Language, Gender, and Sexuality

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 455-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Meyerhoff ◽  
Susan Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender

Research on language and gender encompasses a variety of methods and focuses on many aspects of linguistic structure. This review traces the historical development of the field, explicating some of the major debates, including the need to move from a reductive focus on difference and dichotomous views of gender to more performative notions of identity. It explains how the field has come to include language, gender, and sexuality and how queer theory and speaker agency have influenced research in the field.

scholarly journals Language, Gender, and Sexuality

Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lal Zimman ◽  
Kira Hall
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Sociocultural Linguistics ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender

Research on language, gender, and sexuality has been advanced by scholars working in a variety of areas in sociocultural linguistics, among them conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, linguistic anthropology, sociophonetics, and variationist sociolinguistics. The relevance of gender to linguistic analysis was first noted in the early 20th century when descriptive linguists observed differences in female and male vocabularies and patterns of speaking in non-European languages. But it was not until the 1975 publication of Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place (Lakoff 1975), originally published as a lead article in a 1973 issue of Language in Society, that disparate work on language and gender began to coalesce as a field of study. Research during this era of second-wave feminism focused on the everyday micro-discourse practices of women and men as instantiating hierarchical power relations, analyzing such phenomena as turn-taking, interruptions, and topic uptake. Fifteen years later, Deborah Tannen popularized a “two-cultures” approach to language and gender in You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation (Tannen 1990), which shifted the source of gender differentiation away from patriarchy and onto language socialization in same-sex peer groups. Lakoff’s and Tannen’s models—which came to be called the “dominance” and “difference” models, respectively—set the foundation for contemporary work on language and gender. In the mid-1990s, the field was revitalized by what is often referenced as the “discursive turn” in social theory. New theoretical work in post-structuralist and multicultural feminism, including the view of gender as produced in discourse instead of predetermined by biological sex, inspired new involvement by language scholars across the fields of anthropology, communication, education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies. The close analysis of gender in interaction demonstrated its intersectionality with other social categories, such as social class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexuality. Although work on language and sexuality preceded this development, this relationship too received renewed attention as scholars of language and gender came to recognize the heteronormativity that had implicitly shaped previous work in the field and began drawing on perspectives within the emergent field of queer theory. Gender and sexuality came to be seen as intimately connected in the language and gender literature, hence the field’s eventual designation in many publication domains as language, gender, and sexuality. This annotated bibliography aims to bring together socially oriented linguistic scholarship on both gender and sexuality while also recognizing the independent trajectories of these traditions of research. Although the bibliography at times treats gender and sexuality as separate topics for purposes of clarity or emphasis, research in these traditions remains closely intertwined.

scholarly journals Converging Feminist and Queer Legal Theories: Family Feuds and Family Ties

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Craig
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cour De Justice

The notion that queer theory and feminism are inevitably in tension with one another has been well developed both by queer and feminist theorists. Queer theorists have critiqued feminist theories for being anti-sex, overly moralistic, essentialist, and statist. Feminist theorists have rejected queer theory as being uncritically pro-sex and dangerously protective of the private sphere. Unfortunately these reductionist accounts of what constitutes a plethora of diverse, eclectic and overlapping theoretical approaches to issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, often fail to account for the circumstances where these methodological approaches converge on legal projects aimed at advancing the complex justice interests of women and sexual minorities. A recent decision from the Ontario Court of Justice addressing a three-parent family law dispute involving gay and lesbian litigants demonstrates why recognition of the convergences between feminist and queer legal theories can advance both queer and feminist justice projects. The objective of this article is to demonstrate, through different and converging interpretations of this case that draw on some of the theoretical insights offered in a new anthology called Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, one rather straight-forward claim. The claim advanced here is that activists, advocates, litigants and judges are all well served by approaching complex legal problems involving sex, sexuality and gender with as many “methods” for pursuing and achieving justice as possible.La notion que la théorie homosexuelle et le féminisme sont inévitablement en conflit l’un avec l’autre a été bien développée à la fois par les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels et féministes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels ont critiqué les théories féministes les qualifiant d’être anti-sexe, trop moralistes, essentialistes et étatistes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes féministes ont rejeté la théorie homosexuelle la qualifiant d’être pro-sexe sans esprit critique et dangereusement protectrice du domaine privé. Malheureusement, ces descriptions réductionnistes de ce qui constitue une pléthore d’approches théoriques aux questions de sexe, de genre et de sexualité qui sont diverses, éclectiques et qui se chevauchent manquent fréquemment de tenir compte de circonstances où ces approches méthodologiques convergent sur des projets légaux visant à faire avancer les intérêts juridiques complexes des femmes et des minorités sexuelles. Une décision récente de la Cour de justice de l’Ontario portant sur un litige en droit de la famille entre trois parents et impliquant des parties homosexuelles et lesbiennes démontre pourquoi la reconnaissance des convergences entre les théories juridiques féministes et homosexuelles peut faire avancer à la fois les projets légaux homosexuels et féministes. Le but de cet article n’est pas de suggérer qu’une seule «théorie juridique féministe homosexuelle» convergente soit possible, ou même désirable. Plutôt, le but est de démontrer, par le biais d’interprétations différentes et convergentes de ce cas qui s’inspirent de certaines intuitions théoriques présentées dans une nouvelle anthologie intitulée Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, une proposition assez simple. La proposition avancée ici est que les activistes, les avocats, les parties à un litige et les juges sont tous bien servis en abordant des problèmes légaux complexes au sujet de sexe, de sexualité et de genre avec autant de «méthodes» que possible pour considérer la justice dans tous ses détails.

