Language and Sexuality

Location, lore, and language: An erotic triangle

by Brian King

Published in the Journal of Language and Sexuality, Vol 1(1) 2012

This study explores the notion that we become sexual subjects within our surroundings rather than being a priori... more This study explores the notion that we become sexual subjects within our surroundings rather than being a priori sexualised subjects. It addresses the questions of how the erotic and ‘place’ (our socially understood surroundings) interact in an online, text-only, mostly linguistic environment to create an erotic atmosphere, and how eroticised atmosphere relates to sexual subject formation. This article focuses on discourse analyses of extracts from a corpus in which public erotic discussions unfold between participants who are (ostensibly) men who desire men. During online conversation, a ‘room’ spatiality is continually performed, sometimes relying upon idealised images of ‘erotic oases’ from the offline world to build an erotic atmosphere. These offline erotic oases are places of ‘deviance’ characterised by semi-public sex (e.g. parks, public washrooms, and saunas). This type of atmosphere is contested by some participants as a ‘back room’ construction, inappropriate for the public chat room, while others embrace it. Analysis demonstrates that eroticism, spatiality, and language adapt to one another along a reformulating path. The ‘where’ of the erotic is seen to be as important as what is said or done. This suggests that a more nuanced understanding of language and the erotic depends on spatial investigations as much as discursive theory.

A Gay Immigrant Student's Perspective: Unspeakable Acts in the Language Class

by Cynthia Nelson

Incomprehensible language? Language, ethnicity and heterosexual masculinity in a Swedish school

by Tommaso M. Milani

Co-authored with Rickard Jonsson, Gender & Language 2011, 5 (2): 239-266

In the Swedish context, the discursive regime about linguistic phenomena is charac- terized by a ‘matrix of... more In the Swedish context, the discursive regime about linguistic phenomena is charac- terized by a ‘matrix of intelligibility’ (Butler 1999 [1990]) that promotes images of linguistic practices among adolescents in the suburbs not only as deviant and incomprehensible, but also as essentialized traits of ethnic Otherness, social and educational problems and, more recently, of an aggressive masculinity embodied in sexist and homophobic behaviour. Unlike dominant media representations which depict such linguistic practices as unintelligible as well as inherently sexist and homophobic, the aim of the present article is to take a queer stance and illustrate how ethnic insults, gay innuendos and misogynist talk are meaningful in the sense that they constitute a rich pool of interactional resources that allow the young men in our study to actively partake in the negotiation of a ‘local masculine order’ (Evaldsson 2005) in which positions of power, authority and solidarity are enacted and/or contested.

Re-casting language and masculinities

by Tommaso M. Milani

Gender & Language 2011, 5 (2): 175-186

This special issue of Gender & Language aims at re-rethinking the linguistic/discursive study of masculinities in... more This special issue of Gender & Language aims at re-rethinking the linguistic/discursive study of masculinities in the light of recent theoretical debates that have arisen in conjunction with the not always uncontroversial volume Language and Sexuality (Cameron and Kulick 2003a). More specifically, the contributions to the special issue take masculinities as a case in point and interrogate whether, and if so, how Cameron and Kulick's theoretical constructs can be put to work in a range of empirical linguistic/discursive investigations.

Cybergirls in trouble: Fan fiction as a discursive space for interrogating gender and sexuality

by Sirpa Leppänen

Published in Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen-Rosa & Rick Iedema (Eds.). 2008. Identity Trouble: Critical discourse and contested identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 156-179.

Creatividad léxica en una jerga gay de la frontera México-Estados Unidos

by Israel Sanz Sanchez