Michael Adams extols them:
Slang keeps your mind nimble. Speaking or listening to rhyming slang is like doing the crossword puzzle in The Sunday Times, London or New York. A group of researchers in the UK measured the brain activity of human subjects while those subjects read Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus. They discovered that when Shakespeare used words in odd ways, for instance, when he put a word typically recognized as a noun to use as a verb — "He godded me," for instance — the subjects’ brains were suddenly very active. Apparently, the activity was positive: it wasn’t as if the brains were confused, exactly, but rather as if they had been awakened from linguistic boredom. Language used casually that nonetheless takes you by surprise — slang — is good for your brain.
Jonathon Green also celebrates slang:
At its heart it’s down, it’s dirty, it’s grubby, it’s tart, it’s essentially subversive. … There are 1,500 synonyms for having sex, 1,000 penises, 1,000 vaginas and 2,000 drunkards and drink-related words… and so on. I see slang as Freud would see the Id. In other words, the unrestrained side of ourselves. Slang is the pleasure principle. It evokes it in language, lets us get it out there. It has no morals, it has no party, it has no religion, it’s just in it for the kicks. What I love most about it is that it is ourselves at our most human – not at our best, but at our most real.
To study up on your prison slang, go here. For some nautical fun, here.
The Dish 