Language and Gender

The rise of India’s global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual modernity within the expanding middle classes. This article explores this perception in the multilingual humor of Hindi-speaking Delhi youth marginalized for sexual and gender difference. Their joking routines feature the Sikh Sardarji, a longstanding ethnic figure often caricatured as circulating in modernity but lacking the English competence to understand modernity’s semiotics. Reflective of the economic restructuring that ushered in the millennium, the humor supports a normative progress narrative that prioritizes an ethnically unmarked urban middle class. At the same time, the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth who tell these jokes—still criminalized under Section 377 when this fieldwork was conducted—shift this narrative by positioning sexual knowledge at modernity’s forefront. The analysis reveals how sexual modernity—here viewed as constituted in everyday interaction through competing configurations of place, time, and personhood—relies on normativity even while defining itself against it. (Chronotope, ethnic humor, formulaic jokes, globalization, Hindi-English, Hinglish, media, middle class, normativity, sexual modernity, temporality)

RESUMO: Este artigo tem como objetivo construir inteligibilidades contingentes acerca de eventos interacionais marcados pela violência linguística praticada contra pessoas trans, a partir da análise de atos de fala em circulação em comentários online. Nesse sentido, discuto os resultados de uma pesquisa qualitativa, inspirada na etnografia virtual, feita entre julho de 2015 e julho de 2016, na seção de comentários do site de notícias brasileiro G1, em três matérias jornalísticas relacionadas à encenação de uma crucificação realizada pela atriz e modelo transexual Viviany Beleboni, durante a 19ª edição da Parada do Orgulho LGBT de São Paulo. Do ponto de vista teórico, são mobilizados saberes relativos à noção de linguagem como performance, às discussões sobre a violência linguística e ao processo de patologização das vidas trans. No trabalho analítico empreendido, foram focalizados os processos de entextualização acionados pelos participantes em seus comentários online. Assim, em razão do olhar adotado sobre os dados gerados, o que se observa é a produção de uma (meta)pragmática engajada no reestabelecimento de contextos violentos, relativos a discursos médico-científicos patologizantes, com vistas a dotar de força ilocucionária os atos de fala transfóbicos, capazes de subalternizar e ferir pessoas trans por meio da linguagem. Desse modo, a pesquisa realizada permitiu salientar o potencial de um modelo indisciplinar e descentrado de investigação em linguagem, comprometido com a compreensão de práticas semióticas situadas na elaboração da realidade social, particularmente em tempos de alta reflexividade e trânsitos textuais intensos.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: pragmática; violência linguística; transfobia; entextualização; estudos queer.

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innovations as transgressions to the genderedness of Spanish language. First I discuss the grammatical rules of expressing gender in Spanish and a summary of the ongoing debates concerning linguistic sexism and androcentrism in Spanish language. Then I present some examples of the gender neutral suffixes drawn from articles found in 3 “Do It Yourself” journals published online by three anarchist collectives in Latin America.

L a « théorie du genre », une dangereuse idéologie menaçant les fondements de nos sociétés humaines ? Banderoles « On veut du sexe, pas du genre » dans les manifestations contre la loi du « mariage pour tous », demande expresse de deux députés UMP d'enquêter sur la « pénétration de cette théorie » dans la société : les polémiques et les attaques médiatiques contre la notion de genre se sont multipliées ces dernières années. Déjà présente sur la scène publique à l'époque du Pacs, cette notion est devenue une cible médiatique récurrente, ses détracteurs dénonçant une « théorie niant les différences physiologiques entre hommes et femmes », qui attaque ainsi les « fondements de notre société ». Rien de moins. « Un discours apocalyptique qui conforte le sens commun le plus obtus et le repli sur des normes figées », s'agace Sylvia Duverger, doctorante à Paris-VIII et administratrice du blog « Féministes en tous genres ». Entre le discours des « anti » et l'objet de leur opprobre, il y a pourtant un monde. Car « il n'y a pas "une" théorie du genre », rappelle Églantine Jamet-Moreau, maîtresse de conférences à Paris-X, mais « "des" études de genre ». En aucun cas un complot visant à détruire famille et société, ces études sont au contraire un outil d'analyse des discriminations. C'est peut-être là ce qui dérange. « S'il existe bien des différences physiologiques et anatomiques entre ce qu'on appelle un homme et ce qu'on appelle une femme, ces différences n'entraînent pas l'ensemble des distinctions que l'on peut constater dans une société entre ces identités », explique la sociologue Christine Delphy. Grossièrement, être pourvue d'un vagin ne donne pas nécessairement une aptitude parfaite à cuisiner ou à tenir en équilibre sur des talons hauts, tout comme l'attribut pénis ne détermine pas spécifiquement la réflexion politique ou le bon usage du crochet du droit. « Le genre, c'est le système hiérarchique qui divise la population en deux groupes et utilise, pour les distinguer, la forme des parties génitales,

