Journal of Language and Sexuality - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2013

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 unite 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.

The issue of “expertise,” while not always termed as such, has long sat at the center of much trans theory. Initially held only by medical authorities, transgender expertise has shifted alongside changes in cultural attitudes and diagnosis models: transgender individuals now often find themselves conversationally positioned as “expert” on the phenomenological experience of being transgender — even if they do not willingly take on that social role. This article considers, first, the role of the trans speaker as expert, and second, the use of expert discourse or expertness (Nguyen 2006) by trans male video bloggers (vloggers) on YouTube. As highly public individuals, these vloggers strategically assume the expert role to correct viewer “misbehavior.” In their talk, vloggers utilize a specific mode of recipient design, advice-giving, to focus attention on viewers’ lack of knowledge and away from the vlogger’s subjective experience. If successful, their talk forecloses on the possibility of further viewer challenges.

This paper examines the understudied and stigmatized sexual category of “bisexuality” as it emerges in the discourse of bisexuals at a California university. Building on the concepts of performance and “doing” identity presented by Butler (2006 [1990]), Goffman (1990 [1959]), and West and Zimmerman (1987), an outline is offered for how bisexuals, who are made invisible by the hetero/homo binary, may build an intelligible social performance of their identity and sexuality. Utilizing methods from within sociocultural linguistics (i.e., “the broad interdisciplinary field concerned with the intersection of language, culture, and society” [Bucholtz & Hall 2005: 586]), this paper uses ethnographic observations and video-recorded social interaction in order to analyze how bisexuality is performed in social contexts, with a focus on its performance in discourse. The paper closes with a critique of the ways that normativity operates alongside efforts at social resistance and an exploration of the relationship between different layers of sexuality.

In this article I explore the effects of heteronormative assumptions on the interpretation of interaction. I consider two pieces of data that, based on the kinds of alignments shown, might be seen as flirting. However, through both perception experiments and discourse analysis, I show that these are rarely considered to be flirting if they take place for ‘same-gender’ interactions. These results demonstrate the power and effect of ‘background knowledge’ about sexualities on the interpretation of talk.

Singapore is one of a few nations in Asia that has yet to decriminalize homosexuality yet has a queer scene that rivals other more liberal cosmopolitan centers. Since the introduction of the Internet into Singapore in 1994, queer Singaporeans have been exposed to a variety of regional and transnational discourses of sexual subjectivity and rights. In this article, I examine the ways that individuals and activists in Singapore reject the “globalization” of sexuality and instead create unique ways of speaking about queer rights. In the process, they are creating a rights movement that is beginning to find limited success.

Linguistic and anthropological analyses of the globalization of sexual frameworks typically emphasize how putatively global models remain disjunctive with localized understandings. Few scholars have examined how NGOs in the Global North compile the information needed to advocate for LGBT rights, much of which is generated by activists in the Global South. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork at a Northern-based LGBT human rights NGO to explore how brokers produce and circulate knowledge amidst the complex challenges of information politics. As brokers of information, activists face structural, linguistic, and technological impediments that complicate their work. They also grapple with doubts about facticity, motives, and potential repercussions that affect whether information is deemed “good enough” for advocacy. Understanding how activists practically navigate these challenges is critical as linguists and anthropologists move beyond reductive global-local dichotomies and advocates seek to do solidarity work as effectively and responsibly as possible.