Dent's Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain is a celebration of the words and phrases shared by groups of people right across the country - from doctors to journalists to teachers and beyond. It's fascinating, funny and - for some who spends all day trying to pick the right words at work - inspirational.
In some respects it would have been easy for this to slip into being a pseudo-dictionary. As much as that would have been fairly interesting, it wouldn't have made for the greatest continuous read and Dent settles neatly on a well-paced structure instead. Each group is introduced with a short-but-sweet exploration of the type of words and language that they use, followed by lists of terms and their definitions.
That certainly all makes this a good bite-size read to dip in and out of and was perfect for our lunch time reading club. There's little chance that you'll get bogged down or bored here, jumping from bird watchers to darts players to undertakers to freemasons, via plenty of places along the way.
I'm continually fascinated by the words and phrases that we use and the stories behind why we use them and where they come from. It's in these stories that the words offer important nuggets of information about the people who use them and this book is riddled with such stories. It's through these words and stories that many old traditions live on - even in this more digital-led era.
As you go through Modern Tribes, it's interesting to note the threads that run throughout many of our 'secret languages'. Sexual innuendo and black humour, in particular, feature at almost every level of society - shaping the slang that we use on a daily basis. Plenty of these are bound to make you chortle (or maybe that says more about me?) and yearn to deploy some of the most fun in your own life. Dent, you feel, revels in revealing the cheekiest words possible.
There's also great fun to be had in spotting the terms that are familiar with you. The section on the language of journalists and publishers certainly made my eyes light up and contained many familiar words that were par for the course in my newsroom days (spike, splash, nibs, kickers, back-of-the-book etc). The sheer breadth of the groups covered means that I'm sure many people will find something to relate to here.
Modern Tribes is, therefore, a window through which we can have a good old nosey at the worlds of all sorts of different people. It's a word based form of people watching - as well as a celebration of our weird and wonderful language - and is great fun as a result.
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