Rembetiko and language: the awareness of slang

Abstract

In the period since the Great Catastrophe of Asia Minor until the Nazi occupation during World War I, the musical genre called rembetiko gets configured: a manifestation at first of suburban culture that will gradually lose its most marginal features. Characteristic of the rembétiko is the use in the lyrics of its songs of many slang words, or that were supposed to be slang ones. Through the 1932 song «Το λεξικό του μάγκα», «The lexicon of the scumbag», some of these words are analyzed and the concept and limits of slang are reflected.