La poésie du marginal. De l'emprunt à la langue rromani dans l'argot du malfaiteur

In 1953, Pierre Mac Orlan remarked that "it is mainly the presence of Boumian slang that gives this lexicon its character" in reference to Georges Arnaud's poetry. This statement raises several questions: Is it a fantasy? What lexicon is he referring to, and what relevance does this have in the contemporary context? The Rromani community is often depicted in complex, opaque ways, frequently linked to crime in collective imagination. How does this cultural backdrop influence the linguistic practices of marginalized individuals, particularly criminals? Our corpus includes autobiographical works by former prisoners: Schtilibem 41 by Georges Arnaud, L'Astragale by Albertine Sarrazin, and Acte de Barbarie by B. James. These authors, all with criminal backgrounds, incorporate specific slang into their writing. This study aims to explore how this linguistic choice reflects various forms of marginality-linguistic, literary, and social-and to examine the role of Rromani influence in the language of ex-prisoner poets.