Prison slang in Féliz Ramos i Duarte’s Diccionario de mejicanismos

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to study lexical units that are identified as proper of prison slang and are marked as such in the first contrastive dictionary of Mexican Spanish, Diccionario de mejicanismos, by Féliz Ramos i Duarte. Attention will be paid to their testimonial value and to sources that the lexicographer had used to make his dictionary. Another problem treated here will be whether we can consider this dictionary as a serious source for a future lexicological analysis of criminal slang in Mexico from the diachronic point of view.