Resignifications: Linguistic Resistance and Queer Expressions of Latinidad

The resignification of language practices among LGBTQIA+ communities has seen the reclamation of terms like queer, dyke, and faggot enter mainstream discourse. Marginalized communities who view the reclamation of language as a form of empowerment also have a long history of resignifying certain forms of pejorative language to revalorize meanings along ethnic and racial lines. This chapter provides an overview of contributions from queer theory, queer studies, and queer linguistics that center the reclamation of historically pejorative terms used for queer communities, but situates these queer resignifications within the context of linguistic reclamations enacted around ethnic and racial affiliations. The chapter specifically focuses on the reclamation of the Spanish terms joto/a/x and jotería by Latinx communities in the United States—terms that have historically been used to denigrate men performing traits associated with femininity—to illustrate how linguistic reclamation provides an avenue for resistance by creating and maintaining new worlds of possibility.

Bisexuality: Narrating Sexual Fluidity

This chapter attends to bisexuality in places where it is not specifically named, such as in narratives of sexual fluidity over the lifespan. Building on a history of bisexual research addressing sexual desires, practices, and identities alongside biphobia, the chapter proposes a life narrative framework for the sociolinguistic examination of bisexuality that approaches sexual desires as both signs and effects. An analysis of a personal biography describing the process of lesbian self-realization at the end of state socialism in Hungary highlights the impact of compulsory heterosexuality on women’s lives, exposing the effects of gender hierarchy and its associated economics on the interpretation and realization of same-sex desire. However, the analysis also reveals continuities between the previous socialist culture of silence regarding homosexuality and the current capitalist culture of sexual objectification, which upholds heterosexuality by encouraging “performative bisexuality.” The chapter stresses the importance of attending to situated hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality in the sociolinguistic study of bisexuality.

Populist Discourse and Desire for Social Justice

This chapter reviews research on populism by describing the role of discourse in articulating a “we” as an empty signifier. The emergence of “gender-ideology” discourse is presented as key to contemporary forms of exclusionary populism, as demonstrated in a case study of Hungary’s recent modification of the national register to prevent transgender individuals from retroactively changing their “sex at birth” status. The chapter argues that the discrediting of gender as an ideology mobilizes not only exclusionary right-wing populism but also feminisms asserting binary distinctions of a biologized sex and gender. While the government defends “us, the Hungarian people” against a “gender” that is not material but pure propaganda, self-identified progressive feminists dismiss trans-politics for focusing on identity instead of political economy. Both groups thus use “gender ideology” to mobilize an exclusionary rhetoric of hate. The chapter proposes that “us, the people” may instead be used to motivate a radical left populism organized around a “feminist people” of flexible inclusivity.

At the Crossroads of Language, Race, and Sexuality

This chapter explores how researchers have examined race and sexuality as mutually implicated dimensions of language use and interpretation. While past descriptions of language have inadvertently conflated these dimensions by foregrounding certain speakers and erasing others, recent research has decentered the privileged gaze of whiteness and heterosexuality by examining the language of racially and sexually marginalized communities and by exploring the semiotic mapping of hierarchies of race onto those of sexuality. The chapter analyzes interactions among Korean American girls who highlight the sexual value of locally racialized body parts, illustrating how their acts of intersectional highlighting allow them to contest the sexual devaluation of Korean bodies while reproducing the very ideologies they challenge. Researchers are encouraged to reflexively consider their own strategies of intersectional highlighting by asking what ends are served—and not served—when making intersectional facts visible in their analyses.

Animacy as a Sexual Device

This chapter explores the relationships between gender and sexuality and the linguistic concept of animacy. Opening with an overview of linguistic animacy, it moves into a discussion of its import for discussions of forms of sociopolitical power such as colonialism, and their relationship to dehumanization as well as agency. It explores the potentiality of animacy for revisory approaches to humanity, turning to the use of animacy in the particular case of the pronominal “it” in considerations of linguistic gender and transnational trans identity. The chapter concludes with a reiteration of the ways animacy is useful as a sexual device.

