[Gala-l] Call for Papers: Panel on "Language and Sexuality Before Stonewall"

Thu Oct 4 22:14:11 UTC 2018

***Apologies for cross-posting*** 

This is a call for papers for a panel to be held at the 26thLavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, which will take place May 2-4,2019, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (conference website: https://lavlang26.wordpress.com/).

Panel on “Language and sexuality before Stonewall”

Panel organisers: 

William L. Leap,American University Washington DC / Florida Atlantic University (wleap at fau.edu)Heiko Motschenbacher, Western Norwayof Applied Sciences Bergen / Florida Atlantic University (heim at hvl.no) 

Language and sexuality researchers have demonstrated howsexuality is discursively shaped by the way we use language to talk and writeabout sexuality-related aspects. This issue becomes even clearer when it is investigatedhow sexuality-related language use changes over time, since differences inlanguage use evolving from a comparison of historical periods tell us somethingabout how our conceptualisation of sexual phenomena has developed. It is oftenagainst the backdrop of historical (linguistic) evidence that we realise howculturally relative our modern-day understanding of sexuality is. 

This panel, therefore, invites contributions fromresearchers who have worked on the discursive construction of sexuality vialanguage in times before the Stonewall Riots – the central event of gayliberation in the Western world (Duberman 1992). The year of the event (1969)is here set as a final boundary, with work that studies sexuality-relatedlanguage use dating from any period up to this year being welcome. Potentialtopics include sexuality-related language use in various historical periods,ranging from Ancient Greek and Rome (Adams 1982), to linguistic repercussionsof the desire-identity shift in the conceptualisation of sexuality in the late19th century (Barrett 2015, Foucault 1978 [1976]), to sexuality-relatedlanguage use in the first half of the 20th century. One centralfunction of such work is to uncover the experiences of historicallymarginalised and non-normative sexualities and to reconstruct their genealogies,which have often been publicly silenced, through textual evidence.Investigations covering the time period directly before Stonewall (Leapforthcoming) could, for example, consider how linguistic practices helpedestablish the event as an “emblematic event in modern lesbian and gay history”(Duberman 1992: xvii) or highlight evidence for alternative narratives oflanguage and sexuality in U.S. history.

Work on language and sexuality before Stonewall willnormally involve some archival work and/or analysis of historical textual data.This also raises questions on what methods to use when examining language and sexualityhistorically and what kinds of theories support and emerge from the inquiry(for example, what is the queer linguistic potential of such analyses?).   

Previous work on the historical dimension of language andsexuality has, for example, shed light on sexuality-related lexicography (Adams1982, Coleman 1999, Nevala & Hintikka 2009, Simes 2005), the historicaldiscursive construction of prostitution and men engaging in same-sex practices(Hintikka & Nevala 2017, McEnery & Baker 2017a, 2017b), or thehistorical development of desire-related text types (Wyss 2008). The panelhopes to unite papers that investigate a range of sexuality-related phenomenaand that draw on various language- and text-centered types of analysis.

Please contact the panel organisers (wleap at fau.edu /heim at hvl.no) for more information or to propose a paper for this panel. Abstractsof maximally 250 words should be submitted to the organisers by November 15,2018.

Please follow the conference organisers’ guidelines forabstract submission:

Title: Do not capitalise the whole title but only the firstletter of the title (e.g. Language and homonationalism)

References: Please keep references to a minimum and do notprovide a reference list. For references in the text please follow the surnamedate convention with no comma between surname and date (e.g. Ericsson 2018)

References

Adams, James N. (1982): The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. London:Duckworth.

Barrett, Rusty (2015): Desireversus 'sexual identity' debate. In: Patricia Whelehan & Anne Bolin (eds.):The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality. London:Wiley-Blackwell, 294–296.

Coleman, Julie (1999): Love, Sex, and Marriage. A HistoricalThesaurus. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Duberman, Martin (1993): Stonewall. New York: Penguin.

Foucault, Michel (1978 [1976]): The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. AnIntroduction. New York: Penguin.

Hintikka, Marianna; Nevala, Minna(2017): Representations of prostitutes and prostitution as a metaphor innineteenth-century English newspapers. Journal of HistoricalSociolinguistics 3 (2), 219–240.

Leap, William (forthcoming): Language before Stonewall. London:Palgrave McMillan

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

McEnery, Tony; Baker, Helen (2017b):The public representation of homosexual men in seventeenth-century England – Acorpus based view. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 3 (2),197–217.

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

Simes, Gary (2005): Gay slanglexicography. A brief history and a commentary on the first two gay glossaries.Dictionaries 26, 1–159.

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

---------------------------------------------Heiko Motschenbacher [currently on research leave: Marie Curie Global Fellow, Florida Atlantic University]

Professor of English as a Second/Foreign LanguageWestern Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL)Engelskseksjonen
Inndalsveien 28
5063 Bergen, Norway
www.quinguistics.de

 General Editor: Journal of Language and Sexuality (JLS) 
http://www.benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jls 
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