ABSTRACT
The Racing Tribe speaks a mixture of normal English and its own obscure dialect. The proportions vary: Socials speak mainly English, with just a self-conscious sprinkling of the native idiom, but among Enthusiasts, connections, entire conversations may be conducted in racing dialect. As with all jargon or 'private languages', the racing dialect reinforces bonds between speakers partly by excluding non-speakers. In comparison with, say, cricket or tennis or show-jumping, racing would appear to have little need for any special terminology, yet racing jargon is almost as elaborate and convoluted as that of post-modernist literary criticism. The essential simplicity of racing merely presents an irresistible challenge to their linguistic ingenuity, and they happily proceed to clutter up the straightforward a-to-b contest with hundreds of special terms, combining into a potentially limitless number of idiomatic phrases. The special jargon of racing scribes is a richer, more extravagant version of the normal racing dialect, which is sometimes combined, rather uneasily, with standard 'journalese'.
