Sexuality

• Anti-language


  A way of communicating within a language that excludes outsiders
• Language of an anti-language


  Group who diverges from mainstream society
• Anti-society


  An alternative community within a wider society
• Sex


  One's anatomy/biology
• Sexuality


  One's erotic desire
• Gender


  One's social behaviour, a spectrum of masculinity to femininity
• Halliday (1975) on anti-language


  • Language of an anti-language exists within a society as an alternative
  • Word lists is the main evidence
  • Formed by re-lexicalising existing vocabulary
  • Different lexicon but same grammar as society
  • Communicate meanings that are inaccessible to a non-user
  • Subcultures with an anti-language view is part of their identity
  • Conversation is the main form of communication
  • Anti-language is a vehicle of resocialisation
  • There is continuity and exchange between language and anti-language
• Anti-language


  • Diverge from society, sense of identity
• Polari


  • Associated with British gay men
  • Mostly used in London: Piccadilly and West End
  • Used in the first ⅔ of the 20th century
  • Polari got its words from overlapping low forms of slang that were associated with travelling or stigmatised groups eg. Yiddish, Italian, Cockney
  • People learnt polari from older gay men as it was passed on
  • The word classes are mostly adjectives eg. to describe clothes, types of people and sexual acts
  • Polari was used for gay men to express themselves without getting caught
  • Polari can be classes as an anti-language to describe how stigmatised subcultures develop languages to help reconstruct reality according to their own values
  • Polari was also used to objectify and demean mainstream society
  • Polari declined after the mid 1970s because of the decriminalisation of homosexuality and after people started finding out - homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967
• Baker (2003) on 5 key functions of polari


  • Allow homosexuals to hide their identity
  • Bonding mechanism
  • Identify other speakers
  • Build an alternative society
  • Describe ideas relevant to speakers
• Most research in the 40s and 50s focused on slang and jargon, and how gay men developed new terms to refer to themselves positively and created an isolated and secret subculture to separate from mainstream society
• In the 1970s and 80s, gay slang promoted in-group solidarity used as a survival strategy in response to greater society's hostility - a form of social protest
• Halliday's comparison of anti-languages

  • Thieves Cant
  • Kolkata
  • Grypserka
• Thieves Cant


  Language between people who wander from place to place without a home or job
• Kolkata + Grypserka


  Found among Polish prisoners, established hierarchy
• William Leap (1996) - 5 uses of gay language


  • Language of desire
  • Language of risk
  • Format for performative display
  • Release from shame
  • Form of cooperative discourse
• Gregory Ward (1998) - No single linguistic feature has been currently correlated with sexual orientation
• Sexual and gendered identities are sociocultural constructs drawn from a large repertoire of social roles available to us
• Examples and reasons for anti-languages

  • Used to confuse authority
  • Terms are often playful metaphors
  • Some language was used to fool slave traders
  • Words are taken from a mainstream society and added a humorous twist
  • The internet will encourage slang and metaphorical forms of speech
  • Anti-language is the resilience of human expression in the face of oppression
  • Our language is at its richest and most powerful when driven underground
• Essentialist viewpoint


  Gender is an entity - something with stable and stative properties, established by nature. This makes matters black and white.
• Social constructionist viewpoint


  Gender is constructed through a history of interaction and the choices made by individuals. Gender is not a male/female binary, it is fluid - a performance of masculinity and femininity. You perform your gender to construct your identity. Gender is a role, a social behaviour, something that we consider masculine in one culture may be feminine in another.
• Zimmerman + West (1987) - Gender is not what you are, it's what you do.
• Hayes (1981) - 3 functions of gayspeak


  • Secret code = protecting oneself, female pronouns
  • Code enabling = performing multiple gay roles, sexualised lexical terms
  • Politicising = reclaiming derogatory terms
• Hayes' functions of gayspeak have been criticised for not providing evidence that they are unique to the way homosexuals speak.
• Zwicky (1997)


  Suggests that gay men differentiate themselves from straight men by using "the voice." This is characterised by wider pitch range, breathy voice, lengthened fricatives, and affrication of plosives. This isn't necessarily an exhibition of feminine speech styles, but being perceived as feminine.
• Butler (1990) - Gender is performed through replicating behaviours of gender.
• Barrett (1995) - Investigated African-American drag queens. Found that they combined "white woman speech" with features of Lakoff's women's language, African-American vernacular English and sexual references. They constructed their identities by juxtaposing linguistic styles which are socially dissimilar.
• Piccolo (2008) - Challenges the idea that people can identify a speaker's sexuality based on aural tasks. The stereotypical homosexual voice was not exclusively used by homosexuals, and listeners were not significantly accurate on the speaker's sexuality regardless of their own sexuality.
• Harvey (2005) - 4 strategies that homesexuals use to index their sexuality

  • Paradox = "white woman style"
  • Explicit language
  • Inversion = inverting gendered pronouns
  • Ludicrous = puns, parody, heightened femininity
• Baker (2005) - Analysed personal adverts used by homosexuals and found "straight acting" and an emphasis on stereotypical masculine activities like sport to distance from negative gay culture.
• Zimman (2013) - Studied transgender males taking testosterone. This resulted in a lower vocal pitch, but stylistic traits while living in a female role persisted. While they were still "gay-sounding", their speech was not similar to cisgender gay men. This suggests that gay speech is not a single phonetic style, but deviations from the hegemonic norm.