Teen-Age Hophead Jargon

Abstract

world. As David Maurer once said in writing of the argot of the underworld drug addict, constant checking of lists of the ever changing argot of addicts is necessary for understanding.' Recent investigations of teen-age addiction conducted in several of our larger cities, such as New York and Washington, have impressed upon all socially conscious people the gravity of the problem, but they have also brought to public attention an interesting bit of language in the making. No longer is the jargon of the drug addict hidden from the general public, for it is rapidly becoming well known through the press, radio, and television. The methods of recruiting used by teen-age drug users have also in themselves brought out in the open the lingo of the juvenile addict. Although many of the terms used are very old, the teen-agers have learned and changed the 'hophead jargon' to meet their own peculiar needs, particularly the need for hiding their meaning. For example, consider the unintelligibility of this statement by a drug addict: 'I heard fellows who go up buying food talking about: Man, I'm short fifty cents, let me have fifty cents, all I got is two-fifty. ' The greater portion of the source material for this brief study has been derived from newspapers (New York Times, San Diego Union, San Diego Evening Tribune), periodicals (Life, NEA Journal, Time), interviews of teenagers at Anthony Home (temporary detention home for juvenile delinquents of San Diego County), and personal letters from the Los Angeles and New York police departments and the Board of Education of New York. After the words were compiled, dictionaries such as A Dictionary of the Underworld and The American Thesaurus of Slang have served as checking sources for words entered and any change of meanings. The glossaries of the studies of narcotic argot by David Maurer have proved valuable for purposes of comparison. Several radio and television programs broadcasting interviews and recordings of the recent investigations in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Diego were found to be of general value.