Language and Sexuality

• The Evolution of the study of language and sexuality

  Cameron and Kulick (2003) laid out 4 phases of perspective on language and sexuality, and how beliefs about sexuality changed from essentialising discourses to social constructionist viewpoints
• Baker - Polari - 2003


  Baker identified 5 key functions of Polari

  • allowed speakers to create specialised lexicons to describe relevant ideas
  • allowed homosexuals to hide their identity
  • acted as a bonding mechanism between speakers
  • allowed speakers to identify other members of the society
  • allowed speakers to build an alternative social reality and identity for themselves
• Hayes - Gayspeak - 1981


  Hayes believed there were 3 functions of gayspeak

  • secret code - protecting oneself against exposure of being gay (use of innuendo and female pronouns when talking of partners)
  • code enabling - way of performing multiple gay 'roles' such as camp speech or wide range of sexualised lexical terms
  • politicising - reclaiming derogatory terms for gay people
• Criticism of Hayes gayspeak

  Hayes has been criticised, particularly by Darsey, for not providing any evidence that the functions are unique to the way homosexuals speak, and not just everyone's language.

  Example - two straight students of opposite sex sharing a room and deliberately being evasive about their roommate's sex to their parents
• Zwicky - 1997

  • Zwicky suggested that gay men can differentiate themselves form heterosexual norms by employing 'The Voice' ( a set of phonetic features) to distance themselves from straight men.
  • Features include - wider range of pitch, breathy voice quality, lengthening of fricatives,affrication of plosives

  BUT/ not all gay men use any or all of these features
• Butler (1990,1999) and Lloyd (1999)


  Argued that gender is performed through 'replicating' the 'behaviours' of a gender.

  • these 'behaviours' vary between cultures and across time
  • argued that homosexuals adopt the 'behaviours' associated with a specific gender to perform their sexuality
• Barrett, 1995, African-American drag queens

  Barrett investigated the language of African-American drag queens

  • found that they used two very distinct styles of speech
  • combined a stereotypical 'white women style' with African-American vernacular english and highly sexual references
  • Barrett argued that the drag queens constructed their identity of queerness by juxtaposing linguistic styles that are socially dissimilar
• Piccolo - 2008 


  challenges the idea that listeners could identify a speaker's sexuality based on aural tasks alone

  • showed that stereotypical homosexual voice quality was not exclusively used by homosexuals
  • found that listeners were not significantly accurate in their identification of a speaker's sexuality, regardless of their own sexuality and discrediting a gaydar
• Harvey - 2000 - Camp Talk


  Harvey suggests four strategies that homosexuals use to index their sexuality

  • paradox - using incongruent concepts and meanings in tandem (eg. 'white women style' and explicit language)
  • inversion - inverting a 'norm' (eg. inverting gendered pronouns)
  • ludicrism - 'linguistic playfullness' (eg. puns)
  • parody - amplifying aspects of identity (eg. hyperbole, innuendo)

  Harvey said that homosexuals intentionally employ these strategies
• Zimman - 2013 - trans men

  Zimman studied female-to-male trans men (those using testosterone).

  • testosterone resulted in a lower vocal pitch but the stylistic traits acquired when living in a female role peristed
  • found that while they were being gay sounding their speech was not similar to the speech of non-trans, gay-sounding men
  • suggests gay speech isn't a single phonetic style
• Essentialism 


  Essentialist viewpoint on gender - gender is a real 'entity' - something with stable and static properties, something inevitable or established by nature

  • essentialist viewpoint may seem like the obvious truths to those living in a society where gender exists, but such a viewpoint makes matters black and white
• Social constructionist viewpoint on gender

  • gender is not a natural concept, rather it is constructed through a history of interaction and the choices made by individuals within a society
  • gender is not black and white (male/female binary)
  • gender is fluid
  • you perform your gender to construct your identities
  • gender is a role, a social behaviour - could be different in culture
• Zimmerman and west - 1987 - gender

  • summarised that gender is not what you are, rather what you do
  • much of society and groups that exist in it are closer to being a dimmer switch than an on and off switch
• Heteronormativity

  • compound of words hetero (different, male/female split) and normative (standard, societal norms)
  • it treats heterosexuality as the default sexuality
• ADD HETERONORMATIVITY


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