From “Gay Lisp” to “Fierce Queen”: The Sociophonetics of Sexuality’s Most Iconic Variable

The sound of the queer voice has captured the intrigue of the popular and sociolinguistic imagination, spurring a wave of research investigating what makes someone “sound gay.” This chapter follows the trajectory of the sociophonetics of LGBTQ+ speakers, focusing on what is perhaps the most robustly studied phonetic variable in queer linguistics: the /s/ sound. The chapter explores how a group of non-normative drag queens in San Francisco use acoustic dimensions of /s/ to project radical queerness, illustrating how this community’s practices bear on greater conversations in sociolinguistics involving the connection between phonetic variation and the articulation of identity.

Trash: Language, Sexuality, and Social Class

This chapter considers four linguistic areas related to the intersection of sexuality and social class. The first is the link among sexual promiscuity, stereotypes of working-class sexuality, and ideologies of “vulgar” or “obscene” language. The second area considers the role of class in patterns of language change and changes in sexual normativity, both of which show movement from the middle class outward. The third area considered is the relationship between stereotypes of social class and LGBTQ+ identities, where negative portrayals of the working class remain constant across contrasting views of LGBTQ+ identities. The final area considered is the way in which language related to sexuality reproduces social forms of class inequality, particularly though diminishing the potential for sexual pleasure among the working class.

Gay (White) Male Speech and the E(race)sure of Identity

Although a notable body of work has emerged describing gay male speech (GMS), its overlap with African American language (AAL) remains comparatively understudied. This chapter explores the assumption of whiteness that has informed research on gay identity and precluded intersectional considerations in sociolinguistic research. Examining the importance of racial identity, particularly Blackness, to the construction of gay identity in the United States, the chapter investigates the treatment of GMS as white by default, with the voices of gay men of color considered additive. The desire vs. identity debate in language and sexuality studies contributed to an understanding of gay identity as community-based practice, thereby laying a necessary framework for the study of GMS. However, this framework led to a virtually exclusive focus on white men’s language use. Although efforts to bring a community-based understanding to gay identity have been groundbreaking, the lack of consideration of intersectionality has erased contributions to GMS from racially based language varieties, such as AAL.

Sexual Harassment, Speech Acts, and Public Secrets in U.S. Higher Education

This chapter draws on data from U.S. higher education to analyze the ways that the language used to describe sexual harassment secures its continued power. Focusing on two features viewed as definitional to sexual harassment, frequency and severity, the discussion analyzes three sets of online conversations about the disclosure of abuse in academia (a series of tweets, survey responses, and posts on a philosophy blog) from grammatical, pragmatic, and semiotic perspectives. Unlike most prior research, this chapter focuses on the language of victims rather than the intentions of harassers. The results suggest that speech act theory is unable to account fully for sexual harassment without accepting the relevance of perlocutionary effects. Using Gal and Irvine’s (2019) model of axes of differentiation, the chapter demonstrates how opposing discursive representations (of professors, sexual harassers, victims, and accusers) create a discursive space in which it becomes difficult for victims to report their harassers.

Neoliberal Pleasure: Intimate Talk about Female Sexual Experience

Sociolinguists have investigated the language of sexual violence and consent at length, but sexual pleasure remains largely overlooked. Sexual pleasure has often been forgotten in the battle against rape culture, but this discussion centers it. First, relevant concepts from the sociolinguistic scholarship are positioned alongside queer feminist conceptions of sexual pleasure. The discussion then turns to New Zealand case studies of conversations in intimate friendships about sexual pleasure to demonstrate how navigating conflicting discourses transforms sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. A critical response is offered in a consideration of pleasure activism and how further sociolinguistic attention can harness the political power of pleasure. Sexual pleasure is a significant contributor to advancing sexual liberation, and sociolinguistic efforts to understand these complexities are important. Without paying attention to how sexual experiences are made sense of in intimate conversations, there is a risk of ensnaring pleasure in traps of faux empowerment discourse and neoliberal constraints.