused acronyms in Polari are TBH, ‘to be had’ and the polar opposite NAFF, meaning ‘notavailable for fucking’.
In order to extend the ir range of lexical items, secret language speakers sometimes use
compounding to create novel phrases, Burke confirms that ‘jargons are rich in figures ofspeech, notably metaphor and euphemism’(1995: 15). Polari is productive in this way,
and uses metaphorical compounding, such as ogle riahs for ‘eyelashes’ (literally ‘eyehairs’) and Bevvy omee, meaning ‘drunkard’ is literally ‘drink man’. Hayes (1974: 259)
and Stanley (1970: 53) discuss the tendency of speakers in the Gay community to use
compounding to delineate subgroups within gay culture, such as the ‘noun plus queen’compound formation (Stanley, 1970: 53), which yields labels such as drag queen, drama
queen, dinge queen, amongst many others.

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Chapter Three: The Uses of Polari

As previously discussed, Polari is a jargon which has functioned for the secretcommunication of groups such as thieves, gypsies and homosexuals. Hancock (1984:393) defines Polari as an ‘anti- language’ for secrecy, because it functions as a barrier
between people (1984: 396), suggesting that not only does the language mean outsiders
do not understand certain messages, it in fact symbolically distances the in- group and theoutside world. Cox and Fay extend this definition, showing how Polari functions forinclusion and exclusion, and they summarise the functions of Polari in the homosexual
community as ‘self-protection, secrecy, and statement of common identity’ (1994: 118).
This ‘self-protection’ element was vitally important as not only was homosexuality acriminal offence, the general public were also extremely hostile towards homosexuals. A
1949 survey claimed that ‘most British people were horrified and disgusted byhomosexuality in England’ (Baker, 2002: 64), therefore jargon was acting as a valuable
defence mechanism. The idea of Polari being used as a ‘statement of common identity’ isechoed by Baker’s assertion that some gay men would speak in Polari to tentatively
identify fellow homosexuals (Baker, 2002: 68-69), and some to flaunt their sexuality.
This illustrates how Polari’s functions were flexible – from concealing one’s identity torevealing it. In the Channel 4 documentary Storm in a Teacup (1993), one of the Polari
speakers, Dudley Cave, explained how Polari words were used as ‘secret passwords’. By
dropping an innocent-sounding Polari word into conversation, a gay man could establish
if their interlocutor was a member of the in- group (a fellow homosexual) or an outsider,
to whom the utterance would have probably been meaningless. As Colin Richardson
writes, Polari ‘enabled one gay man to identify another… and provided a vocabulary for56951580

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talking about gay sex and sexuality’ (Richardson, 2005). Considering the specificlinguistic functions Polari served between speakers within the gay community, Hayes(1972: 259) proposed what he believed to be the five key lexical areas of Gay speech:1) physical appearance2) sexual preference3) intimacy of relationship4) rank within the subculture5) eccentricities within the subculture

Physical attributes are expressed with a wide range of adjectives, such as bona ‘good’,bijou ‘small’, fabulosa ‘wonderful’ and zhoozy ‘showy’. Many of the adjectives havenegative connotations, and are most often used as put-downs, to ‘bitch’ about people who
were present – creating the ‘bitchy queen’ image – or to ‘cruise’ (Baker, 2002: 73) for
men, evaluating their physical appearance, usually opened with ‘Vada the homie…’(‘Look at the man…’). However, there are also several terms of endearment such asheartface, dear, ducky. These examples show that the uses of Polari, like those of mostsecret languages, related to areas of life which were culture-specific and which needed tobe concealed from the majority. Thus, we find over- lexicalisation of terms for sex, bodyparts, people and illegal activity.

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Chapter Four: The Rise of Polari

