Lucy Jones 6 th BAAL Gender and Language Special Interest Group Aston University 10042013 Why community The gay community Ideologicalimagined Gay scenes Shared language may be spoken by ID: 330718
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Slide1
Dealing with 'community' in queer linguistics research
Lucy Jones
6
th
BAAL Gender and Language Special Interest Group, Aston University, 10.04.2013Slide2
Why ‘community’?
‘The gay community’Ideological/imaginedGay 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)Slide3
Why ‘community’?
Gay contextsE.g. Podesva (2007): gay identities produced within gay spaces
E.g. Queen (1998): ‘the gay community’ often reified through local interactionSlide4
‘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 communitySlide5
Communities of practice
Barrett (1997) speech community
cannot account for differences within demographic groupsCoupland (2003) we engage in multiple communities and have multiple identities as a resultCoP: 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.Slide6
CoP
Local gay scene
Global gay community
Instantiated through interaction
Typical lesbianSlide7
Sociocultural linguistics
“the social positioning of the self and other” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005
: 586)POSITIONALITY PRINCIPLEIdentities emerge from interaction
Ethnographic context (CoP)
Macro-level demographic categoriesSlide8
The Sapphic Stompers
Lesbian hiking group: middle-aged, middle-class, white, British womenStomper practice
Conformity to some lesbian stereotypesArticulation of feminist valuesProduction of a binarydyke/girl
CoP-specific reworking of butch/femmeSlide9
Dolls or teddies?Slide10
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 communitySlide11
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 communitySlide12
Conclusions
‘Community’ should remain a research questionWe might benefit from explicitly recognising the relevance of the imagined gay community
E.g. Stompers drawing on ideologies of lesbians as masculine/gender inversionWe 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’ Slide13
“Dolls or teddies?” Constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice
@
jones_lucylucy.jones@hull.ac.uk
Lavender Languages and Linguistics 20, February 15-17 2013