Maisy Harris - Bowling Jargon
Split Signals: Bowling Jargon and Belonging
You get a turkey, pick up a spare, and dread the split, but step outside the alley and the words that made you an insider can suddenly make you the punchline.
Maisy Harris
LING 1000: Language in U.S. Society
Spring 2025
Instructor: Prof. Kira Hall
TA: Emma Bornheimer
Inside the Alley
In a bowling alley, everything moves quickly. Pins crash, scoreboards update, and the room reacts instantly. Conversations follow the same rhythm. Someone complains about a “split,” another celebrates a “turkey,” and everyone around them understands without explanation.
For many communities, a specialized register like this is both playful and protective. In bowling, calling out a "turkey" or reacting to a “Brooklyn” shot feels normal and unifying because these words carry insider meaning and create a shared sense of community.
When developing a research project for the course “Language in US Society,” I was drawn to bowling jargon specifically because bowling is not always taken seriously as a sport, making its language unusually sensitive to in-group and out-group dynamics. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, Michael Silverstein’s work on indexicality, and Mary Bucholtz & Kira Hall’s concepts of distinction and adequation, my project shows how bowling jargon reflects broader cultural and linguistic struggles over who gets to claim the label of “real” athlete.
Some Term Definitions
- Turkey → three strikes in a row.
- Split → separated pins or groups of pins standing after the first ball.
- Brooklyn → hitting the “wrong” side but still striking.
- Scratch → score without handicap.
Outside the Alley
Unlike more traditionally respected sports, bowling jargon tends to carry different social meanings outside the alley, which can often lead to discomfort or mockery.
Most bowlers are not invested in whether bowling is considered a sport, but when outsiders assume they are, the use of a specialized register can be taken as evidence that they are treating something unserious too seriously. This language becomes a target not because it is unclear, but because of what it is assumed to represent.
The Flip
At the same time, not knowing the language can make you feel just as out of place inside the alley. You miss references, hesitate to speak, and struggle to fully participate in conversations.
Importantly, this exclusion is rarely intentional. My research showed that most bowlers are happy to explain terms and help newer players learn the language. Still, even without that intent, not understanding the jargon can create a real sense of being on the outside.
Bowling jargon does not just include or exclude. It shifts depending on context.
What I Found
To explore this, I combined survey responses from competitive bowlers with observations from league and casual play, tracking how often jargon terms were used and by whom.
Figure 1. Frequency of 15 terms used by casual and competitive players during one league and one open bowling night.
The pattern was clear. Terms like “strike” and “spare” were used by everyone and did not signal experience. More specialized terms, like “turkey,” “scratch,” and “pocket,” appeared more often in competitive settings and signaled familiarity and belonging within a more serious bowling community.
One participant I interviewed for this study said:
“[Jargon is] part of the culture, so when using it you feel like you’re part of a more niche group of people than most.”
This shows how terms specific to the practice of bowling can create a sense of belonging. Using the right terms allows bowlers to feel like insiders, not just participants. As Bucholtz & Hall would say, the use of this collective lexicon serves as a tactic of adequation, producing similarity.
However, another bowler explained:
“Slang can be used to test how much a person knows… or to establish superiority.”
Here, instead of just bringing people in, jargon (or as this interviewee calls it, slang) can also be used to separate those who truly belong from those who do not—a tactic Bucholtz & Hall call distinction.
This tension becomes even clearer outside of bowling spaces. Another interviewee said:
“Yes, [I avoid using jargon] around non-bowlers… because they usually just make fun of you and it is not worth the headache.”
Bowling jargon does more than signal belonging or status in the alley. It becomes something bowlers must actively navigate in wider social life, adjusting their language to fit whoever they're with.
That tension shows up in the data: while 80% of respondents said using jargon made them feel like more serious bowlers, many still avoided it around non-bowlers. Language that builds confidence in one setting can just as easily create self-consciousness in another.
Why It Matters
These patterns reflect how deeply language shapes identity. Jargon acts as a form of social currency, as Bourdieu would predict, signaling experience and legitimacy within a group. But that value shifts depending on the audience.
This is best understood through what Silverstein calls indexical meaning—the idea that words take on different social significance depending on who is listening. Inside the alley, bowling jargon indexes belonging and expertise. Outside of it, those same terms can index pretentiousness.
Final Thought
Bowling is often seen as simple and accessible, but the language used within it tells a more complicated story. This research shows that language both reflects belonging and actively produces it.
That belonging, however, is fragile. The same words that create connection in one space can create distance in another. Bowlers are constantly navigating when to use language that signals identity and when to hold back.
Many communities rely on specialized language to build identity, but those same markers can also become sources of judgment or exclusion. Bowling jargon makes this tension especially visible. Language is not just about communication, but about recognition, status, and belonging.
References
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant. “Symbolic Capital and Social Classes.” Journal of Classical Sociology 13, no. 2 (May 2013): 292–302.
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. “Locating Identity in Language.” In Language and Identities, edited by Dominic Watt and Carmen Llamas, 18–28. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
Silverstein, Michael. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language & Communication 23, no. 3-4 (2003): 193–229.
Maisy is a Business major at ĢӰ Boulder who loves puzzles, traveling with family, and finding patterns in everyday life. She bowls competitively and works at a bowling alley, which sparked her interest in how people communicate and connect, especially through the small details in language that often go unnoticed.