17.382, Review: Discourse/Socioling/Corpus Ling: Baker (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-382. Sat Feb 04 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.382, Review: Discourse/Socioling/Corpus Ling: Baker (2005)

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1)
Date: 31-Jan-2006
From: Claire Maree < maree at tsuda.ac.jp >
Subject: Public Discourses of Gay Men 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 03:57:21
From: Claire Maree < maree at tsuda.ac.jp >
Subject: Public Discourses of Gay Men 
 

AUTHOR: Baker, Paul
TITLE: Public Discourses of Gay Men
SERIES: Routledge Advances in Corpus Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Routledge, Taylor and Francis
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2150.html

Claire Maree, Full-time Lecturer, Tsuda College

OVERVIEW

Bringing together sociolinguistics with corpus linguistics, Public 
Discourses of Gay Men examines the construction of gay male 
identities in the public domain. Taking data from parliamentary 
records, tabloid newspapers, television sitcoms, erotic internet texts 
and safer-sex pamphlets, Baker sets out to discuss the ways that 
discourses of gay men interact and effect each other. The book also 
looks at how this in turn interacts with the construction of identity in 
contemporary English-speaking societies.

OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS

Baker outlines the main focus of his research and methods in his first 
chapter. The three issues to be addressed are: 
i) the way that ''language is used in the public domain to construct 
discourses of male homosexuality,'' the connotations of those 
discourse and how they are ''connected to concepts of gender, sexual 
behavior and sexual desire'' 
ii) the ways in which ''discourse surrounding homosexuality differ 
depending on the authors of the texts and their intended audiences,'' 
and 
iii) how those ''discourse exist in relation to each other'' either 
as ''dominant of contested'' (p. 21). 
To attend to these questions, Baker takes texts from debates in the 
House of Lords (chapter 2), tabloid newspapers (chapter 3), a 
television sitcom script (chapter 4), erotic narratives (chapter 5), 
personal advertisements (chapter 6) and sexual health documentation 
(chapter 6). Frequency counts, keyword analysis, collocations, 
semantic preference (discourse prosody) and linguistic annotation of 
the texts are used in the analysis. 

Baker's first analysis is of three transcripts from the House of Lords 
debates in to the age of consent (1998, 1999, 2000). All utterances in 
the electronic transcripts were annotated according to the position of 
the speaker: for, against and undecided. A keyword comparison, 
using WordSmith Tools, of pro-reformers and anti-reformers 
utterances identifies 41 keywords. Baker's analysis shows that pro-
reformers organise keywords convention, rights and human into a 
discourse of tolerance whilst anti-reformers reference homosexuality 
as an act causing danger and ruin. Overall, the language of the anti-
reformers portrays homosexuality as behaviour, not an identity 
position, and posits anal sex as the prototypical act of homosexuality, 
an act that is both dangerous and criminal. Furthermore, anti-
reformers position anal sex as ruinous to both boys and girls, a claim 
that supports the position that opposition to anal sex is not 
homophobic. However, in contradiction to this, anti-reform discourse 
also claims boys are at more risk than girls, and that lowering the age 
of consent will lead to demands for further rights for gay people. Pro-
reformers, however, ''argued for tolerance and equality, or warned 
that the government would be forced to make the change in order to 
fall in line with the European human rights conventions'' (pp. 57-58).