Polari rose in usage due to the growing gay community and their need for secrecy. Manygay men would move to the larger cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham,as these metropolitan settings afforded them increased anonymity and a more close-knit
gay community. However, despite the acceptance that gay men could find within theirown community, the legal situation towards homosexuality in Britain meant that it was
still very dangerous to be publicly known as a homosexual. In 1950s and 1960s London,
plain-clothes policemen would ‘advertise their virtue’ by waiting in recognised gay
meeting places, or ‘cottaging sites’ (usually Underground stations or public parks) toarrest homosexuals who would meet there for sex (Higgins, 1996: 163). The combinationof a growing gay ‘scene’ and the continuing need for secrecy led to a rise in the use of
Polari, and the mid-twentieth century saw Polari consolidate its status as the secretlanguage of gay men. Polari was utilised because it allowed gay men to speak freely
about their lives and their sexuality in the company of non- homosexuals, without being
persecuted. However, not only did the coded vocabulary of Polari serve as a form ofprotection, it also became a part of the flamboyant and theatrical ‘camp’ gay identity.
Although in relation to the outside world Polari symbolises concealment of gay identity,
within the gay community, it became a way to flaunt and celebrate sexual identity. The
1960s saw an explosion of ‘camp’ which lasted well into the 1970s, as evidenced bycinema (such as the ‘Carry On’ films), literature (such as Quentin Crisp’s 1968 book The
Naked Civil Servant) and light entertainment (through television hosts such as Larry
Grayson, Frankie Howerd and Dick Emery). The major exponent of this was the gay
community, a community in which ‘high status’ was ‘awarded to verbal performance’56951580

22(Cox and Fay, 1994: 116), such as verbal puns, sexually suggestive language and witty
turns of phrase – all of which are staples of camp humour. Two of the most famous camp
entertainers were Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, who were to bring Polari into theconsciousness of the British public. Most British people in the 1960s were unaware they
were being exposed to the secret language of gay men through a BBC radio comedy
programme. Round the Horne showcased Polari through the language of two out-of-workactors named Julian and Sandy. Julian and Sandy, played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh
Paddick, were effeminate characters who spoke in a mixture of double entendres,
euphemisms, innuendo and Polari. It is surprising that at a time of such animosity
towards homosexuals, two flamboyant, effeminate characters could be so popular –Round the Horne was attracting around nine million listeners per week (Took andFeldman, 1976: 1) – but this took advantage of Polari’s equal associations with the gay
community and the theatrical world. By characterising Julian and Sandy as actors, thewriters could play on ideas of sexuality whilst having the characters’ theatricalbackgrounds to fall back on as an explanation of their use of Polari. The writers
themselves were surprised at Julian and Sandy’s popularity, and, as Barry Took andMarty Feldman wrote in the foreword to The Bona Book of Julian & Sandy, ‘we’d noidea how popular they’d become, or how their fey but knowing camp chat would spreadfrom a limited circle of aficionados in show business to become a national institution, notto say menace’ (Took and Feldman, 1976: 9). They believed that the public accepted
Julian and Sandy because they were figures of gentle, ambiguous humour within a ‘safe’
heterosexual environment - ‘such innuendo as there was in the dialogue seemed
acceptable with the benign Horne, representing the rest of us, to referee’ (Took and56951580

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Feldman, 1976: 9). The Polari element came into Round the Horne through the writer
Barry Took’s experience as a musical comic in the West End, where Took found Polari
through a choreographer friend. He also commented on BBC Radio 4 in 1998 that
Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick would frequently speak Polari to one another, andthe writers ‘thought it would be a good idea to incorporate what they did in their private
lives into the script’. Kenneth Williams, who had a background in both the homosexualand theatrical communities, reportedly explained much of the Polari vocabulary to thewriters (Baker, 2002: 96). A typical example of Julian and Sandy’s dialogue is from thesketch Bona Prods., which sees the characters running a production company, and telling
Kenneth Horne about their films:

HORNE Would I have vada’d any of them, do you think?
SANDY Oh – he’s got all the palare, hasn’t he?
JULIANI wonder where he picks it up

SANDY You may have vada’d one of our tiny bijou masterpiecettes
heartface. We made Funny Eek, My Fair Palone…
(Took and Feldman, 1976: 18-19)

As well as using the most well-known Polari words (vada, eek, palone), Julian and Sandy
introduced their own idiosyncratic figures of speech into the Polari register, perhaps themost frequently used is ‘your actual…’. This phrase was sometimes used to mean
‘genuine/real’, but was often fairly empty of meaning, and more of an affectation. The
following examples show how it was used by Julian and Sandy:

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JULIAN Divine. Sitting, sipping a tiny drinkette, vada-ing the great butchomis and dolly little palones trolling by, or disporting yourself on
the sable plage getting your lallies all bronzed – your riah getting
bleached by the soleil.

