Dozens, the

Forms of verbal dueling recorded among black youths in America have been termed variously “playing the dozens,” “playing,” and “sounding.” There is also a related term, “to signify,” meaning more “to insult through pointed insinuations and oblique remarks.” The genre, which has been commented on and researched for well over half a century, has clear affinities to flyting, which has a long history in the United Kingdom, extending from Anglo-Saxon times. However, flyting is an individual, extended, and finally written display of verbal skill in the fine art of savage insult (some of the participants having been major poets), whereas sounding is extempore, taking place in the context of rival street gangs and the establishment of dominance.

An article on playing the dozens by John Dollard in 1939 emphasized the aspects of taboo and discipline:

One asked the other, “Do you want to play the dozens?” The other boy said, “Yes.” These reactions of concealment and shame convinced me that playing the Dozens is not an orgy of licentious expression for lower-class Negroes; all know that the themes treated are in general forbidden, some refuse to play the game and still others are very resentful and defensive at the mere thought of it.

( American Imago , November 6, 7)

This sense of the dozens containing taboo topics is corroborated by a citation from the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994) dated 1928: “It is the gravest of insults this so-called ‘slipping in the dozens.’ To disparage a man is one thing; to disparage his family is another” (Fisher, Jericho , 9). The same source records the significant phrase “the dirty dozens” from 1926, as well as the sociological comment that “‘Playing the Dozens’ is the most common way a convict has of using profanity” (Clemmer 1940).

Roger D. Abrahams noted in 1962: “The dozens are commonly called ‘playing’ or ‘sounding’” ( Journal of American Folklore LXXV, 209). The earliest cited reference in Random House (1994) is dated 1915, from American Negro Folk-Songs: “I don’t play the dozen / And don’t you ease me in.” Erskine Caldwell’s classic novel God’s Little Acre (1933) has the plural form: “If you want to play the dozens, you’re at the right homestead” (x, 142). William Labov’s substantial article “Rules for Ritual Insults” noted that “the activity is remarkably similar throughout various black communities” (1972, 307), although much of the basic research derived from Philadelphia. “Many sounds,” Labov continues, " are obscene in the full sense of the word. The speaker uses as many ‘bad’ words and images as possible—that is, subject to taboo and moral reprimand of middle-class society" (1972, 324).

Abrahams observed in a related article: “Sounding, especially Mother-Sounding, demonstrates the second place given to the mother-son bond in comparison to the primary place assigned to the clique” ( Journal of American Folklore LXXVIII, 1965, 209). (While flyting matches contained disparaging allusions to the paternity of the opponent, the mother was not a target of insult.) Instances of sounding thus typically involve insults often delivered in couplets directed at the victim’s mother, using a concentrated mixture of vigorous metaphor and savagely chauvinistic humor:

I hate to talk about your mother, she’s a good old soul
She got a ten ton pussy and a rubber asshole.
(cited in Labov 1972, 307)

Others rely on black humor and punning: “Your mother’s like a police station—dicks going in and out all the time” (cited in Labov 1972, 320).

On a wider perspective, David Crystal observes: “Verbal duelling contests between street gangs or individuals, before or instead of violence, are probably universal, and involve a highly inventive figurative language, in which the taunts subject the participants, their close relatives, and selected parts of their bodies to an increasingly bizarre set of unpleasant circumstances” (1995, 401). Although flyting seems to have died out in the United Kingdom, “the dozens” continues to thrive in the United States.