Queer Theory and Heteronormativity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Page Valentine Regan ◽  
Elizabeth J. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Lgbtq Youth ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Queer Pedagogy

The concepts of queer theory and heteronormativity have been taken up in educational research due to the influence of disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Queer theory seeks to disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries that structure our understandings of gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity describes the belief that heterosexuality is and should be the preferred system of sexuality and informs the related male or female, binary understanding of gender identity and expression. Taken together, queer theory and heteronormativity offer frames to interrogate and challenge systems of sex and gender in educational institutions and research to better support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ youth. They also inform the development of queer pedagogy that includes classroom and instructional practices designed to expand and affirm gender and sexual diversity in schools.

Crimen Sollicitationis

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-192
Author(s):  
Diederik F. Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Feminist Sociology ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Late Modern

Late modernity’s binary intrigue of child sexuality/abuse is understood as a backlash phenomenon reactive to a general trans‐Atlantic crisis concerning the interlocking of kinship, religion, gender, and sexuality. Tellingly dissociated from 1980s gay liberation and recent encounters between queer theory and kinship studies, the child abuse theme articulates modernity’s guarded axiom of tabooed incest and its projected contemporary predicament “after the orgy”—after the proclaimed disarticulation of religion‐motivated, kin‐pivoted, reproductivist, and gender‐rigid socialities. “Child sexual abuse” illustrates a general situation of decompensated nostalgia: an increasingly imminent loss of the child’s vital otherness is counterproductively embattled by the late modern overproduction of its banal difference, its status as “minor.” Attempts to humanize, reform, or otherwise moderate incest’s current “survivalist” and commemorative regime of subjectivation, whether by means of ethical, empirical, historical, critical, legal, or therapeutic gestures, typically trigger the latter’s panicked empiricism. Accordingly, most “critical” interventions, from feminist sociology and anthropology to critical legal studies, have largely been collusive with the backlash: rather than appraising the radical precariousness of incest’s ethogram of avoidance in the face of late modernity’s dispossessing analytics and semiotics, they tend to feed its state of ontological vertigo and consequently hyperextended, manneristic forensics.

scholarly journals "Body Language" pilot and gendered language in modern Canadian television

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Helen Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Creative Thesis ◽  
The Will ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Current Representation

In this thesis I draw on deconstruction theory and queer theory to analyze the current representation of sex, gender, and sexuality in Canadian television. Through this research I found that although Canadian television is portraying an increasing number of queer genders and sexualities, misinformation and stereotypes continue to perpetuate a one-dimensional characterization of people. This research pertains directly to my creative thesis: a pilot episode of a TV series which fraternal twins, Jed and Theodora, grow up with the ability to switch into one another's body. I dive directly into the correlation between sex and gender and the lived experience of being in a body that does not necessarily represent gender. The will both create a new gendered "construction" as well as question the need for gender identifications.

scholarly journals Sporting Gender: Women’s Footballing Bodies as Sites/Sights for the (Re) Articulation of Sex, Gender, and Desire

