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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Panel Title: Queer
Linguistic Futures: Linguistic
Insurgents and Homonormativity<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Lavender
Languages XV - Rhode Island College<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">April 20-22,
2018<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">This panel is
designed to interrogate how queers (broadly defined) continue to work in concert
and challenge established forms of queer language created through
homonormativities present in various socio-cultural contexts. Duggan (2002) claimed homonormativity
demanded a retreat from the public sphere by anchoring gay culture in the
domestic. Puar, on the other hand,
describes the intersections of homonormativity and the public, national, and
international (2007). Many have built
upon these works to explore various intersections of homonormativity and
socio-cultural formations, among them: the relation to the state in the USA
(Canaday 2009); in relation to physical ability (Tyburczy 2014); in relation to
queer political resistance in Singapore (Lazar 2017); and the ways language and
normativity intersect within various linguistic contexts (Leap 2013). Though we know homonormativity continues to
shape the lives of queers, we are interested in how and in what ways ‘language
insurgents’ continue to challenge homonormative language and what the responses
to those challenges might be. We are interested in how homonormativity and
linguistic performance both work together and yet, also against one another in
ethnographically specific contexts. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">This panel seeks
to better understand ‘queer linguistic insurgents’ who challenge, reinvent, and
and re-work long-standing homonormative linguistic practices. We are especially interested in papers
addressing new media; homonormativity and its effects in the writing of
ethnography; sustained ethnographic inquiry into communities of practice whose
linguistic insurgency continues into the present; imagined futures of
linguistic insurgents.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Please send
paper abstracts (up to 300 words) to:<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Brian
Adams-Thies, PhD<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Faculty – The
University of Arizona North Valley<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:badamsth@email.arizona.edu"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">badamsth@email.arizona.edu</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">AND <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Sean
Nonnenmacher <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Linguistics Ph.D.
Student – University of Pittsburgh<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:sen40@pitt.edu"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">sen40@pitt.edu</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">
<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Current Papers:<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Sean
Nonnenmacher <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">University of
Pittsburgh – PhD Student<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Abstract: Linguistic
insurgency: queer and trans adolescent discourse in new media<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">This study
assesses the language practices and associated orders of indexical meaning
(Silverstein, 2003) of queer- and trans-identified adolescents in real-time
online chat rooms. Even with more widespread acceptance of LGBT people in the
United States today, internet sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr
remain havens for some queer- and trans-identified (Q/TI) users. Q/TI
adolescents in particular gravitate to online spaces because of their ability
to facilitate fast and easy connections with others who present virtually as
embodying similar real-world experiences. Q/TI adolescents are exploring
nuanced subjectivities and elaborating what it means to be “gay” or “lesbian”
or “trans” or “queer.” Real-time online chat rooms present spaces for open and
(at least initially) anonymous conversation about topics with significant
real-world implications: relationships (sexual/romantic and platonic), coming
out to friends and family, and activism/advocacy. Chat rooms also allow users
to express themselves creatively through the (re-)appropriation of cultural
icons in the form of memes and GIFs, whose success often depends on the
effective deployment of linguistic play (whether in form or meaning). Through
an analysis of real-time chat room discourse, I will demonstrate how queer and
trans adolescents are (1) building a new terminology to describe their
experiences that isn’t necessarily available to the broader (online and
offline) population of LGBT adults, (2) developing extensive virtual networks
calibrated to their own specific experiences (as asexual/ace or pansexual/pan,
for instance), and (3) forming layers of circulating indexical meaning around
terminology and their constructed social worlds. These processes result in
potentially ambivalent attitudes by LGBT adults toward Q/TI adolescents, who
might be considered linguistic insurgents of historically defined queer
(including gay and lesbian) and trans identities.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Brian
Adams-Thies, PhD<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Faculty, The
University of Arizona – North Valley<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Abstract: No Longer the Solitary Vice: Bators, Bonding,
and Homonormativity<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">This research
addresses the rise of a community of men who self-identify as ‘bators’. These men participate in semiotic communities
where masturbation becomes socially meaningful in new manners. Bating and bators as sexual subjectivites are
a fairly recent phenomenon. These
subjectivities, and the cultural practices attendant, have been fomented
through the use of online communications.
Masturbation, once thought to be a shameful and debilitating practice,
is reconfigured as a source of brotherhood, male bonding, and the building of
community. Bators can be gay, straight,
bisexual, and solosexuals. Bators
practice of masturbating alone and with other men bears no necessary connection
to the ways they self-identify their own sexuality. For instance, a straight-identified bator can
masturbate with other men, including touching other men, and not lose their
claim to heterosexuality. Bators
practice masturbation alone, in couples, and in groups. Many of these interactions are video recorded
and uploaded to various websites including ‘<a href="http://bateworld.com">bateworld.com</a>’. In this piece, I
look closely at how ‘bators’ speak to one another in self-produced masturbation
videos posted to <a href="http://bateworld.com">bateworld.com</a>.; and how the participants in the videos think
about their own language use. Analyzing speech interaction and associated
discourse between masturbators indicates three important themes for this group
of men: 1) masturbating and talking
about masturbating with other men is a form of reclaiming a childhood
culturally configured as sexless; 2) a resistance to stable sexual identities
where if one participates in homosexual acts then one is therefore, always a homosexual;
3) a new form of male-bonding where the masturbating the penis, talking about
masturbating the penis, and penis-worship coalesce to produce community,
brotherhood, and a universal experience of maleness.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><span> </span></span></p>
<b style="font-family:garamond,serif">Brian Adams-Thies, PhD</b><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="garamond, serif"><b><a href="mailto:brianat73@gmail.com" target="_blank">brianat73@gmail.com</a></b></font></div><div><font face="garamond, serif"><b>Facebook: Brian.Adams-Thies</b></font></div></div></div></div></div>
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