Language and Sexuality

This dissertation is based on a long-term ethnographic and sociophonetic study of 15 transgender people on the female-to-male (or transmasculine) identity spectrum. The focus of the study is the way these individuals’ voices change during the first 1-2 years of masculinizing hormone therapy, which brings about a drop in vocal pitch along with other salient physiological changes. Based on regular recordings of participants during a one year period, the analysis tracks changes in fundamental frequency as well as formant frequencies and the acoustic characteristics of [s], each of which has a different place in biology-driven theories of gender and the voice. In addition to ostensibly hormonally driven changes to speakers’ available fundamental frequency range, I present evidence that these speakers are engaged in various types of articulatory shifts as part of their gender role transition, which affect both formants and [s]. However, I argue that changes in all three of the phonetic domains examined here must be situated in both sociocultural and linguistic context, even where biology appears to play a significant role. The analyses presented, which include attention to both intra- and inter-speaker variation, draw on a multi-layered understanding of gender derived from transgender people’s own distinctions between gender assignment, gender role, gender identity, and gender presentation. My speakers’ metalinguistic commentary on gender and the voice further elucidates the constellations of phonetic features that combine to create their cohesive gendered speaking styles. Ultimately, I focus on the ways that changes in one phonetic variable, like pitch, can recontextualize other elements of a speaker’s linguistic style, like the acoustic spectrum of [s]. This connection drives home the necessity of considering the relationship between linguistic characteristics, rather than treating them as entirely separable variables. Attention to stylistic wholes, over individual variables, points us toward the notion that transmasculine individuals do not engage in across-the-board masculinization, but rather bring together acoustic characteristics acquired from disparate sources in order to construct phonetic styles that reflect their complex affiliations with manhood, maleness, and masculinity.

As an introduction to the special issue, this paper presents an overview of previous corpus linguistic work in the field of language and sexuality and discusses the compatibility of corpus linguistic methodology with queer linguistics as a central theoretical approach in language and sexuality studies. The discussion is structured around five prototypical aspects of corpus linguistics that may be deemed problematic from a poststructuralist, queer linguistic perspective: quantification and associated notions of objectivity, reliance on linguistic forms and formal presence, concentration on highly frequent features, reliance on categories, and highlighting of differences. It is argued that none of these aspects rules out an application of corpus linguistic techniques within queer theoretically informed linguistic work per se and that it is rather the way these techniques are employed that can be seen as more or less compatible with queer linguistics. To complement the theoretical discussion, a collocation analysis of sexual descriptive adjectives in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is conducted in an attempt to address some of the issues raised. The concluding section makes suggestions for future research.
Keywords: corpus linguistics, language and sexuality, queer linguistics, sexual descriptive adjectives, methodology, collocation

In this wide-ranging survey Joseph Bristow introduces readers to the most influential contemporary theories of sexual desire. Revealing how nineteenth-century scientists invented 'sexuality', he investigates why this term has been the source of such controversy in modern culture. Demonstrating the lasting influence of late-Victorian sexology, Sexu-ality turns a critical eye on many conflicting accounts of eroticism. Bristow shows why Freud and Lacan have been widely discussed within the fields of cultural studies, literary history and feminist theory. He explains the importance of Bataille, Baudrillard, Cixous, Deleuze, Irigaray and Kristeva, among many others. Analysing the work of Michel Foucault, Bristow considers how The History of Sexuality paved the way for queer theory in the 1990s. The conclusion looks at the decisive postmodern emphasis on erotic diversity. Presented in a clear and concise style, Sexuality makes complex theoretical ideas accessible to readers who wish to discover more about this exciting and rapidly developing field.

This article demonstrates the importance of considering transgender speakers apart from gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, even where there is significant overlap in the linguistic practices of these groups. Through an analysis of transgender coming out narratives, it is shown that previous accounts of this genre, which have focused on gays and lesbians, do not extend to the entire LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. Coming out as transgender differs from coming out as gay or lesbian primarily in that there are two distinct ways a person can come out as transgender: before and after a change in gender role. The dissimilarity of coming out before such a transition and afterwards presents a challenge to previous characterizations both of coming out and the narratives that result from this practice. Ultimately, the coming out narrative genre reveals itself as a venue for making sense of stigmatized identities in community-specific ways.

