Language, gender and sexuality in 2019

interrogating normativities in the field

Authors

  • Jeremy Calder University of Colorado Boulder

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.18634

Keywords:

normativity, agency, intersectionality, embodiment, gender, queer, transgender, nonbinary

Abstract

In recent years, the study of language, gender and sexuality has become increasingly global, multiracial, intersectional, crosslinguistic and queer- and trans-inclusive. The year 2019 continued this trajectory with a wave of research interrogating normativities, both among the speakers under analysis and among the researchers doing the analysing. While the analysis of linguistic practice has allowed language and gender scholars to probe the ways speakers normatively construct and ideologise the prototypical man, woman, gay person and transgender individual, theoretical and methodological advances in 2019 have also invited scholars to interrogate what is considered the prototypical study of language and gender. Interrogating normativities among both speakers and researchers has allowed for theoretical and methodological advances that paint a fuller picture of the multifaceted and context-specific relationship between language, identity and speaker agency.

Author Biography

  • Jeremy Calder, University of Colorado Boulder

    Jeremy Calder is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their work explores the role of phonetic variation in the articulation of identity in communities of queer/trans individuals and people of colour.

References

Adams-Thies, Brian (2019) Hooking up mildly or wildly: linguistic interventions for the negotiation of gay male desires. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(1): 108–131. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17002.ada

Ahearn, Laura (2001) Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30(1): 109–137. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.109

Anderson, Clare (2019) Discourses of Ageing and Gender: The Impact of Public and Private Voices on the Identity of Ageing Women. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96740-0

Bailey, Aimee (2019) ‘Girl-on-girl culture’: constructing normative identities in a corpus of sex advice for queer women. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(2): 195–220. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.18013.bai

Barrett, Rusty (2019) Multiple forms of masculinity in gay male subcultures. In Lucas Gottzén, Ulf Mellström and Tamara Shefer (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315165165-24

Bodó, Csanád, Szabó, Gergely and Turai, Ráhel Katalin (2019) Voices of masculinity: men’s talk in Hungarian university dormitories. Discourse & Society 30(4): 339–358. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519837395

Borba, Rodrigo (2019a) Gendered politics of enmity: language ideologies and social polarization in Brazil. Gender and Language 13(4): 423–448. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.38416

Borba, Rodrigo (2019b) The interactional making of a ‘true transsexual’: language and (dis)identification in trans-specific healthcare. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 256: 21–55. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-2011

Borba, Rodrigo and Milani, Tommaso M. (2019) Colonial intertexts: discourses, bodies and stranger fetishism in the Brazilian media. Discourse, Context & Media 30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.01.003

Bradley, Evan, Salkind, Julia, Moore, Ally and Teitsort, Sofi (2019) Singular ‘they’ and novel pronouns: gender-neutral, non-binary, or both? Paper presented at Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v4i1.4542

Bucholtz, Mary and Hall, Kira (2016) Embodied sociolinguistics. In Nikolas Coupland (ed) Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates 173–197. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107449787.009

Burnett, Heather and Bonami, Oliver (2019) Linguistic prescription, ideological structure, and the actuation of linguistic changes: grammatical gender in French parliamentary debates. Language in Society 48(1): 65–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404518001161

Burnett, Scott (2019) Constructing white autochthony in South Africa’s ‘soul country’: intersections of race and land. Discourse, Context & Media 30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.12.002

Calder, Jeremy (2019a) From sissy to sickening: the indexical landscape of /s/ in SoMa, San Francisco. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(3): 332–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12218

Calder, Jeremy (2019b) The fierceness of fronted /s/: linguistic rhematization through visual transformation. Language in Society 48(1): 31–64. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740451800115X

Calder, Jeremy and King, Sharese (2019) Intersections between race, place, and gender in the production of /s/. Paper presented at United Kingdom Language Variation and Change, London, UK.

Calder, Jeremy and Steele, Ariana (2019) Gender in sociolinguistic variation beyond the binary. Paper presented at Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New York, NY.