Chapter three contains analysis of two tabloids (Daily Mail and Mirror, 
January 1, 2001 - December 31, 2002) that show a slightly different 
discourse. Analysis of articles containing at least one use of the words 
gay, gays, homosexual and homosexuals showed that, as with the pro-
reformers discourse discussed in chapter 2, the word used most often 
to refer to male homosexuality is gay. However, a study of collocations 
and discourse prosodies reveals a positioning of homosexuality 
as ''one of many problematic minority groups.'' Furthermore, 
collocations show that gay relationships are portrayed as transitory 
(i.e. gay lovers). As with the debates described in chapter 2, the 
tabloids frame homosexuality as behaviour (homosexual act(s), 
activity/activities, behavior, encounters, tendencies). Homosexuality is 
linked to words related to crime (gay/homosexual rape) and a 
discourse of shame and secrecy (gay slurs, closet gay) whereby those 
who are open about being gay are shamelessly so. Gay men are 
portrayed are sexually obsessed (gay predator), and as those who do 
not operate as individuals, but as a ''unified group'' (p.83) 
(gay/homosexual community) to promote homosexuality to children 
(gay/homosexual propaganda) and gain political power via 
campaigning for rights (gay/homosexual lobby(s)).  In his final 
analysis, Baker illustrates how the Daily Mail focuses on the 
consequences of equality and the effect of so-called gay propaganda 
on minors, whereas the Mirror contributes to a discourse of shame 
and secrecy regarding homosexuality. 

Chapter 4 deals with scripts from the USA hit sitcom Will and Grace. 
Using scripts from 107 episodes, Baker analyses words relating to sex 
and sexuality, the speech of the two central gay characters (the 
leading character Will and his friend Jack) and two central straight 
female characters (leading character Grace and her employee Karen). 
First, a word frequency analysis of those terms related to sex and 
sexuality show that, contrary to the discourse surrounding the age of 
consent debates in the UK, here homosexuality is understood as an 
identity. Baker identifies a ''be yourself'' moral discourse where coming 
out and being yourself is preferred over all else.

A comparison of the speech of the two central gay characters, Will 
and Jack, reveals that Will's speech shows urban sophistication and is 
more other-orientated. Jack, in contrast, employs a camp (Harvey 
2000) style that shows him to be more ''self-assured, self-absorbed 
(and) playful'' (p. 115). Analysis of key semantic and grammatical 
categories reveals that Grace's speech constructs her as ''needy'' 
whereas Karen employs a camp style of speech. Baker notes a 
difference between Jack and Karen's camp style, namely that Karen's 
use of hyperbole, rhetorical triplets, commands and insults ''is witch-
like or queeny'' (p. 125). Baker posits Karen's performance as that of 
a drag queen and suggests that she is ''doubly in drag.'' He notes that 
perhaps ''(i)n order for a drag queen to be accepted by contemporary 
mainstream audiences (and advertisers) she must be played by a 
women'' (p.130). Baker concludes that although Will and Grace is the 
first long running sitcom to feature openly gay male characters, 
consideration of the use of homophobic statements in the scripts 
illustrates it remains '''inherently conservative''' by enlarging the idea of 
the nuclear family to include gay men only as long as their sex lives do 
not come to the forefront of the comedy itself.

Chapter 5 moves to a slightly different and shorter text form: personal 
advertisements from Gay Times magazine over four nine year periods 
(1973, 1982, 1991, 2000; four). Baker seeks to ''identify the ways 
advertisers negotiated gender identities, both for themselves and the 
sort of person they desire'' (p. 134) and in particular the negotiation of 
homosexuality and masculinity. He considers that gay male personal 
ads ''function as a possible site where desires and fantasies 
surrounding masculinity are fore-grounded, negotiated and contested'' 
(p.134). An overall analysis of the texts showed that 60% of advertisers 
used identity based nouns to describe both themselves and the type 
of person they were seeking: guy, male, man. A comparison of the 
adjectives referring to masculinity over the four periods revealed that 
there was a higher frequency of such terms in 1991 than in other 
periods. The chapter closes with a discussion of why frequency 
peaked that way, and why ''definition of gender at this time converged 
upon straight-acting and related collocates'' (p.151). To answer this 
question, Baker turns to mainstream portrayals of gay men, and points 
to discourses of AIDS as a ''gay disease'' and the increase in images 
of male heterosexuality in media and advertising. Baker suggests that 
perhaps ''as male homosexuality became more stigmatised and male 
heterosexuality became eroticised, it is possible that gay men felt the 
need to distance themselves from appearing obviously 'gay''' (p.152).