This book focuses on linguistic practices of identity construction in a popular culture media context, the Eurovision Song Contest. Subscribing to a normativity-based approach to critical discourse analysis, it studies Europeanisation as it surfaces at the discursive interface of European, national and sexual identities in Eurovision lyrics and performances. Research in critical discourse analysis that deals with Europeanisation, or the discursive work involved in European identity formation, has so far mainly studied data from EU political contexts that illustrate a top-down approach to what Europeanness means. The
present book complements this earlier research in several ways, focusing on the linguistic construction of identities, and its interrelation with non-linguistic modes of signification in the Eurovision Song Contest. Discursive mechanisms that prove to be central for the
normative shifts of Europeanisation in the given context are de-essentialisation, inclusion, camp, crossing and languaging.

Sociophonetic inquiry into sexuality and the voice has often focused on the perception of men's sexuality on the basis of disembodied voices. However, inconsistencies across these studies limit our ability to unit their findings into a cohesive model of gay-sounding speech. This paper focuses on variability among gay-sounding speakers by analyzing the voices of female-to-male transgender individuals, or trans men. Trans men who make use of testosterone typically experience a significant drop in vocal pitch, yet may maintain stylistic traits acquired while living in a female social role. An acoustic and perceptual analysis of trans and non-trans men's voices reveals that even as trans men may be perceived as gay-sounding, their sociolinguistic styles also differ from those of gay-sounding non-trans men. These findings support the notion that gay-sounding speech does not constitute a single phonetic style, but rather numerous deviations from the hegemonic norm.

Recent theorizations of trans embodiment have brought attention to the ways neoliberalism limits the productivity of non-normatively gendered bodies. This paper deals with the discursive framing of embodiment and sexual desirability among trans men and other transmasculine persons negotiating internet-mediated homoerotic spaces. Micro-level analysis of discourse structure and macro-level analysis of socio-political context together show how trans men navigate homonormative sexual economies by linguistically recuperating their bodies’ sexually productivity. Instead of undermining claims of embodied masculinity and homoerotic value, potential sites of exclusion—i.e. trans genitals—become sites of flexible accumulation that enhance, rather than detract from, their bearers’ desirability.

In recent years, the study of language, gender and sexuality has become increasingly global, multiracial, intersectional, crosslinguistic and queer-and trans-inclusive. The year 2019 continued this trajectory with a wave of research interrogating normativities, both among the speakers under analysis and among the researchers doing the analysing. While the analysis of linguistic practice has allowed language and gender scholars to probe the ways speakers norma-tively construct and ideologise the prototypical man, woman, gay person and transgender individual, theoretical and methodological advances in 2019 have also invited scholars to interrogate what is considered the prototypical study of language and gender. Interrogating normativities among both speakers and researchers has allowed for theoretical and methodological advances that paint a fuller picture of the multifaceted and context-specific relationship between language, identity and speaker agency.

Though various ethnicities, religions, and political groups have been discussed in the linguistic and anthropological literature, there remains a gap when it comes to the discussion of how the LGBT community uses humor. In 1905, Freud expanded the limited study of humor when he wrote the first critical discussion of humor from the margins. Since then, scholars have conducted linguistic, psychological, and anthropological analyses of stereotypes and the responsive use of humor by marginalized groups. However, a gap when it comes to humor and sexuality remains. Thus, the current article uses the theories of intertextuality, indexicality, and audience design to contrastively analyze a case study of how a lesbian comedian uses humor in two settings. First, an analysis is presented of how humor functions when used for a known LGBT friendly audience. This is then contrasted with a discourse analysis of how humor is used when the same lesbian comedian performs for a general (i.e. not explicitly LGBT) audience. This article provides insight into how intertextuality and audience design can be useful tools for LGBT performance when used in a " safe space " versus a general arena. More broadly, this research expands studies of humor to include marginalized sexual identities.

This article provides an overview of the young discipline of Queer Linguistics and discusses how it may be fruitfully applied in sociolinguistics as a contribu­ tion to critical heteronormativity research. After locating Queer Linguistics historically as a reaction to earlier essentialist approaches in the field of lan­ guage and sexuality, its theoretical underpinnings are outlined. Queer Linguis­ tics is not to be equalled with a " gay and lesbian " approach to language. It rather transfers ideas from Queer Theory to linguistic research, building on the integration of work by poststructuralist scholars such as Foucault, Butler and Derrida in order to provide a critical investigation of the discursive for­ mation of heteronormativity. Three potential criticisms against Queer Linguis­ tics as a poststructuralist approach are addressed: its supposedly low rele­ vance, issues of political agency, and its alleged lack of empirical applicability. Finally, methodological suggestions are made as to how sociolinguists may proceed from a Queer Linguistic point of view, focusing on ethnographically oriented studies of local identity negotiation, critical approaches to Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Sociolinguistics.

