[Linganth] "Historical dimensions of language & sexuality" at the 25th Lavender Languages Conference

Thu Oct 5 11:39:28 UTC 2017

Call for Papers :   Panel on “Historical Dimensions of Language and Sexuality”

Panel chair: Heiko Motschenbacher
25th Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference
Rhode Island College, Providence, RI; 20-22 April 2018

The relationship between language and sexuality has been investigated from a number of angles to date, but historical investigations still form the exception rather than the rule. However, from a queer linguistic perspective, documenting the diachronic variability of this relationship plays a key role in deconstructing contemporary sexuality-related discourses, as it highlights the historical instability even of discourses that are highly dominant today. Theoretical debates in language and sexuality studies have placed great emphasis on the desire-identity shift in the conceptualisation of sexuality (Cameron & Kulick 2003), which is claimed to have taken place at the end of the 19th century. Still, we know only little about how this conceptual shift has changed the way we use language to talk and write about sexuality.

Echoing the conference theme “Future Directions for Language and Sexuality Inquiry”, the panel on “Historical Dimensions of Language and Sexuality” seeks to collate work that empirically engages with the question how language use about sexuality has changed across time periods and invites contributions which address this issue. The historical desire-identity shift is just one significant change whose linguistic repercussions can be studied. Other potentially relevant work may address, for example, sexuality-related language use pre-dating this shift (for example, in Old English, Middle English or Early Modern English times; e.g. Calvo 2005, Frank 2003, Nevala & Hintikka 2009, Oncins-Martínez 2006), language use before (and after) Stonewall (Leap forthcoming), linguistic representation before and after a person’s coming out (e.g. Chirrey 2003, Wong 2009), the influence of changing sexuality-related legislation on language use (for example, legalisation of same-sex marriage or prostitution; e.g. Love & Baker 2015, McEnery & Baker 2017), changing textual representations of sexually defined social groups (e.g. Koller 2013), changes in sexually relevant text types (e.g. Wyss 2008), developments in academic language use about sexuality (e.g. Baker 2013), and the linguistic effects of any other sexuality-related normative historical shifts.

The historical study of language and sexuality can be approached with a range of methodologies, including corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and historical linguistics. What is important for this panel is that papers have an explicit contrastive historical dimension which highlights how sexuality-related discourses and language use have changed due to – and in support of – certain social changes.

References

Baker, Paul (2013): From gay language to normative discourse. A diachronic corpus analysis of Lavender Linguistics conference abstracts 1994-2012. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2 (2): 179–205.

Calvo, Juan José (2005): Sexual euphemism in the history of the English language. Sample probe 0. In José Santaemilia (ed.): The Language of Sex. Saying and Not Saying. València: Universitat de València, pp. 63–74.

Cameron, Deborah; Kulick, Don (2003): Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chirrey, Deborah A. (2003): ‘I hereby come out’: What sort of speech act is coming out? Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (1): 24–37.

Frank, Roberta (2003): Sex in the Dictionary of Old English. In Mark C. Amodio, O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine (eds.): Unlocking the Wordhord. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr. Toronto: University of Toronto, pp. 302–312.

Koller, Veronika (2013): Constructing (non-)normative identities in written lesbian discourse. A diachronic study. Discourse & Society 24 (5): 572–589.

Leap, William L. (forthcoming): Language ‘Before’ Stonewall: Language, Sexuality, History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Love, Robbie; Baker, Paul (2015): The hate that dare not speak its name? Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3 (1): 57–86.

McEnery, Tony; Baker, Helen (2017): Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution: Computational Linguistics and History. London: Bloomsbury.

Nevala, Minna; Hintikka, Marianna (2009): Cider-wenches and high prized pin-boxes. Bawdy terminology in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. In R. W. McConchie, Alpo Honkapohja, Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.): Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX 2). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 134–152.

Oncins-Martínez, José L. (2006): Notes on the metaphorical basis of sexual language in Early Modern English. In Vázquez González, Juan Gabriel, Montserrat Martínez Vázquez, Ron Vaz, Pilar (eds.): The Historical Linguistics-Cognitive Linguistics Interface. Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, pp. 205–224.

Wong, Andrew (2009): Coming-out stories and the ‘gay imaginary’. Sociolinguistic Studies 3 (1): 1–36.

Wyss, Eva L. (2008): From the bridal letter to online flirting. Changes in text type from the nineteenth century to the Internet era. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9 (2): 225–254.

Researchers who are interested in contributing to this panel are invited to submit an abstract to the panel organiser by 20 October 2017 (motschenbacher at em.uni-frankfurt.de<mailto:motschenbacher at em.uni-frankfurt.de>). Abstracts should be no more than 250 words (excluding references) and include the presentation title, the presenter’s name, affiliation, and email address. Abstracts must explain which sexuality-related shift is addressed, and sketch out theoretical foundations, data type, research method and basic findings. Paper presentations are 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion.

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