Chapter 6 moves the analysis to erotic narratives. Here, Baker 
compares lesbian and gay male narratives taken from an internet 
archive of amateur narratives classified under the 'adult-friends' sub-
category. Differences between lesbian and gay narratives were 
collated in order to attend to questions regarding the language used 
to construct ''ideal sexual partners'', ''discourse of sexuality'' 
and ''sexually arousing'' language (p. 155). Through keyword analysis, 
Baker identifies a common discourse that he labels ''compulsory 
homosexuality'' whereby characters in both categories of narrative do 
not identify as gay or lesbian, but find the same-sex sex they 
experience in the stories as more fulfilling than previous heterosexual 
sex (p.162). Supporting this is the portrayal of men as hyper-
masculine and women as hyper-feminine. 

Keywords for the gay narratives include sweat, beer and towel and for 
the lesbian wine, glass and tea. Furthermore, keywords relating to the 
act of sex itself portray gay men as ''emotionless machines'' 
(throbbing, pumped/pumping) and male sex as work or action 
(work/ed, job). In contrast, for lesbian women are ''love and emotions 
are strong elements of an erotic narrative'' (love) and ''lesbian love 
occurs after a long build-up of desire for a person'' (been) (p.168). In 
terms of physicality, through a comparison of keywords Baker's 
analysis shows that in the erotic texts, lesbian are portrayed as gentle 
and tender (kiss/kissed, soft) whereas in gay male texts the penis is 
cast as a weapon (shot/shoot/shooting). In terms of language itself, in 
gay male erotic narratives ''men's language is informal, non-standard 
and often impolite'', whereas ''lesbian's language is politer, more 
affectionate and more standardised'' (p.174). Another difference noted 
in the texts is that of confidence, Baker groups his results to suggest 
that lesbians are ''coy and shy (giggle/d/ing; asked, smiled, smile), 
while gay men are ''confident and assertive'' (get, got). Furthermore, 
gay narratives are egocentric in comparison to lesbian narratives 
which are more interaction oriented. Baker situates the narratives 
analysed sites of ''heterosexual gender (and class) stereotyping - men 
are constructed as hyper-masculine/working-class, while women are 
hyper-feminine/middle class'' (p. 188). In closing, Baker is careful to 
stress that the analysis is one of discourses of ideal sex, rather than 
actual practices, and represent a possible ''queering of hegemonic 
heterosexuality'' (p. 189).

In chapter seven, Baker turns to safer sex pamphlets and analyses 
documentation published by the Terrence Higgins Trust (2000-2003) 
that is available on their website. He notes a high degree of ''border 
crossing'' (cf. Goodman 1996) whereby information is presented as 
entertainment in a format accessible to many gay men. Distribution of 
the acronym HIV shows that the term is more likely to occur in the later 
part of the documentation which points to another form of border 
crossing whereby information about HIV is embedded in that of other 
subjects (p. 198). Analysis of the most frequent nouns and adjectives 
shows that HIV is the most frequent noun to appear in the texts, 
followed by gay and men. In terms of HIV transmission, ''responsibility 
concerning passing on HIV (or other infections) is downplayed, 
responsibility for (not) getting HIV is made implicit'' (p.203).  A high 
level of informality is noted in the texts, along with heavy use of 
vernacular terms. The use of non-standard language is said to 
emphasise ''a form of masculinity associated with working-class 
heterosexual men (Trudgill 1974: 94)'' (p.209). Finally, Baker identifies 
these safer-sex texts as being conflicted because they must avoid 
homophobic discourses yet also engage men who don't identify as 
gay whilst focussing on altering sexual behaviours without making this 
information too invasive. 