This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to call for more sociolinguistic attention to the role played by sexuality discourse in the reproduction of class relations. The discussion highlights the centrality of the middle classes to sustaining as well as shifting sexual normativity, suggesting that sexual norms are in part constituted through everyday discourses that situate middle class subjectivity between two class extremes. Specifically, the article tracks how Hinglish, as a mixed-language alternative to a class system polarized by English and Hindi, came to rival English as the preferred language of sexuality, challenging the elite censorship of “vernacular” languages that began in nineteenth-century colonialism. However, as demonstrated by two case studies of queer speakers at different ends of the Hinglish continuum, speakers of this internally diverse hybrid variety are not equally able to master the sexuality discourse that has become indexical of upward mobility.

The nineteenth century marked a radical shift in thinking about dissident sexuality when, in 1886, the German sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing popularised the term “homosexuality” in Psychopathia Sexualis, categorising it as a pathological condition and thus lending credence to existing widely-held beliefs about sexual transgression. Significantly, the former absence of language to describe same sex desire was often filled by Gothic fiction. In the seminal Queer Gothic, George Haggerty argues that ‘Gothic fiction offered the one semirespectable area of literary endeavour in which modes of sexual and social transgression were discursively addressed on a regular basis’, and thereby ‘itself helped shape thinking about sexual matters – theories of sexuality, as it were.’

Through a reading of the fin de siècle writings of Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde, in conjunction with the earlier precedents set by Emily Brontë, whose own sexual inclinations remain contested, this paper examines the ways in which these writers responded to cultural associations between sickness and sexual dissidence, posing challenges to normative and hegemonic discourses through radical Gothic narratives. It ultimately suggests that they embody Teresa Goddu’s notion of ‘haunting back’, reclaiming the often deeply homophobic Gothic mode to instead sensitively and progressively represent subjugated subjectivities.

Taking Elinor Ochs's (1992) notion of indirect indexicality as a starting point, the significance of stance for studies of sexuality and desire is explored. Stance helps organize sexual identity registers and is thus central in the creation and display of desire between speaking subjects. After defining stance and reviewing ways in which it has been used in studies of language and sexuality, the chapter provides two examples: how a 'gay voice' homosexual identity and a 'brospeak' heterosexual identity index different stances that in turn constitute differentially enregistered personae or characterological figures. The chapter concludes with an outline of the ways that the concept of stance may be used in further research, especially with respect to the analysis of desire in interaction.

Lucha libre, a form of exhibition wrestling, has recently gained popularity in Bolivia, thanks to mixed-gender matches featuring traditionally-dressed women known as the cholitas luchadoras. Within their matches, the act of kissing is often used as a form of humiliating an opponent. This article explores the convergence of eroticism and humiliation in these kisses as an entry point for a broader understanding of the deployment of power in the Bolivian context. Taking both the symbolic language of bodies in the ring and audience discourses about that action, I explore how associations between humiliation and demasculinization may reinforce the potency of masculinity as a position of power. Further, seeing the chola as representative of the Bolivian nation helps us to understand the ways that humiliation works as a recognizable trope for Bolivian audiences, lending import to these seemingly superficial performances.

Race, Class, and Gender is an interdisciplinary course that touches on the fields of sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, science, literature, media, and art to introduce students to the study of identity in American society. Placing experiences at the center of interpretation, Race, Class, and Gender introduces basic concepts and perspectives in the field of Women's and Gender Studies. Focusing on contemporary issues (with reference to historical trends), we will examine lived experience with an emphasis on how gender interacts with other identities (in particular, race, class, ability, and sexuality). The central goal is to foster critical thinking about how interlocking systems of racism, sexism, ableism, and heterosexism shape who we are, based on our individual social location and experiences of privilege and oppression. We will also examine how individuals have resisted inequality, worked to create new systems of change, and engaged in transformational and liberatory politics. Specific topics include beauty ideals, body image, non-binary gender identity (trans* and intersex), sexuality, gender violence, reproductive justice, birthing practices, and disability. We will place these contemporary issues within their historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts, and students will have the opportunity to engage in active discussion on a daily basis.

This chapter highlights the role of the concept of normativity in language and sexuality studies. It is argued that normativity has played a central role in this field, even if as a largely undertheorized concept. The theoretical discussion of normativity is advanced by conceptualizing norms as discursive formations and by distinguishing prescriptive from descriptive norms as well as normative mechanisms on the social micro-level from those on the social macro-level. Central patterns that are involved in the discursive construction of various sexual normativity types are outlined, namely heteronormativity (i.e., the notion that a particular version of

The sound of the queer voice has captured the intrigue of the popular and sociolinguistic imagination, spurring a wave of research investigating what makes someone “sound gay.” This chapter follows the trajectory of the sociophonetics of LGBTQ+ speakers, focusing on what is perhaps the most robustly studied phonetic variable in queer linguistics: the /s/ sound. The chapter explores how a group of non-normative drag queens in San Francisco use acoustic dimensions of /s/ to project radical queerness, illustrating how this community’s practices bear on greater conversations in sociolinguistics involving the connection between phonetic variation and the articulation of identity.

