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- Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020
Journal of Language and Sexuality - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020
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Redefining realness
Author(s): Stephen Turtonpp.: 101–126 (26)More LessAbstractThis paper furthers the goal of “queering lexicography” (Nossem 2018) by proposing a theoretical approach to analysing dictionary definitions that replaces the traditional descriptive/prescriptive binary with a model of normativity influenced by performativity theory. This is demonstrated by a critical discourse analysis of how entries for lesbian, gay, and homosexual in four contemporary English dictionaries tacitly position homosexual as a neutral term against which lesbian and gay are sociolinguistically marked. The paper also stresses the need for researchers not only to analyse how normativity is embedded in dictionaries, but to recognize the extent to which lay dictionary-users are already aware of the normative potential of lexicography, whether they embrace it or condemn it. This is explored through an incident in which Merriam-Webster’s addition of the word genderqueer to its online dictionary in 2016 became the subject of public scrutiny and contestation on social media.
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Menos masculino, demasiado infantil
Author(s): Matthew John Hadodo and Matthew Kanwitpp.: 127–151 (25)More LessAbstractAge is an under-analyzed variable in linguistic research concerning gender and sexuality. We consider these three constructs by examining diminutives as an index of gay sexuality in Madrid Spanish across two tasks. Although phonetic cues have received great attention, morphological features (e.g. diminutives) may also index gayness (Mendes 2014). Moreover, despite frequent usage across Spanish-speaking varieties, diminutives are primarily restricted to women and children in north-central Spain (Haensch 2002). In a diminutive reaction task, 53 Madrid residents indicated whether men, women, adults, or children were likely to have uttered diminutivized sentences. Mixed-effects models indicated that the number of diminutives and sentence theme significantly affected perception, and participants’ evaluations in a free response task corroborated that men using diminutives were considered effeminate, gay, and childish. Thus, even with sociophonetic cues removed, morphological phenomena create a gay percept. This study demonstrates how age ideologies inform indexicalization processes related to gender and sexuality.
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Incels, in-groups, and ideologies
Author(s): Frazer Heritage and Veronika Kollerpp.: 152–178 (27)More LessAbstractWe present a study of the online forum Reddit, specifically a sub-forum for (typically heterosexual) men who identify as involuntary celibates or incels. Incels are an online imagined community/community of practice who wish to, but do not, have sexual relations with women. Owing to this identity, they view themselves as non-normative within broader society and see women and societal standards of masculinity as the cause of their problems. In this paper, we take a small corpus of 67,000 words generated from 50 threads created, and commented on, by incels. We analyse keywords, word frequencies, and concordance lines to explore the representation of gendered social actors. Keyword analysis reveals that references to gendered social actors are particularly salient within this community, leading to an analysis of all such social actors in the corpus. The findings suggest that incels position different groups of men in a hierarchy in which conventionally attractive men occupy the top position. Notably, we find that female social actors are not placed in a similar hierarchy. An additional appraisal analysis of the most frequently occurring male and female social actors shows that men are judged as incapacitated while women are seen as immoral, dishonest and capable of hurting men. Members of the online community also seem preoccupied with physical attractiveness. The study opens up a number of avenues for future research, especially into the complexities with which members of non-normative heterosexual groups simultaneously orient to and reject social norms.
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“Thaz how u kno ur dum”
Author(s): Eric Chamberspp.: 179–201 (23)More LessAbstractThis study analyzes language use among a group of gay men who participate on an online messageboard (OnYourKnees), focused on the attainment of a ‘dumb jock’ identity. Posters align with a series of qualities that largely conform to ideologies of American jock masculinity, but at the same time satirize those ideologies: in particular, many posters view as an integral quality of dumb-jock identity ‘dumbness:’ an unwillingness/inability to engage in scholarly/academic pursuits. The repeated citationality of dumbness as a positive quality creates a distinct identity-type that posters link with erotic desire. Orthographic variation contributes to the attainment and recognition of a jock identity: posters who identify as jocks are more likely to display non-standard American English spelling than those who do not. This study thus highlights the importance of orthographic variation in maintaining distinct identities among local communities, especially in a space where traditional ideologies of masculinity are recontextualized.
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PrEP in the press
Author(s): Lucy Jones and Luke Collinspp.: 202–225 (24)More LessAbstractThis research reports on newspaper representations of PrEP, a HIV-prevention drug recently made available on a trial basis to at-risk individuals in England. Using corpus-assisted queer critical discourse analysis, we investigate the linguistic representations of the users of PrEP within three leading British newspapers from across the political spectrum between 2014–18. We find that users of PrEP are most frequently positioned as ‘men who have sex with men’ or ‘gay men’, a representation that we argue limits public awareness of HIV itself, and of available HIV prevention. Furthermore, while the most left-leaning newspaper in our corpus focuses on the human benefit of PrEP, the most right-leaning newspaper takes a moralistic stance which frames gay men as risk-taking and therefore less deserving of healthcare funding than other groups. We therefore argue that certain representations of PrEP’s beneficiaries are implicitly homophobic, and that most representations are unhelpfully restrictive.
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Incels, in-groups, and ideologies
Author(s): Frazer Heritage and Veronika Koller
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Enregistering “gender ideology”
Author(s): Rodrigo Borba
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“How my hair look?”
Author(s): Qiuana Lopez and Mary Bucholtz
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