SANDY That’s your actual French…
‘Bona Bijou Tourettes’ (Took and Feldman, 1976: 20)

JULIAN Then how about corn on your actual cob?
‘La Casserole De Bona Gourmet’ (Took and Feldman, 1976: 34)
Another feature of Polari used frequently in the speech of Julian and Sandy is suffixing –using like and –ette (which is used to create diminutives of nouns ):SANDY: …very butch-like‘Ballet Bona ’ (Tooke and Feldman, 1976: 59)

SANDY: Welcome to our bijou restaurantette‘La Casserole de Bona Gourmet’ (Tooke and Feldman, 1976: 32)

SANDY: Well, to start with – artichoke, with perhaps your mini glassette of
Chablis.
‘La Casserole de Bona Gourmet’ (Tooke and Feldman, 1976: 34)

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Polari was also present in the titles of the Julian and Sandy sketches, such as Bona Pets,Bona Male Models, Lazy Bona Ranch. The national broadcasting of this language meantthat gay men outside of the London theatrical circles had access to the secret gay
language. Julian and Sandy’s Polari speech was ‘virtually incomprehensible to anyone
hearing it for the first time, though by repetition week by week a mental glossary could
be constructed’ (Quinion: 1996).This undoubtedly helped to promote and preserve Polarias part of homosexual identity, and the lexical items us ed by Julian and Sandy are thosewhich have spread the furthest and reached the largest audience. However, at this pivotal
time in gay history, and the cusp of great change, Round the Horne ‘was both Polari’s
apotheosis and its last hurrah’ (Richardson, 2005) as a language for the gay community.

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Chapter Five: The Decline of Polari
Polari, by the 1960s, existed largely as a language of the homosexual community, usedbecause they needed to hide their sexuality for fear of being arrested. However, theWolfenden report, published in Britain in September 1957, recommended thathomosexuality, ‘between consenting adults over the age of twenty one in private’(Higgins, 1996: 115), should no longer an illegal act. These recommendations werepassed as part of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which meant that gay men did nothave to conceal their sexual identities for fear of criminalisation. This did not mark an
end to public hostility towards homosexuality – though many national newspapers
reported the charter positively, some corners of the press reinforced traditional attitudes,
even referring to the Wolfenden report as ‘The Pansies Charter’ (Higgins, 1996: 116).
However, after 1967, as one would predict, the need for a secret language to conceal
homosexual identity became less necessary, and therefore, Polari went into decline.
The ‘gay pride’ movement emerged in the 1970s and gained momentum throughout
following decades. Polari had developed negative associations of concealment ofhomosexuality; of puns, sexual innuendo and the camp humour of ‘queens’. Polari wasperceived as part of the image of a shamed or stereotyped homosexuality which gay
rights campaigners wanted to shake off. An example of how Polari gathered negative
associations is shown in a dialogue from the Channel 4 (1993) documentary A Storm in a
Tea-cup:56951580

27
D

Honestly Tony you are so self-oppressed. All this camp, bitchychat is so sexist like. It really puts down women and Gay men.

Tony Its called Polari. Words like camp and gay, fab and groovy –they’ve entered the language.
D

Just listen to yourself. ‘Entered’ – that is a revolting metaphor.
You are a slave to phallocentric discourse without even realisingit.

Tony Oh that’s just the madcap fun-loving Stalinist in you ducky.

Further to this rejection of all that was symbolic of repression, was the embracing of newhomosexual identities. The 1970s and 1980s saw a new, hyper-masculine ‘butch’aesthetic emerging in the gay community, and subsequently the effeminate ‘camp’ image
became anathema. Because Polari had become inextricably linked with campness, it wasquickly rejected by the new breed of liberated young gay men. If a gay man was to use
Polari in the post-Wolfenden years, it was a matter of choice rather than necessity: ‘theneed for secrecy’ write Cox and Fay (1994:118), became ‘a matter of personal conviction
rather than legal sanction’, and it seems that very few gay men felt this ‘personalconviction’, thus leading Polari into decline.

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Chapter Six: Polari Today

In 1950, Eric Partridge concluded his chapter on Polari, ‘Cinderella among languages’,
by stating that ‘Parlyaree… is a glossary, a vocabulary, not a complete language. Little
remains’. He then forecasted that ‘even that little may disappear’ (Partridge, 1950: 125),
which seems curiously at odds with the fact that the 1960s would prove to be Polari’s
most high-profile decade. Linguists were continually predicting Polari’s decline, andHancock wrote in 1984 that Polari ‘survives only as a lexicon of 80-100 words’, therefore
it is unlikely that anyone knows all of them (Hancock, 1984: 391). The ethnologue reportfor Polari lists it as a language of the United Kingdom, but does not estimate a speaker
population or classify it as part of any language family. It also lists the alternate names of
Polari (Parlare, Parlary, Palarie, Palari, Parlyaree). The report also says that Polari is ‘anin-group language among theatrical and circus people. Speakers are gays. Some observers
trace its roots to sailors and seafarers, alleging that it derived from a maritime lingua
franca. Second language only. ’ This report suggests that Polari still exists, though it is nota well-established language.
Despite these bleak forecasts, traces of Polari have made it into widely- used slang (suchas ponce, scarper, bevvy and carsey) (Hancock, 1984: 391), particularly that associatedwith London ‘Cockney’ slang, probably due to the higher concentration of Polari
speakers around the capital, historically.

