Why jihadists don't use slang

Jonathan Green explains:

The true believer cannot loosen his grasp on language any more than he can on those who speak it. The aim of his speech is language as handcuffs. What seems leaden is presumably inspiring, since to the ideological mind, to borrow from Orwell, ‘freedom is slavery’. It is unlikely that the jihadi camps teach their idealistic young volunteers any new words. They have a theological script, and like all such scripts, that is self-sufficient. But it has no place for humour, for deviation, and certainly not for slang.

Yet given slang’s role as a counter-language, its hardwired antagonism towards the established order, one might have proposed it as a useful lexis for the revolution. No, not at all; or not if an old boss, as it were, has invariably to be replaced by his new version. Because slang does not like uniforms, nor mantras of belief. It resolutely refuses to take sides, and pops off at every target; far too creative of what the euphemism of our modern imperium has long been calling ‘collateral damage’. It comes from the street, and for the believer the street must, no matter what the ideology, do what it is told. Slang is unimpressed. The first word slang learnt was ‘no’; the first emotion it felt was doubt. Slang does not do respect nor obedience; and very definitely, slang does not do submission.