Pride parades are of key importance regarding the visibility and reinforcement of LGBTQI Movement both in Turkey and the United States. The discourse emerging in the Pride parades gathers attention of linguists as it is remarkably inundated with linguistic strategies which could potentially function as discursive identity and solidarity construction. This study analyzes the discourse emerging in the Pride parades of Turkey and the United States by looking at the phrases in slogans and on the protest signs, banners, and graffiti. Dwelling upon the discursive identity principles of Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall (2005) as well as the referential and predicational strategies of Christopher Hart (2010), this paper investigates the linguistic strategies used in the parades in terms of identity and solidarity construction and develops a cross-cultural analysis.

In this essay, I analyze the multi-semiotic processes through which gender minorities use language for political purposes. The focus on language as a grammatical, multilingual, and artistic resource gives me the possibility of shedding light on political and aesthetic issues at work in the analysis of the relations between language and gender minorities and to propose what I call "Do-It-Yourself-Language-Strategies" (DIYLS).

The feminist movement is more present today than ever before. The protests, the demands and the feminist view begin to knock down the current hierarchical system and take sides within the institutions, organizations, and also within the media. However, the presence of women in media is still and issue that does not seem to be solved. In addition, media is still perpetuating and witnessing certain stereotypes and practices related to a specific gender. This paper presents the characteristics of feminist researchers and the creation of knowledge from a gender perspective in order to analyze the headlines of the press. The corpus collected consists of the headlines of the most read newspaper in Catalonia (ARA and La Vanguardia) and in Spain (El Mundo and El País), including the numbers published on March 8. The conclusions allow us to affirm that the presence of women in the headlines is insufficient, and also, the tendency of presenting them as a weak and potentially unsuccessful people.

Key words: gender perspective; feminist epistemology; press; intersectionality; discourse analysis.

The chapter offers a discourse analytic exploration of the topic of arranged marriage, which continues to fuel popular discourses of culture clash in public/media debates on one hand, and academic celebrations of hybrid British Asian femininities in a range of (non-linguistic) research disciplines on the other. My own work with a group of adolescent British Bangladeshi girls seeks to provide a space in language and gender research for the voices of adolescent Asian girls. At the same time I aim to offer to existing cross-disciplinary scholarship on young British Asian identities a discourse analytic focus on the complex negotiations and contestations of ideas, discourses and subject positions that characterise the spontaneous talk of five Bangladeshi girls from London. Whereas my analysis of the spontaneous data highlights the hybrid nature of a modified discourse of arranged marriage which emerges from the girls' negotiations, later interviews with my in-group informant contain a discourse which positions the girls as being torn between cultures. My chapter on the girls' talk about marriage will therefore take a critical and reflexive approach to perspectives of researcher and researched, different sources of data, and discourses of hybridity and culture clash.

This chapter will capture some of the complexity, heterogeneity and even contradictory nature of gender performances that are at the core of the social constructionist approach to language and gender with a particular focus on the rich and varied talk of adolescents and young adults. This focus will allow for a fresh perspective on many of the most important developments in the field at the same time as presenting data from an age range of speakers that will be of particular interest to many of the readers of this handbook. 

The first section of the chapter will trace the development of social constructionist thinking about language and gender. The second section will clarify the main two aspects of language that this chapter will focus on; (conversational) style and discourse, providing a brief overview of early language and gender research on conversational style. The third and main section of this chapter considers a range of important issues on the basis of recent language and gender research. It introduces language and gender studies which highlight what can be gained from moving beyond a discussion of conversational style to include a focus on discourse. It discusses the interplay of gender with other sociocultural variables and the contributions ethnographic and community of practice studies have made to capture the heterogeneity of gendered performances. The section will also highlight how scholarship on language and sexuality as well as on gender structures has shaped our recent understanding of language, gender and identity. The chapter will conclude with some recommendations for future practice in language and gender research.