The research begins!

As mentioned previously, I am beginning some research on the creation, functionality, and meaning of new language in queer communities, drawing on linguistic studies of language & sexuality and language & gender. I have begun gathering potential sources for this project and below are notes on two of the sources I plan to use in my work. The first is an anthology of scholarly work and the second is an article from a peer-reviewed journal. Both are meant for an academic audience and are full of academic jargon and theoretical concepts, so if jargon and theory are not your cup of tea, hold out for something different!


1) Leap, William. Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination, and Appropriation in Lesbian and Gay Languages. Australia: Gordon and Breach, 1995.

This anthology, edited by William Leap, covers historical, anthropological, and linguistic inquiry into lesbian and gay language. It demonstrates that such languages do indeed exist and looks at how they are cooperatively formed, what effects they have in shaping identity, and discourses about and around lesbian and gay identities. I anticipate some of the selections will be highly relevant, but even those that are less so may give some further insight to how language functions to shape identity, especially in the case of a minority population. Selections such as Martin F. Manalansan IV’s “’Performing’ Filipino Gay Experiences in America: Linguistic Strategies in a Transnational Context,” may be particularly useful as it examines a further subculture within the gay community with its own particular speech, “swardspeak.” I anticipate Leap’s work being cited by other scholars in the field (Bucholtz, Cameron, and Kulick mention him), so having a basic knowledge of it may further understanding of later texts.


2)Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. "Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research." Language in Society. Cambridge: Sep 2004. Vol. 33, Iss. 4; pg. 469, 47 pgs

This article uses queer linguistics, an approach which draws upon "feminist, queer, and sociolinguistic theories," to examine the positions of identity and desire in the field of language and sexuality research. Recent work by Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick, whose work I am also examining, has called for an end to inquiry into identity within language and sexuality research, advocating an investigation of desire instead. Bucholtz and Hall examine these critiques of sexual identity scholarship in linguistics, embracing some views and cautioning against others, arguing for an understanding of intersubjectivity in identity research and giving a framework from which to proceed with semiotic study in language and sexuality. An overview of relevant historical linguistic scholarship is given to back the critique of anti-identity theorists and defend practices of linguistic inquiry into sexual identity.

Mary Bucholtz received her PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley and has published in various peer-reviewed journals of anthropology and linguistics. Kira Hall also received a PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley, but does not seem to have published as much as Buchholtz. The authors are authoritative and the use of linguistics, semiotics, and intersubjectivity in considering identity and sexuality is a particularly powerful combination for examining the phenomena I am researching.

Stay tuned for more from the research front!