Argot Roles In The Movie Shawshank Redemption

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Argot Roles The movie Shawshank Redemption analyzing various aspects of prison life. These characteristics include prison culture specifically guard subculture and inmate subculture. The movie explores how prison is used as a punishment and can be seen as a form of machine. Argot roles, in prison as explained by Gresham Sykes, display the beliefs and attitudes of prisoners expressed in a rather distinctive manner (Lovell, 1998). They are exemplified through the inherit meanings generation by the prison environment and tied together through the prisoner social world. The language is a significant aspect of prison, and therefore it is essential to understanding the social worlds of prisoners. These argot roles represent a framework in which the social world can be further understood. There are several argot roles found in a prison. In specific, throughout the movie Shawshank Redemption, many of the characters are labelled and interpreted to be play such roles signifying how common these roles are in a prison. …show more content…

These are the individuals that never give the guards a break. The stereotype given to these individuals is that they are respected by the other inmates, however the reality is that they are looked down upon due to their disregard for the negotiations and compromises which comprise the social order of a prison (Lovell, 1998). While the ball busters are portrayed in a negative manner by many inmates, the real men are the most admired in the prison world (Lovell, 1998). The ball busters tend to disrupt the social order of the prison, the real men on the other had do their time without confronting their captors by not acknowledging them. According to Sykes “it is the man who can stop himself from striking back at the custodians that wins the admiration and thus their image of the hero functions wittingly or unwittingly to maintain the status quo” (Sykes,

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