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne Caudwell
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender Differentiation ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Relations Of Power

Past and present participation in the game of football (soccer) by women and girls in the UK is mostly through organizational structures and legal and discursive practices that differentiate players by sex and incidentally gender. In this article, the author argues that the emphasis on sex and gender differentiation in football underpins a sporting system that is unable to move beyond sex as pregiven and the sex/gender distinction. The author engages with feminist–queer theory to illustrate how sex, gender, and desire are regulated in order to uphold social relations of power. The focus on women’s footballing bodies demonstrates how the sexed body is socially constructed to inform gender and sexuality. In addition, the author highlights resistance to the compulsory order woman-feminine-heterosexual and presents examples of rearticulations of sex-gender-desire.

scholarly journals Why Queer Diaspora?

2008 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meg Wesling
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Natural Categories ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Queer Diaspora ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

‘Why Queer Diaspora?’ intervenes at the intersection of queer theory and diaspora studies to ask how the conditions of geographical mobility produce new experiences and understandings of sexuality and gender identity. More particularly, this essay argues against a prevalent critical slippage between queer and diaspora, through which the queer is read as a mobile category that, like diaspora, disrupts the stability of fixed identity categories and thus represents a liberatory position within the material and geographical displacements of globalization. Instead, I posit that the work of ‘queering’ diaspora must be to examine the new articulations of normative and queer as they emerge in the transformations of the late twentieth century. To this end, the essay looks to two contemporary documentaries, Remote Sensing (Ursula Biemann, 2001) and Mariposas en el Andamio/Butterflies on the Scaffold (Margaret Gilpin and Luis Felipe Bernaza, 1996), as models of alternative articulations of the queer and the diasporic. Ultimately, I argue, it is a focus on the labour through which the seemingly natural categories of gender and sexuality are produced, that a queer diasporic criticism might offer.

scholarly journals A Cross-Examination of Female Masculinities and Male Femininities in Mema by Daniel Mengara

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 384
Author(s):  
Ayodele A. Allagbé ◽  
Akinola M. Allagbé
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
And Gender

<p><em>This paper attempts a critical reading of Mema (2003) written by Daniel Mengara. The study draws on insights from language and gender studies, feminism and queer theory to critically cross-examine how female masculinities and male femininities are represented in the novel. It holds the view that gendered identities are socially constructed via speech. This means that language encodes means which overtly mark masculinity or/and femininity. However, it should be noted that neither masculinity nor femininity is an exclusive characteristic of the male or the female sex/gender. In this sense, the role(s) an individual takes on in a given context confers either the masculine or the feminine profile upon him/her. This study concludes that gendered identities as portrayed in Mema are intricate, and that in most cases the portraiture of both sexes counters the expectations of African culture</em><em>.</em></p>

Japanese? Language? and Gender?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Gender Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Final Particles

This essay offers an overview of language and gender research as it unfolded in a particular ‘Place’: Japan. In the past thirty years, Japanese language and gender/sexuality relations have been characterised both domestically and globally as special, sometimes as unique, due to the existence of distinct joseigo ‘women’s language’ and danseigo ‘men’s language’. A preferential focus on the surface-segmentable forms (pronouns, sentence final particles, etc.) over discursive features and a limited focus on Standard Japanese in the early years of Japanese language and gender research has led to a tendency to view ‘the’ Japanese language as a homogeneous unity and to the reification of the three critical categories, ‘Japan’, ‘language’ and ‘gender’. In this essay, I discuss the problematic nature of the three critical terms, and suggest ways in which Japan-as-Place might profitably be renarrated as the complex place it is and Japanese language, gender and sexuality relations revisited as they operate within that complexity.

scholarly journals Language and gender: Mainstreaming and the persistence of patriarchy

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (263) ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Deborah Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Core Issues

AbstractIssues related to gender (and sexuality), largely ignored in the early development of sociolinguistics, have emerged as a cornerstone of the field. Spurred on by the feminist movement and new generations of engaged scholars addressing how language use both reveals and embeds gender inequalities, scholarship on such questions is now “mainstream” across a range of disciplines. Deborah Cameron argues that the primary focus in recent decades on social identity and performance, while path-breaking in many ways, has had the unintended consequence of drawing attention away from core issues of power and patriarchy in terms of gender relations.

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