Cameron, Deborah (1997) Performing gender identity: young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity. In Sally Johnson and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (eds) Language and Masculinity 47–64. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cameron, Deborah (2019) Feminism: A Brief Introduction to the Ideas, Debates, and Politics of the Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226620763.001.0001

Candelas de la Ossa, Abigaël (2019) Exceptionalizing intersectionality: a corpus study of implied readership in guidance for survivors of domestic abuse. Gender and Language 13(2): 224–250. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.35094

Carr, E. Summerson and Lempert, Michael (2016) Scale: discourse and dimensions of social life. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520965430

Carr, Georgia and Bednarek, Monika (2019) Beyond risk and safety?: identifying shifts in sex education advice targeted at young women. Discourse & Society 30(3): 225–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519828029

Cashman, Holly R. (2019) What Phoenix’s jotería is saying: identity, normativity, resistance. Language in Society 48(4): 519–539. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000411

Clifford, Lily (2019) Late acquisition of gendered phonetics: voice feminization in transgender women. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, Eugene, OR.

Coffey-Glover, Laura (2019) Men in Women’s Worlds: Constructions of Masculinity in Women’s Magazines. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57555-5

Coimbra-Gomes, Elvis and Motschenbacher, Heiko (2019) Language, normativity, and sexual orientation obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD): A corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Language in Society 48(4): 565–584. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000423

Conrod, Kirby (2019) Nonbinary singular they in apparent time. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, Eugene, OR.

Cruz, Emiliana (2019) Swearing and cursing in San Juan Quiahije Chatino. Journal of Lingusitic Anthropology 29(2): 181–187. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12243

Dawson, Shelley (2019) ‘Bitch I’m back, by popular demand’: agency and structure in a study abroad setting. Gender and Language 13(4): 449–468. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.39399

Diabah, Grace (2019) The representation of women in Ghanaian radio commercials: sustaining or challenging gender stereotypes? Language in Society 48(2): 261–283. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404518001343

D’Onofrio, Annette, Pratt, Teresa and Van Hofwegen, Janneke (2019) Compression in the California Vowel Shift: tracking generational sound change in California’s Central Valley. Language Variation and Change 31(2): 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394519000085

Eckert, Penelope (2019) The limits of meaning: social indexicality, variation, and the cline of interiority. Language 95(4): 751–776. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2019.0072

Ehrlich, Susan (2019) ‘Well, I saw the picture’: semiotic ideologies and the unsettling of normative conceptions of female sexuality in the Steubenville rape trial. Gender and Language 13(2): 251–269. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.35019

Esposito, Lewis (2019) Linking gender, sexuality, and affect: evidence from post-tonic lengthening. Paper presented at Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New York, NY.

Fabricio, Branca Falabella (2019) Discourse circulation in news coverage of the Zika virus outbreak: colonial geopolitics, biomediatization, and affect. Discourse, Context & Media 30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.01.002

Fabricio, Branca Falabella and Moita-Lopes, Luiz Paulo (2019) Transidiomaticity and transperformances in Brazilian queer rap: toward an abject aesthetics. Gragoatá 24(48): 136–159. https://doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.v24i48.33623

Fine, Julia (2019) Performing graysexuality: a segmental and prosodic analysis of three voices employed in the construction of the graysexual self. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.18003.coo

Glapka, Ewa (2019) Critical affect studies: on applying discourse analysis in research on affect, body and power. Discourse & Society 30(6): 600–621. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519870039

Gonçalves, Kellie (2019) ‘What are you doing here, I thought you had a kid now?’: the stigmatization of working mothers in academia – a critical self-reflective essay on gender, motherhood, and the neoliberal academy. Gender and Language 13(4): 469–487. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.37573

Gonçalves de Freitas, Lucia and Bastos, Liliana Cabral (2019) Sexual abuse in proceedings of gender-based violence in the Brazilian judicial system. Gender and Language 13(2): 153–173. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.35608

Gronert, Nona Maria and Raclaw, Joshua (2019) Contesting the terms of consent: how university students (dis)align with institutional policy on sexual consent. Gender and Language 13(3): 291–313. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.34939

Hall, Kira (2019) Middle class timelines: ethnic humor and sexual modernity in Delhi. Language in Society 48(4): 491–517. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000435

Hall, Kira, Levon, Erez and Milani, Tommaso M. (2019) Special issue: Navigating normativities: gender and sexuality in text and talk. Language in Society 48(4). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000447

Hazenberg, Evan (2012) Language and identity practice: a sociolinguistic study of gender in Ottawa, Ontario. MA thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Hazenberg, Evan (2019) Inferring social meaning from language variation: liminality and gender. Paper presented at United Kingdom Language Variation and Change, London, UK.

