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- Volume 12, Issue 1, 2023
Journal of Language and Sexuality - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2023
Volume 12, Issue 1, 2023
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How to do gender with names
Author(s): Miriam Lindpp.: 1–22 (22)More LessAbstractMost trans people change their name in accordance to their gender in the process of transitioning. The decision for a new name can take place at any stage during an individual’s exploration of their identity, typically coming into use when the individual comes out to others and asks to be addressed with this new name. Whether or not this new name is accepted and adopted by others is not only a matter of time, but correlates to the acceptance of the “new” gender and thus of a person’s right to change their name.
This article offers an analysis of trans name change announcements as performative speech acts and analyses the reactions to this name change, i.e. the acceptance or refusal of this new name, in relation to the speech act’s felicity conditions.
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Negotiating normativities of gender, sexuality and the family in gay parents’ small stories
Author(s): Jai Mackenziepp.: 23–45 (23)More LessAbstractThis article considers how two gay male parents negotiate normative discourses of gender, sexuality and the family in an interview context. Employing a three-level framework for exploring narratives-in-interaction, the micro-linguistic analysis identifies and unravels two gay parents’ multiple layers of self- and other- positioning through their telling of ‘small stories’. The findings support insights from existing sociological and psychological research to some degree, showing how these parents’ liminal situation amidst multiple and intersecting normative discourses can lead to conflict as they work to position themselves as partners, parents, and gay men. However, the analysis also reveals new insights about the specific and nuanced forms such conflict can take, depending on individuals’ circumstances and experiences. The findings suggest that everyday encounters are important sites for the (re)constitution of such normative discourses, and that the small stories parents tell about these encounters can be important resources for making sense of their lives in relation to broader social norms and structures.
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Provocative euphemism in pornographic film titles
Author(s): Eliecer Crespo-Fernándezpp.: 46–72 (27)More LessAbstractFollowing a critical discourse-analytic approach, this study explores the role of euphemistic language in a corpus of titles of pornographic films designed for heterosexual male consumption that were nominated and awarded in the different categories of the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards, also known as “Oscars of Porn”, from 2015 to 2020. The analysis demonstrates that provocative euphemism contributes to the discursive representation of gender and sexual stereotypes that fall under a dominant heteronormative discourse in which female characters are represented both as victims of male dominance and as perverted, sex-crazed animals. This study also reveals that in the context of male supremacy that straight pornography seems to exalt, the sexist and misogynistic connotations that euphemistic references carry are used with a strategic purpose intended to attract the interest of pornography consumers, stimulate their curiosity, and ultimately make them buy, rent or stream the film.
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“Haute couture? More like haute glue!”
Author(s): Martina Podbojpp.: 73–97 (25)More LessAbstractReading is a unique interactional practice in the drag queen community. It refers to leveling witty and often cutthroat mock insults at fellow drag queens, with an aim of throwing shade. In this paper, I examine the discourse of the ‘reading challenge’, a staple of RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR), an internationally popular drag queen reality TV show (2009–). In the first part, I review central concepts surrounding drag performance and the phenomenon of RPDR and summarize relevant sociolinguistic literature about drag queen speech and the practice of reading. In the second part, I describe the RPDR reading challenge as a unique discursive genre and analyse its performative structure, themes, and most prominent strategies that queens use to construct felicitous reads and throw shade. The analysis demonstrates that this genre relies on camp language and highly ritualized, repetitive, and recontextualized performance of reading, framed by requirements of mass-consumed reality TV.
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“You know she didn’t have no country”
Author(s): Nicholas Kontovaspp.: 98–134 (37)More LessAbstractThis study focuses on switches into and out of African American English among contestants of the television series RuPaul’s Drag Race. Following Barrett (1995), I note that Black contestants who are comfortable in White Middle-Class American English tend to use it as their primary dialect, switching to AAE in order to develop rapport. I suggest that non-Black performers switch into AAE either in order to mitigate the effects of comments which might otherwise be interpreted as rude, or to reinforce strength in moments of emotional self-disclosure, and that this is possibly reflective of an interpretation on the part of the speaker that forwardness and strength constitute a normal element – ‘sass’ – of Black women’s speech. Finally, I explore the possible social impact of this phenomenon from the perspective of two common themes in the popular discourse on race: one centered on cultural appropriation, the other on the perception of Black Women’s Language.
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Review of Borba (2020): Discursos Transviados: Por uma Linguística Queer
Author(s): Daniel Amarelopp.: 135–139 (5)More LessThis article reviews Discursos Transviados: Por uma Linguística Queer
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Review of Comer (2022): Discourses of Global Queer Mobility and the Mediatization of Equality
Author(s): Brandon William Epsteinpp.: 140–143 (4)More LessThis article reviews Discourses of Global Queer Mobility and the Mediatization of Equality
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