Chinook Jargon Vocabulary and the Lexicographers

Abstract

Introduction. It is readily apparent to anyone who works with Chinook Jargon materials and actually listens to it spoken that those who spoke and wrote Jargon used various types of words that are not included in the dictionaries and word lists of Jargon: (a) regionalisms used in a small area or among a particular tribal group which never came to be widely used; (b) English (and occasionally French) words considered to be non-Jargon lapses but which were either common in Jargon or were synonymous with more used Jargon terms; (c) crude vocabulary of body reference and sexual slang and other stigmatized usage; (d) Jargon argot used in particular activities (in particular, religious terminology and some domestic, clothes, and food terms); and (e) Jargon words used consistently among Indians but which apparently never caught the attention of the Jargon lexicographers. The data included herein derive from Chinook Jargon materials I have collected over the past two decades.' They include lexical data, speeches, jokes, plays (including an opera!), letters, advertisements and notices, sermons and prayers, liturgical chants, translations of the Bible and other literature, hymns and ditties, poetry, place-names of Jargon origin, and transcripts of Jargon conversations. The lists which follow are not complete but are presented with three purposes. First, it is useful to compile and make available a list of these overlooked Jargon words. Second, it is important to place on record the observation that most Jargon lexicographers prescriptively evaluated vocabulary in terms of whether they believed it qualified as generally used and proper before