ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some of the stances, identities and activities that have been popularly viewed as indexed by the use of criminal and youth language practices, and attitudes towards both the language used and speakers. The most complete account of early criminal language practices in France concerns the language of the Coquillard criminal beggars and brigands of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Youth and criminal language practices are thus strongly functional, enabling speakers to meet various communicative and social goals. A particularly engaging study of an adult cohort's attitudes towards youth language practices can be seen in a survey conducted in Cameroon by Stein-Kanjora. Stein-Kanjora's data make for very interesting reading, not least when we compare them with the ranking of social and cryptolectal motivations found in Mallik's data and with some of the aims cited by Bardsley's linguistics students.
