THE QUEENS' VERNACULAR
First edition of this early, important, and extensive dictionary of gay slang.
Very good plus.
Price: $450.00
THE QUEENS' VERNACULAR
"Slang in social protest, used to deflate the hypocrisy of nice-sounding labels that mean nothing to the people who use them. Slang is also the expression of the underdog — it is always aimed against the establishment." — Introduction
While 1964's LAVENDER LEXICON and the following year's THE GUILD DICTIONARY OF HOMOSEXUAL TERMS both precede Rodger's influential THE QUEENS' VERNACULAR, they were little more than short pamphlets. As Rodgers himself outlines in his introduction: "Previously gay slang has been explored only in slight, dated glossaries or in booklets, not much more than glossaries themselves." Rodger's guide, however, is both properly scholarly and firmly grounded in lexicographic practice — with pronunciation guides, usage examples, and more 12,000 terms and definitions. QUEENS' VERNACULAR not only remains an important resource, but one of the most extensive as well: "the magnificent, still unsurpassed Mother of all gay glossaries [that made] all previous attempts to document gay slang look like shopping lists scribbled on the back of a paper bag" (Kulick 251).
Read more: Jonathon Green, Slang: A Very Short Introduction; Don Kulick, Gay and Lesbian Language, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 29 (2000).
The Object
First printing. (San Francisco): (Straight Arrow Press), (1972). 8'' x 4.5''. Original printed lavender wrappers. $3.50 cover price. 272 pages. Faint creasing here and there. Touches of shelfwear, rubbing. Else remarkably bright and clean.
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