I am fascinated by language, myself. I tend to run the gamut when refering to my sub. Sometimes she's "slave," sometimes "kajira." When describing her to others I'll use "submissive" or just "sub," and in written communication I tend to just use "j," the first letter of her name. I feel like the importance of language in bdsm, however, goes well beyond the names we call each other (or even the capitalization rules we tend to use). Between any two lovers there's a private language, but between j and I there's so much innuendo and inflection that, regardless of where we are, it's always clear between us that she is mine.

That said, a lot of the framework for the words and insinuations we use was laid well before we became "lifestyle" bdsmers. Really, the process of taking that formidable step is, above all, a linguistic one. Our actual interaction is barely distinguishable now from what it has always been - especially to the uninformed eyes of (most of our) friends - but we have learned to describe our interaction in a more meaningful, accurate way. I think that's a big part of any bdsm interaction; after all, bdsm is an incredibly vocal and communicative kind of sexual play.