This book makes an innovative contribution to the relatively young field of Queer Linguistics. Subscribing to a poststructuralist framework, it presents a critical, deconstructionist perspective on the discursive construction of heteronormativity and gender binarism from a linguistic point of view. On the one hand, the book provides an outline of Queer approaches to issues of language, gender and sexual identity that is of interest to students and scholars new to the field. On the other hand, the empirical analyses of language data represent material that also appeals to experts in the field. The book deals with repercussions of the discursive materialisation of heteronormativity and gender binarism in various kinds of linguistic data. These include stereotypical genderlects, structural linguistic gender categories (especially from a contrastive linguistic point of view), the discursive sedimentation of female and feminine generics, linguistic constructions of the gendered body in advertising and the usage of personal reference forms to create characters in Queer Cinema. Throughout the book, readers become aware of the wounding potential that gendered linguistic forms may possess in certain contexts.

Language, Gender, and Sexuality offers a panoramic and accessible introduction to the ways in which linguistic patterns are sensitive to social categories of gender and sexuality, as well as an overview of how speakers use language to create and display gender and sexuality. This book includes discussions of trans/non-binary/genderqueer identities, embodiment, new media, and the role of language and interaction in sexual harassment, assault, and rape. Drawing on an international range of examples to illustrate key points, this book addresses the questions of: how language categorizes the gender/sexuality world in both grammar and interaction; how speakers display, create, and orient to gender, sexuality, and desire in interaction; how and why people display different ways of speaking based on their gender/sexual identities. Aimed at students with no background in linguistics or gender studies, this book is essential reading for anyone studying language, gender, and sexuality for the first time.

Identity and Desire. Models of Gay Male Identity and the Marketing of "Gay Language" in Foreign-Language Phrasebooks for Gay Men / Rusty Barrett -- Incomprehensible Language? Language, Ethnicity and Heterosexual Masculinity in a Swedish School / Tommaso M. Milani, Rickard Jonsson -- The Desire for Identity and the Identity of Desire: Language, Gender and Sexuality in the Greek Context / Costas Canakis -- Unpacking Heteronormativity. Constructing Hegemonic Masculinities in South Africa: The Discourse and Rhetoric of Heteronormativity / Russell Luyt -- On-line Constructions of Metrosexuality and Masculinities: A Membership Categorization Analysis / Matthew Hall -- A Bit too Skinny for Me: Women's Homosocial Constructions of Heterosexual Desire in Online Dating / Kristine Kohler Mortensen -- Beyond Binaries? Do Bodies Matter? Travestis? Embodiment of (Trans)Gender Identity through the Manipulation of the Brazilian Portuguese Grammatical Gender System / Rodrigo Borba, Ana Cristina Ostermann -- Butch Camp: On the Discursive Construction of a Queer Identity Position / Veronika Koller -- The Other Kind of Coming Out: Transgender People and the Coming out Narrative Genre / Lal Zimman -- Gender, Sexuality and Space. Language, Sexuality and Place: The View from Cyberspace / Brian W King -- Homophobia as Moral Geography / William L. Leap -- Normal Straight Gays: Lexical Collocations and Ideologies of Masculinity in Personal Ads of Serbian Gay Teenagers / Ksenija Bogetic

This lively and accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality.

Presenting new and exciting data from lesbian and gay conversations, narratives, representations of lesbians in film and erotic fiction, and representations of prominent gay men in newspapers, this book looks at some of the ways lesbians and gay men construct identity from among the symbolic resources available within lesbian and gay communities.

Sexed Texts explores the complex role that language plays in the construction of sexuality and gender, two concepts often discussed separately but, in practice, closely intertwined. It locates sexuality and gender as socially constructed, and examines language use in terms of socio-historical factors, linking changing conceptualisations of identity, discourse and desire to theories surrounding regulation, globalisation, new technologies, marketisation and consumerism. This book draws on a range of theoretical perspectives and published research, and takes examples from written, spoken, internet, non-verbal, visual, mediascripted and naturally occurring texts. Some of the questions addressed in the book include: how do people construct their own and other's gendered or sexual identities through the use of language? What is the relationship between language and desire? In what ways do language practices help to reflect and shape different gendered/sexed discourses as 'normal', problematic or contested? Taking a broadly deconstructionist perspective, the book progresses from examining what are seen as preferable or acceptable ways to express gender and sexuality, moving towards more 'tolerated' identities, practices and desires, and finally arriving at marginalized and tabooed forms. The book locates sexuality and gender as socially constructed, and therefore examines language use in terms of socio-historical factors, linking changing conceptualisations of identity, discourse and desire to theories surrounding regulation, globalisation, new technologies, marketisation and consumerism.

A pioneering collection of articles on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual language.