Dealing with 'community' in queer linguistics research - PowerPoint Presentation

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