6.1 In what capacity does Polari survive today?
To investigate how much Polari survives, a study by Cox and Fay (1994) was conducted
to determine the kinds of items of Polari, or ‘Gayspeak’, people are familiar with. Their

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survey was in two parts – the first was a questionnaire which created a profile of theparticipants’ age, gender, sexuality and such other traits. The second part of the survey
was a word list of what Cox and Fay divided into ‘older items’ (such as Bona, Lallies,
Palone), ‘cross-over items between Gay culture and mainstream culture’ (Bevvy, Palaver,Scarper) and ‘newer items’ (Butch, Fag Hag, Swish) (Cox and Fay, 1994: 112).
Their findings showed that some Polari does indeed survive in modern speech. O lder
lexical items tended to be restricted to older men in the urban Gay community, cross-overitems are known by many city dwellers and newer items are well-known by many young
urban speakers, particularly those involved in or affiliated with the Gay community.
From this, Cox and Fay propose that Polari is ‘the historical origins’ for an even newer
in-group language: the modern sociolect they call ‘Gayspeak’ (Cox and Fay, 1994: 105).
Polari has had a continued presence in the entertainment industry, and various
outlets of the arts. In the early 1990s, Morris sey released an album entitled Bona Drag (amuch-used Polari phrase, and also the title of a Julian and Sandy sketch), and a song
called Piccadilly Palare which alludes to the underground community of gay prostitution
and includes lyrics such as ‘so bona to vada… your lovely eek and your lovely riah’.
Polari has also been used in recent film and television productions. The 1998 film ‘Velvet
Goldmine’, includes a scene where Polari is used by three gay men in a Soho club in the
1960s (Haynes, 1998: 34-6):
Friend 1: Ooo, varda Mistress Bona! (‘Look as Miss Beautiful’)
Friend 2: Vada the omie palome! (‘Look at the homosexual’)
Friend 1: A tart, my dears, a tart in gildy clobber! (‘A slut, mate, a slut infancy clothes’)56951580

30

A biographical television film about the life of Kenneth Williams, was recently broadcast(BBC, 2006), and was titled with the Polari word ‘Fantabulosa’ in reference to Williams’
part in Julian and Sandy. There were also instances of Polari within the programme.
These examples show that Polari has come to be recognised as an important reference
point in gay culture. Another environment in which Polari can be found today is theinternet. Some niches of the online community try to maintain Polari through websites or
blogs. There are numerous sources detailing Polari, providing examples of its use, andresources such as transcripts and glossaries. Polari has found a place as a ‘part of theextraordinary, the fabulous’ in the exuberant language of The Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence (Lucas, 1997: 88). This order of gay male ‘nuns’ conducts services in a mix
of English, Polari and innuendo. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulge nce have a presence on
the internet, and their site includes trans lations of famous texts into Polari. They haveeven posted a Polari version of the Bible (The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence: 2003).
However, the Sisters’ efforts to revive Polari are fairly superficial, as it acts only as aceremonial language (much as Latin has been the language of religious ceremony in the
Catholic Church) (Lucas, 1997: 89). This does seem to be a deliberate attempt to preservea part of Gay cultural history, rather than a concerted effort to revitalise the language forwidespread use.
Polari has traditionally had a strong presence in the drag community, a famous exponentof which is Paul O’Grady, through his fictional drag queen character Lily Savage.
O’Grady has also been known to occasionally slip Polari items into his speech whilst
presenting his daytime chat show, an example of which shows how Polari is56951580

31

comprehended by the guest (perhaps because eek has made the cross-over into widely
known slang, or perhaps because of a shared background in the entertainment industry):Paul:“Now, Vanessa, who does my eek…”

