Mobspeak is a language that grows out of secrecy, and who can be more secret than the Mafia? The anti-social nature of the Mob is the perfect breeding ground for an "Antilanguage."

The history of laani shows an important and — I think — well-used, underground trail for a significant number of South African neologisms, in English and other languages. The trail starts with class relations of the old Cape and the Afrikaans working-class codes of people of colour; it then proceeds north to the Witwatersrand and is absorbed into the predominantly black forms of township slang and antilanguage.

Anthony Burgess reviewing The Language of the Teenage Revolution by Kenneth Hudson in The London Observer:

"The language of the young is thus really an 'anti-language' — defined as 'the special language of people who choose to be outside society.'"