Heffernan, Kevin (2010) Mumbling is macho: phonetic distinctiveness in the speech of American radio DJs. American Speech 85: 67–90. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2010-003

Hiramoto, Mie (2019) ‘Her soul is Japanese’: Naomi Osaka, mediatization, and intersectionality. Discourse, Context & Media 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100351

Hiramoto, Mie and Pua, Phoebe (2019) Racializing heterosexuality: non-normativity and East Asian characters in James Bond films. Language in Society 48(4): 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000381

Hunt, Sally and Jaworska, Sylvia (2019) Intersections of nationality, gender, race and crime in news reporting: the case of Oscar Pistorius – Olympian and murderer. Discourse, Context & Media 30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100299

Hunter, Sarah C., Riggs, Damien W. and Feo, Rebecca (2019) Australian news media constructions and categorisations of primary caregiving fathers. Discourse & Society 30(6): 622–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519870045

Ilbury, Christian (2019) ‘Sassy Queens’: stylistic orthographic variation on Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24(2): 245–264. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12366

Jaworski, Adam (2019) Intersectionality as family ideology and (banal) nationalism. Discourse, Context & Media 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100350

Jódar-Sánchez, José Antonio (2019) Sexuality in Goytisolo’s Antagonía: fluidity, subversion, and conservatism. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(1): 82–107. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.18011.jod

Jones, Lucy (2019a) Discourses of transnormativity in vloggers’ identity construction. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 256: 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-2013

Jones, Lucy (2019b) ‘The fact they knew before I did upset me most’: essentialism and normativity in lesbian and gay youths’ coming out stories. Sexualities 23(4): 497–515. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460719830343

Kiesling, Scott (2005) Homosocial desire in men’s talk: balancing and re-creating cultural discourses of masculinity. Language in Society 34(5): 695–726. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404505050268

Kiesling, Scott (2019) Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351042420

King, Brian (2019) Language and embodied sexuality. In Kira Hall and Rusty Barrett (eds) Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212926.013.30

Kjaran, Jón Ingvar and Sauntson, Helen (2019) Schools as Queer Transformative Spaces: Global Narratives on Sexualities and Gender. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351028820

Kockelman, Paul (2017) Semiotic agency. In N.J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman (eds) Distributed Agency 25–38. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190457204.003.0004

Køhler Mortensen, Kristine and Maegaard, Marie (2019) Meeting the Greenlandic people – mediated intersections of colonial power, race and sexuality. Discourse, Context & Media 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100348

Køhler Mortensen, Kristine, Maegaard, Marie and Milani, Tommaso M. (2019) Special issue: Mediatizing intersectionality. Discourse, Context & Media 30 & 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100349

Lai, Wei (2019) Visual cues facilitate talker-specific perceptual adaptation within gender. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, Eugene, OR.

Lane, Nikki (2019) The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)politics of Respectability. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23319-8

Levon, Erez and Gafter, Roey (2019) ‘This is not Europe’: sexuality, ethnicity and the (re)enactment of Israeli authenticity. Discourse, Context & Media 30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.12.003

Litosseliti, Lia, Gil, Rosalind and Favaro, Laura Garcia (2019) Postfeminism as a critical tool for gender and language study. Gender and Language 13(1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.34599

Liu, Yuanyuan and Shen, Yifan (2019) New Women identity constructed in language learning narratives in early-twentieth-century China. Gender and Language 13(1): 48–71. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.31138

McLoughlin, Linda (2019) ‘The Nirbhaya who lived’: conflicting discourses and shifting ideologies in Femina’s linguistic representations of rape victims and their perpetrators. Gender and Language 13(2): 202–223. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.34994

Meyerhoff, Miriam and Ehrlich, Susan (2019) Language, gender, and sexuality. Annual Review of Linguistics 5: 455–475. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-052418-094326

Michael, Ryan J. (2019) Communicating trans identity: toward an understanding of the selection and significance of gender identity-based terminology. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(2): 221–241. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.19001.rya

Milani, Tommaso M. and Levon, Erez (2019) Israel as homotopia: language, space, and vicious belonging. Language in Society 48(4): 607–628. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000356

miles-hercules, deandre and Zimman, Lal (2019) Normativity in normalization: methodological challenges in the (automated) analysis of vowels among non-

binary speakers. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, Eugene, OR.