Harry Enfield: “Yeah, she did our make-up as well…”(Channel 4: 2007)
Thusfar, the examples indicate that Polari survives only as a clutch of lexical items inmost cases, but in terms of speakers with an extensive Polari vocabulary (and who use thelexicon on a daily basis), very few speakers still survive today. For this small number ofPolari speakers though, opportunities to use the language are ever-decreasing. A recent
interview with a group of gay men in Nottingham conducted by the BBC Voices project
highlighted the generational difference in Polari usage. A speaker (Raymond Wilson,
born 1944) in his sixties says “Vada the eek on that dolly young thing over there”, “lookat the riahry lallies on that one over there” and “that’s a nice bona homie standing overthere with the polone”. The younger gay men, who were born in the sixties and did not
grow up in an environment where Polari was perceived to be necessary, said they have
“never heard of it” and that it “sounds like a foreign language” (BBC Online: 2007). This
generation gap illustrates just how far removed Polari has now become from the modern
gay identity. To investigate whether this ignorance of Polari is common in the modern
gay community, I have informally investigated (through conversations with a small
number of acquaintances in the Manchester gay community) if they have any knowledgeof Polari. The individuals (all aged 20s to mid-30s) were all ignorant of Polari except

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two, one of whom who had heard of Polari, but knew none of the language, the second
replied to the question “Have you heard of Polari?” with the following:

Jon C: “Oh, ‘bona eek’… ‘naff’ and all that? That’s only used bydreadful old queens.”

This evidence suggests that Polari has been out of everyday use for so long now
that it has not been transmitted to the younger members of the gay community,
and in terms of language endangerment, can be said to be moribund, in that it issurviving only in a small number of aging speakers. The potential for a large scale
revival of Polari seems unlikely, as an audience who would wish to (or feel theneed to) adopt the lexicon is not evident. However, small-scale attempts, perhaps
in the name of posterity have been made to bring Polari back into use. An article
by Colin Richardson (a former editor of Gay Times) in 2005, published in The
Guardian, reported that Polari is be ing revived in some communities:‘Madame Jo Jo's, the Soho cabaret venue which specialises in dragspectaculars, has adopted Polari as its lingua franca. A list of words
and phrases, chosen by linguistics lecturer and Polari expert Dr Paul
Baker, has been given to staff for them to use in their conversations
with each other and with the punters.’ As Paris Tkaczyk, owner ofMadame Jo Jo's, explains: “By offering staff the option of learning andusing Polari to refer to familiar aspects and objects of their work, we

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are offering a fun, yet practical, way of bridging any language gaps, aswell as celebrating the cultural history and diversity of Soho ”(Richardson, 2005).

The Polari that survives in today’s society is found in the small number of items
that have crossed over to mainstream slang, and the nostalgic traces held onto byolder members of the gay community. There are no known communities in which
Polari is still spoken as an everyday language.

Wordcount: 8,923

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Chapter Seven: Conclusion

The preceding study of Polari, past and present, illustrates the great many contributing
sources and stages in the development of Polari. Evidence indicates that, though it began
as a jargon of numerous itinerant groups, Polari’s social domain has narrowed, andbecome inextricably associated with the gay community, which began during a period ofparticularly strong persecution, some time around the early twentieth century. As thestudy shows, since the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Polari underwent a fairly
rapid decline, which led many linguists to suggest that the language had died out.
However, it seems that Polari has not been entirely lost, as a very small number of theoriginal speakers survive, and isolated groups of younger generations have also found use
for the language. Polari still survives in camp humour, and though it ‘may no longer exist
in its original form… its metaphorical practice, once symbolic of its fugitive status, has incamp become a potent means of social critique’ (Wicker, 2004). This is not to say,however, that Polari can be viewed as an in- group language in the way that it has been in
the past. It seems that it is no longer used as an important part of any subculture group –it is increasingly less recognised by the general public or the gay community (despite
recent publications on the subject) and attempts to revive the language have been verysmall-scale. Unlike endangered languages, endangered jargons do not receive
governmental support, and simply have to move with the needs of the communities inwhich they are used.
The fact that Polari seems to have been lost by the wayside in gay culture may be
unfortunate, in that it was such an important part of the gay community at a time of great
persecution. However, the ‘casting off’ of Polari is symbolic of a much greater liberation:

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a transition for gay men from having to live in fear of being ‘exposed’ as homosexuals tobeing free to express and embrace their identities, and claim legal rights equal to theheterosexual culture. Surely, in this sense, the sacrifice of losing a part of the culture’s
linguistic heritage has been justified.

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