Twittering is not just for the birds

Clerk: Two lots of Sex Miss. Old Bailey, tomorrow at 10?

Ms X: Digitals?

Clerk: Yes, no briefs. Just quickies. You’ve been invited for both by Mr Y.

Ms X: Okay. I’m up for that.

This conversation opened a book I wrote some years ago about the secret languages of Britain. It was relayed to me by a barrister friend as an example of a routine chat between a clerk and a barrister of criminal law, a coded exchange from a highly tribal language that is expressly designed to be expedient, pragmatic, and to keep outsiders out. Apart from raising a few eyebrows, I think it does the job. (Translation below).

Anyone who assumes that the rest of us have no need for such masquerades might be surprised: every one of us dips into not just one, but several private lexicons, whether at work, play, or home. Consider the shorthand you use with colleagues to communicate quickly. If you’re a broadcaster, you might schedule a doughnut or two for your morning radio show. Forget the sprinkles though: this is a hand-over from the studio presenter to an outside reporter who will then pass back at the end. If you’re a TV presenter, then I know to my cost that thinking ‘you’re looking hot on the floor’ means you’re having a good hair day would be entirely wrong. It’s actually telling you that you are looking too shiny beneath the studio lights and urgently require make-up.

The first tribe I now realise I belonged to was the convent crowd, for whom confession was a regular event. For my friends and me, an H3 wasn’t a type of lead pencil, but a three Hail-Mary penance for a mid-table misdemeanour (such as, in fact, stealing a pencil). I’ve belonged to many since then, from the sculling and dictionary communities to the fellowships of writers and road cycling. For each of them I dip into a different wordrobe to pull out the items that work best with my fellow club-members. At work, I will talk about lemmas and glosses; at play I might complain of bonking (hitting a wall of exhaustion when cycling) or catching a crab (dipping my sculling blades too deeply into the water). Those who need to know, know. Anyone else will be either befuddled or indifferent, since they will be too busy lobbing their own words above my head at their fellow conversationalists.