Journal of Language and Sexuality - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract

Previous research on language, sexuality, and affect has focused primarily on the presence rather than the absence of desire. This analysis investigates the linguistic manifestations of non-desire on two subreddits: r/AskReddit and r/Asexual. Contrasting asexual redditors’ responses to threads such as When and how did you realize you were asexual? with straight, allosexual redditors’ responses to a thread titled Straight redditors, when did you realize you were straight?, I find that allosexual and asexual redditors’ responses differ in agency and emotionality. While straight allosexual redditors attribute their lack of homosexual desire to factors other than themselves, asexual redditors attribute their lack of allosexual desire to their own identity. Additionally, asexual redditors frame their realizations of their asexuality as processual and emotional, using feel and felt more often than straight allosexual redditors’ responses. These results expose the importance of emotionality – including lack of desire – as a resource for asexual identity construction.

Abstract

Pornography is commonly criticized for allegedly representing and promoting sexual dominance of men over women. Studies have shown varying results, with no scientific consensus reached on the matter. To contribute to the discussion with empirical discourse analysis evidence, I examine the linguistic choices reflected in a corpus of erotic novels to test whether there are gendered patterns of agency in the representation of sexual interactions. The construal of prominence is correlated to the notion of agency to find which participant specifies the trajector status and agent role in every relational expression. Results show that male participants take prominence over females in an overwhelming majority of the cases, while expressions with plural agency are marginal. The approach of this paper, combining cognitive grammar with linguistic participation roles, provides comprehensive and realistic results by attempting to operationalize agency as the linguistic expression of a particular cognitive pathway.

Abstract

This paper draws on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in Chengdu, China to consider the utility of broad labels such as Chinese, Western and gay in accounting for the performance of sexual and cultural identity. I problematise work which takes such notions to be stable and self-evidently referential, arguing instead that identity is much more fluid, emergent and discourse-dependent than conventional understandings tend to imply. I focus on visibility of queer sexual identity partly because it is an especially accessible example of the role of language in identity performance, being most often achieved through verbal interaction. More broadly, however, this focus emerged through my ethnographically informed, discursive-sociocultural approach to my life and research in mainland China during the period 2008–2019. Specifically, I use spoken data from the interviews which formed part of this process to argue that social practice within related ethnic and/or social groups is best understood in terms of the situated use of sociolinguistic tools and the entailed negotiation of pertinent ideological systems. From this perspective, the ostensibly insurmountable ideological pressures that “Chinese gays” are typically seen to face, and which tend to be attributed to a taken-for-granted and monolithic “Chinese culture”, are better interpreted with reference to the complex relationship between language, culture and identity. Thus, I do not assume the right to make broad claims about what Chinese gays do, or to state that they are categorically different from their presumed homogenous Western counterparts. Instead, I discuss what certain individuals say in certain conversations, noting how their performance of identity is often highly individualised, being shaped according to the interactants present and the interactional aims relevant to specific moments of communication.

Abstract

Over the last two decades, there has been an increasing coverage of transgender people in Latin American and Spanish media. However, there are very few research studies that thoroughly examine the increasing use of terms such as transgender “transgénero” and trans in Spanish-speaking press. This contribution studies the linguistic representation of transgender people in Spanish-speaking quality press produced in Colombia and Spain. Within the framework of Queer Linguistics and Corpus-based Discourse Analysis, this article explores the linguistic choices employed by the Spanish-speaking press to name transgender people and examines the main differences in the linguistic choices made by newspapers in the two countries. Unlike in English, the findings suggest that trans and transexual are the most commonly used labels in Spanish. Although the semantic categories of representation are seen to differ between the two countries, the linguistic choices observed seem to be closely linked to sociopolitical and ideological preferences.

Abstract

This paper analyses menarche episodes from TV series using the discourse-historical approach to compare how menarche has been depicted on TV during different decades and takes a closer look into inter-generational experience of menarche. The analysis focuses on membership categorization analysis of the scenes and dialogues involving menarche. After analyzing several decades of menstrual discourse, it is possible to conclude that TV discourse has changed from depicting menarche as a shameful taboo to a powerful visual storyline statement. However, the menarche scenarios did not change dramatically and continue to rely heavily on a mother-daughter bonding plot and highlight childbearing as the main and sometimes the only positive aspect of menstruation. The continuous use of menstruational euphemisms is still predominating the TV discourse.

This article reviews Linguistic Perspectives on Sexuality in Education: Representations, Constructions, and Negotiations

This article reviews Online Sex Talk and the Social World: Mediated Desire