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Dealing with 'community' in queer linguistics research
Lucy Jones
6th BAAL Gender and Language Special Interest Group, Aston University, 10.04.2013
Why ‘community’?
• ‘The gay community’– Ideological/imagined
• Gay scenes– Shared language may be spoken by some gay
people in some gay contexts, but that does not:• Make it a ‘gay language’ (Darsey 1981: 63, Graf and Lipia
1995: 233). • Make it exclusive to gay people (Kulick 2000)
– Not all within a gay community are gay (Barrett (1997)
Why ‘community’?
• Gay contexts– E.g. Podesva (2007): gay identities produced
within gay spaces– E.g. Queen (1998): ‘the gay community’ often
reified through local interaction
‘Community’ in language and sexuality research: what’s the problem?
• No homogenous community of gay and lesbian speakers who share a language that they all use.
• But the gay community is a prevalent ideological construct.
• Language can represent both levels of community
Communities of practice
• Barrett (1997) speech community cannot account for differences within demographic groups
• Coupland (2003) we engage in multiple communities and have multiple identities as a result
• CoP: speakers who engage together in something in a mutual way which, over time, leads to shared ways of doing things, or practices (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992)– Language: part of a coherent, mutual and jointly-
negotiated response to broader structures and cultural ideas.
CoP
Local gay scene
Global gay community
Instantiated through interaction
Typical lesbian
Sociocultural linguistics
• “the social positioning of the self and other” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 586)
• POSITIONALITY PRINCIPLE– Identities emerge from interaction– Ethnographic context (CoP)– Macro-level demographic categories
The Sapphic Stompers
• Lesbian hiking group: middle-aged, middle-class, white, British women
• Stomper practice– Conformity to some lesbian stereotypes– Articulation of feminist values– Production of a binary• dyke/girl– CoP-specific reworking of butch/femme
Dolls or teddies?
Constructing the binary
• Girly
– Preferred by gay boys
– Symbol of heteronormative
womanhood
• Pretend babies
• Maternal instinct
• Dykey
– Preferred by ‘all lesbians’
– Not dolls!
• Positionality principle• Fleeting moment – dolls Vs teddies• Ethnographic norm – in/authentic binary• Ideological level – typical in imagined lesbian community
Discussion
• Dialogic construction of stances against dolls
– Rejection of heteronormative femininity• Relationship to broader ideological structures;
‘the lesbian community’
– Index a dykey identity• A community endeavour• Specific to the Stomper CoP
The women reify stereotypes and
position themselves as a part of imagined
lesbian community
Conclusions
• ‘Community’ should remain a research question– We might benefit from explicitly recognising the relevance of
the imagined gay community• E.g. Stompers drawing on ideologies of lesbians as masculine/gender
inversion
– We need to consider local communities of speakers; people who produce a queer-oriented identity in given contexts. • E.g. Stompers’ rejection of dolls is salient to CoP-specific ‘dyke’
identity
– The Stompers produce identities in line with:• What it means to be a member of a particular community of practice • Ideals and stereotypes which make up a broader ‘lesbian community’
“Dolls or teddies?” Constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice
Lavender Languages and Linguistics 20, February 15-17 2013