Journal of Language and Sexuality - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2022

Abstract

Success in the digital dating world is often dependent on an individual’s ability to negotiate the affordances and constraints of platforms (Bucher & Helmond 2017) while effectively expressing who one is and what they are looking for. Since mononormativity is the dominant script that underpins ideals of romantic love and intimate relations in our society (Wolkomir 2019), for the millions who ascribe to non-monogamy, profile creation is often complicated by dating platform interfaces and relationship orientations. This research takes a critical multimodal discourse approach (Machin 2016, Milani 2013) to examine the interplay between various semiotic modes in meaning making about sexual normativities (Motschenbacher 2019) in digital dating contexts, and considers how people navigating non-traditional relationship orientations negotiate discourse in digital dating contexts to demonstrate how discourse and design have the ability to empower and marginalize users (Sun 2020) as well maintain cultural norms (Wachter-Boettcher 2017) about emotional bonding and sexuality.

Abstract

This article examines Finnish online forum discussions where religion and discourses of ‘homosexuality’ are connected in various ways. Previous research (e.g. Jantunen 2018a) shows that in Finnish online discussions where sexual minorities are the topic, religion stands out as a significant feature – particularly in discourses on ‘homosexuality’. Via corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADS), the present study adds to previous knowledge on this subject by qualitatively analyzing the occurrences of certain keywords in the Finnish societal context – one in which immigration and the visibility of both Islam and sexual minorities are perceived to have increased. The analysis found four interrelated key discourses in these online discussions: (1) Islamization as an alleged threat to gay people (in the data: ‘homosexuals’); (2) the alleged indifference/ignorance of people to Islam’s stance against sexual minorities; (3) relativist discourse(s) claiming all fundamentalists to be similar; and (4) othering – including for instance, the verbal stylization of Muslims as being particularly hypersexual.

Abstract

Mobilizations against gender equality and sexual diversity have gained political traction globally despite their hyperbolic modes of action and conspiracist rhetoric. These anti-gender campaigns rally around “gender ideology,” a trope used to anathemize feminist and LGBTQIA+ activism/scholarship. This paper argues that anti-genderism is a register – a conventionalized aggregate of expressive forms and enactable person-types – of which “gender ideology” is the most famous shibboleth. The paper shows how inchoate collections of words, modes of action, and images of people (i.e. signs) have been enregistered into the cohesive but heterogeneous whole of anti-genderism through semiotic processes of clasping, relaying, and grafting (Gal 2018; 2019). The paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis of anti-genderism to understand the challenges it poses to the enfranchisement of women, queer, trans, and nonbinary people.

Abstract

Same-sex relationships have, over time, stirred serious debates worldwide. Studies on same-sex sexualities in the Nigerian context have focused on its representation in Nollywood movies and other arguments centred on ethics, culture and religion, with little attention paid to how queer people are framed by the Nigerian media. This study, therefore, explores agency and processes in the representation of gay people in news reports of selected Nigerian newspapers, in order to unearth how this social group is discursively constructed in the Nigerian context. Drawing on insights from Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study considers three popular Nigerian newspapers (Vanguard, Nigerian Tribune and The Punch) within three years (2013–2015, being the period of intense debate on the legalisation of the anti-gay bill in Nigeria). Results reveal that gay people are negatively evaluated as actors of negative material processes such as ‘murder’ and other violent actions, and goals of the actions of ‘arrests’ and ‘remands’, ideologically portraying them as criminals and dangerous. The study provides insight into the biased posturing of the Nigerian media on important social/national issues such as same-sex relationships.

Abstract

The author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), dealt with “sodomites” twice in his masterpiece, once in Inferno and again in Purgatorio. In their examinations of the passage in Inferno, literary critics have typically conflated the modern-day definition of “homosexual” with the medieval “sodomite.” In order to see how Dante viewed non-normative sexuality accurately, however, it is necessary first to uncouple the medieval term “sodomite” from today’s term, “homosexual,” and to apply instead the medieval definition of the former. Numerous sources of Dante’s time indicate that “sodomy” did not mean, strictly speaking, same sex practices between men, but rather it encompassed a wide array of sexual activities. The same is probably true of the sodomites in Dante’s Inferno, some of whom might not have bedded other men. Examination of the passage in Purgatorio, moreover, indicates a greater degree of subtlety in Dante’s thought regarding non-normative sexual attraction.

This article reviews Transgender Identities in the Press: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis

This article reviews Queering the English Language Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers