The study used the phenomenological interview method to examine the language of a sample of long-term prisoners for the existence of an inmate argot. Having established that such an argot does exist, the data were subjected to content analysis, and the salience of the argot terms was assessed using two measures--attention and intensity. The argot expressions were divided into categories with reference to different aspects of prison experience: prisoner status (informers, inmate rank), drugs, sexual relations in prison, violence, prisoner behaviors, and nicknames for police officers and for prison staff. In addition to confirming that an inmate argot existed in Israeli prisons, study findings supported the notion that inmates did not feel any obligation to adhere to codes and norms imposed on them by prison authorities. The study also found that homosexual relations, once common in Israeli prisons, were now rare, and terms to describe them were used to humiliate fellow inmates or to describe submissive or negatively sanctioned conduct. Appendix, references