The final chapter of Public Discourse of Gay Men offers an overview 
of the preceding analyses and general conclusions. Baker identifies a 
number of conflicting discourses that indicate a ''reformulation of the 
way that western society conceptualises sexuality and gay men view 
themselves'' (p. 220). The first contestation involves the definition of 
homosexuality itself as either behaviour (i.e. House of Lords 
discourse) or identity-based community (i.e. Will and Grace). Another 
site is that of homophobia, which is now more often noted via under 
representation that moral panics of earlier decades. For example, the 
use of humour in newspaper reporting, or a reframing of debates to 
appeal to the dangers apparent to children, and even in stereotyping 
phrases used in gay friendly television sitcoms. The last area Baker 
discusses is that of ''aspiration'' whereby the commodification of male 
bodies and commercialisation of gay culture has led to promotion of 
conformity to idealised models of gayness: the urbanite, witty 
consumer; and the muscular, healthy bodied, perfectly sexed man -- 
ideals underpinned by modern consumerist capitalism. Baker suggests 
that neither of these aspirational discourses are attainable 
simultaneously and subsequently pull gay men in opposite ways. 

CRITICAL COMMENTS

Public Discourses of Gay Men is a welcome addition to the growing 
body of literature that is often referred to as ''gender, language and 
sexuality studies''; an area that Baker calls ''language and identity 
studies.'' Prefaced by dense explanations and justifications for the 
application of corpus based approaches to the field; Baker's research 
stimulates further discussion of this complex and still 
underrepresented area of language studies.  His final analyses on the 
different and contested discourse in the public domain are important 
additions to the field. For this reviewer, however, there were sections 
when the selection of comparative analytic categories warranted 
further critical discussion. Space restrictions prevents an in-depth 
discussion here, however, I will take up two examples below to 
illustrate this point.

In the analysis of tabloid discourse, Baker takes the term ''gay lover'' 
as exemplary of how gay male relationships are portrayed at 
transitory. He writes; ''if a word like lover is used in conjunction with a 
sexuality identifier, it is much more likely to be referring to 
homosexuals rather than heterosexuals, and this is more pronounced 
than other words like 'couple', 'relationship' and 'partner'. The 
word 'lover' places an emphasis on romance and sex rather than 
commitment and stability'' (p. 73). Although it is difficult to fault this 
interpretation, as Baker himself acknowledges, heterosexuality is the 
unmarked form in tabloid newspapers, henceforth, readers are left 
wondering if a comparison of terms such as ''married'' and ''defacto'' 
may have been more relevant here. Turning attention to legal status, 
rather than only ''sexuality identifiers'', may have revealed something 
else, especially since in the list of terms relating to ''political power'' (p. 
88) gay/homosexual marriage and gay/homosexual weddings occur 
with some frequency.
  
Similarly, for the analysis of erotic narratives, Baker compares lesbian 
and gay texts. Readers will undoubtedly wonder why ''lesbian'' is used 
in comparison only at the point of erotica. Not merely because once 
again the ''lesbian'' is invoked at the moment of sex, but more 
importantly because the concluding remarks maintain ''the characters 
in the narratives tend to be gendered as heterosexual ideals who 
merely happen to engage in gay sex'' (p.190). In order to support such 
a statement, surely a comparison between heterosexual and 
homosexual erotic narratives would be more productive.

Underlying the above points is a frustrating lack of attention to key 
terms such as ''heterosexual,'' ''desire,'' ''lesbian'' and, at times ''gay 
male'' that runs throughout the book. Perhaps in addition to reference 
to sociolinguistic classics such as Trudgill (1974), a more critical 
inclining towards queer studies and masculinity studies to support (or 
contest) critical notions would have been insightful here. Baker, 
however, has anticipated critique: he has taken pains to state the 
subjective positioning of his research project, questions and 
interpretations, and, he even goes as far as to invite counter-
interpretations in the closing chapter. I suggest that diverse critical 
readings of Public Discourse of Gay Men will further advance 
research in this area, much as Baker has anticipated. 

REFERENCES

Harvey, K. (2000) Describing camp talk: language/pragmatics/politics. 
Language and Literature 9:3, 240-60.

Goodman, S. (1996) Market forces speak English. In S. Goodman and 
D. Graddol (eds) Redefining English: New Tests, New Identities. 
London: Routledge, pp. 141-80.

Trudgill, P. (1974) The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Claire Maree is full-time lecturer of Multicultural Studies and Japanese 
Language Studies at Tsuda College. Her research interests include 
the intersections of gender, sexuality and language in contemporary 
society, discourse studies and cultural studies.





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