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

This article received BASEES (http://www.basees.org/) postgraduate prize with the following comment: 'This topical, relevant and methodologically interesting article addresses an issue that, while seemingly not in the spotlight of contemporary Slavonic studies, in fact sheds significant light on important social, discursive and ideational developments. The author does an admirable job of integrating several analytical narratives - one geographically and temporally local to today's Poland, one situated in the broader context of post-socialist 'transition', and one more generally global - into a compelling exploration that says as much about processes of social transformation in Poland as it does about the LGBT movement in that country. Moreover, the article presents significant original research, making effective use of archived online discussions as an unadulterated historical record, thus adding both to our stock of knowledge and to our level of understanding. It is also worth noting that the article is well written and solidly constructed. For all of these reasons, the article deserves recognition with this prize'.

By analysing 200 posts on a Japanese gay dating Bulletin Board System (deai-kei BBS), I investigate how users strategically deploy language to construct desirable identities and " sell themselves " online. Drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative analysis, I demonstrate that users of the BBS creatively manipulate stereotypical identity categories known as Types (taipu) to construct highly nuanced yet specific discourses of the Self and the desired Other. Through a discursive analysis of the strategies users employ to construct their own identities , and the identities of their desired partners, I argue that identity categories marked as masculine and hunky (sawayaka) are privileged as more desirable than feminine and cute (kawaii) identities. Through this analysis, I suggest that users of this particular forum appear to valorise heteronormative masculinity, which they link to being hunky. Furthermore, I argue that being cute is considered undesirable due to its perception as transgressing normative masculine gendered traits.

Marketers, social scientists, and matchmakers in Japan have identified a new group they call sôshoku-kei danshi, or “herbivore men”—shy, unambitious young men more interested in domesticity and fashion than traditionally masculine pursuits, including sex. In this talk, I present data from my fieldwork with contemporary Japanese matchmakers to discuss how they try to reshape their passive male clients’ problematic masculinities and attitudes towards marriage. I argue that in present-day Japan, romantic and sexual assertiveness have become decoupled from gender. As related terms have proliferated—“carnivore woman,” for example—it is now possible for anyone to declare themselves active or passive in their pursuit of sex and love. As matchmakers see it, the problem with the sôshoku-kei danshi is not their feminine pastimes: rather, it is their queer sexual passivity. Matchmakers encourage all their clients, male and female alike, to aggressively pursue marriage—to meet as many people as possible, be open and engaging conversational partners, and be proactive about proclaiming their desires and intentions to marry to their partners. In the world of matchmaking, everyone should be a carnivore. In this paper, I explore how matchmakers counsel their passive male clients; their goal is not to make them more masculine, but instead, to give them the conversational skills to pursue heterosexual relationships. I conclude that matchmakers’ counseling allows for a surprising amount of gender play and variance within the fairly traditional institutions of marriage and matchmaking.

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

We are pleased to announce the Full Program for SLA 2022. Thrice-postponed since its originally scheduled date in 2020, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Spring Conference will be held at the Embassy Suites in Boulder, Colorado and on the virtual platform Gather.town during April 7-9, 2022, with pre-conference plenaries occurring in both locations on Wednesday, April 6. The conference will feature 500+ presentations from leading and emerging scholars of language in social life, including 6 keynotes and 80+ panels, roundtables, workshops, and poster sessions. The Full Program can be found at our official SLA 2022 Trello link: https://trello.com/b/XePCVlsK. You may register for the conference at this link: https://bit.ly/SLA2022Registrations. Late-breaking session proposals and poster proposals accepted until March 14. Please see the associated pdf file for additional information. Questions and concerns about the conference can be sent to SLABoulder@gmail.com.

Recently there has been a semantic shift in the pornographic word ‘cum.’ Traditionally, the word, as a noun, is used to designate semen. However, ‘cum’ is now used to designate also female fluids during sexual activity. The concept of ‘female cum’ is discussed in relation to examples from a corpus of two hundred erotic short stories collected from the Internet, and to the physiological realities of female fluids during sex. In order to show how the innovation of ‘female cum’ is useful in written erotic narrative, a comparison is made with filmed pornography and drawn erotic comics. Finally, I argue that ‘cum’ in this new context is used as a device to arouse sexual excitement.