Sea service slang: Informal language of the navy and coast guard

One function of an occupational folk group's slang is to distinguish the members of the group from outsiders, and thus to nurture a linguistic cohesion among those "in the know." Carol Burke alludes to this fact when she comments that the military's "informal vocabulary" serves, at the most basic level, to distinguish members of the armed services from civilians (2004, 106). In the maritime services, this distinguishing element is perhaps most evident in the specialized lexicon used to name parts of a ship. Anyone who has seen popular films such as The Caine Mutiny, Mr. Roberts, or The Hunt for Red October will be aware that, in the US Navy, no ship has a front or back, floors, or a bathroom; it (or rather "she") has a "fore and aft," "decks," and a "head." That sailors utilize this vocabulary and landlubbers do not constitutes an important distinction between the two groups. But the distinction between sailors and civilians is only one of many that are reflected in "sea service slang." Equally important differentiations are made between new recruits and older hands, seamen and petty officers, Naval Academy graduates and ROTC graduates, the Navy and the Coast Guard-these are among the many binary distinctions that are embraced by members of the seagoing services, sometimes as a means of humorously disparaging other members and sometimes as a way of grousing about the service itself. In this chapter, by focusing on some of the more colorful examples, I will show how the seagoing services' customary lingo-their informal rather than their official vocabulary-both advertises and reinforces the distinctions that are so much a part of their hierarchical culture.My sources for this investigation include not only some of the standard published sources, such as Gershom Bradford's Glossary of Sea Terms (1946) and John Rogers's Origin of Sea Terms (1985), but also personal conversations with sailors and coastguardsmen as well as a variety of online jargon dictionaries. Online sources are of course notoriously variable in their reliability, but I would argue that, despite occasional inaccuracies, they remain useful for capturing additions to the slang lexicon that have not yet appeared in more scholarly venues. Where possible, I have also checked the reliability of questionable terms with my personal informants. I offer the result of my investigation not as an exhaustive catalog but as a sampling focused on the theme of binary distinction. This theme, I admit, is only one of several that might shed light on the extraordinary richness of this occupational jargon. Burke, for example, correctly points out that military speech also provides its users an outlet for humor, for the relief of anxiety, and for the expression of frustration (2004); I'll be pointing to these elements too. In fact, my sample shows that, in an environment that can be alternately tedious and terrifying, sailors and coastguardsmen employ slang as a humorously derisive coping mechanism. What I am calling binary distinction functions as a major, but not exclusive, element in that language system.