Motschenbacher, Heiko (2019) Discursive shifts associated with coming out: a corpus-based analysis of news reports about Ricky Martin. Journal of Sociolinguistics 23(3): 284–302. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12343

Namatende-Sakwa, Lydia (2019) ‘Gendering’ the text through implicit citations of gendered discourses: the construction of gender and teacher talk around children’s fiction. Gender and Language 13(1): 72–93. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.34847

Osatananda, Varisa and Gadavanij, Savitri (2019) Materializing gay identity: an analysis of gay-sounding speech in Thai. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(1): 30–52. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17013.osa

Parnell-Mooney, James (2019) Tran/s/gender: assessing the effects of the social construction of gender on speech: a focus on transgender /s/ realisations. MA Thesis, University of Glasgow.

Pierrehumbert, Janet B., Bent, Tessa, Munson, Benjamin, Bradlow, Ann R. and Bailey, Michael J. (2004) The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116(4): 1905–1908. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1788729

Pharao, Nicolai (2019) What’s the /t/?: comparing coronals in the speech of Danish drag queens. Paper presented at United Kingdom Language Variation and Change, London, UK.

Podesva, Robert and Van Hofwegen, Janneke (2016) /s/exuality in smalltown California: gender normativity and the acoustic realization of /s/. In Erez Levon and Ronald Beline Mendes (eds) Language, Sexuality, and Power 168–188. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210366.003.0009

Pratt, Teresa (2019) Embodying ‘tech’: articulatory setting, phonetic variation, and social meaning. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24(3): 328–349. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12369

Pratt, Teresa and D’Onofrio, Annette (2017) Jaw setting and the California Vowel Shift in parodic performance. Language in Society 46(3): 283–312. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000227

Raymond, Chase Wesley (2019) Category accounts: identity and normativity in sequences of action. Language in Society 48(4): 585–606. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519000368

Ren, Yi (2019) Masculinity, fatherhood, and beyond: potential social indices behind Osaka dialect. MA thesis, University of Oregon.

Rosen, Alessandra (2019) Balance, yoga, neoliberalism. Signs and Society 7(3): 289–313. https://doi.org/10.1086/703088

Ross, Scott (2019) Being real on fake Instagram: likes, images, and media ideologies of value. Journal of Lingusitic Anthropology 29(3): 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12224

Roux, Shanleigh and Peck, Amiena (2019) The commodification of women’s empowerment: the case of Vagina Varsity. Discourse, Context & Media 32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100343

Rowlett, Benedict J. L. (2019) ‘The lines are blurred’: same-sex relationships and the local practice of sponsorship in Cambodia. Gender and Language 13(1): 23–47. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.32942

Russell, Eric Louis (2019) Les Hommen: the language of reactionary masculinity. Gender and Language 13(1): 94–121. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.31061

Sauntson, Helen (2019) Researching Language, Gender, and Sexuality: A Student Guide. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315205540

Schmid, Maxwell and Bradley, Evan (2019) Vocal pitch and intonation characteristics of those who are gender non-binary. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of Phonetic Sciences: 2685–2689.

Shrikant, Natasha and Marshall, Dana (2019) ‘I went to debutante school’: using Southern femininity as a resource to negotiate authority in a Texan workplace interaction. Gender and Language 13(3): 396–417. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.36393

Steele, Ariana (2019) Non-binary speech, race, and non-normative gender: sociolinguistic style beyond the binary. MA thesis, Ohio State University.

SturtzSreetharan, Cindi L., Agostini, Gina, Brewis, Alexandra A. and Wutich, Amber (2019) Fat talk: a citizen sociolinguistic approach. Journal of Sociolinguistics 23(3): 263–283. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12342

Sulpizio, Simone, Fasoli, Fabio, Antonio, Raquel, Eyssel, Friederike, Paladino, Maria Paola and Diehl, Charlotte (2019) Auditory gaydar: perception of sexual orientation based on female voice. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919828201

Talbot, Mary (2019) Language and Gender, 3rd edition. Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons.

Tennent, Emma and Weatherall, Ann (2019) Disclosing violence in calls for help. Gender and Language 13(2): 270–288. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.35106

Published

2020-12-18

Issue

Section

Language, Gender and Sexuality in Review

How to Cite

Calder, J. (2020). Language, gender and sexuality in 2019: interrogating normativities in the field. Gender and Language, 14(4), 429-454. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.18634