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Identity emergence in gay immigrants’ definitions of coming out in the US
No full textThe telling of coming-out narratives presents a paradox: while coming out is a process, each time it marks a disjuncture, or “discursive incoherence” (Sedgwick, 1990) in queer subjects’ lives when their presumed heterosexual identities are subverted. When narrating their coming-out experiences, they are expected to re-create coherence, a textual property Linde (1993) identifies in life stories. How, then, do gay immigrants’ in the US linguistically overcome this discursive incoherence in their narratives when their lived experiences are complicated by migration? In this paper, I argue that this is achieved by adopting two strategies: repetition and constructed dialogue (Tannen, 2007). This allows for relational positioning, whereby their identities emerge in interaction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). Methodologically, microlevel narrative analysis reveals the interactional details, which are often lost when coming-out narratives are employed to formulate models. Drawing from a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Washington DC, this paper examine three gay Indian immigrants’ definitions of coming out. Building on Bamberg’s three-level narrative positioning (1997), the analysis show how they create narrative coherence by relationally positioning themselves vis-à-vis other story characters (level 1), the interviewer (level 2), and the discourses around coming out (level 3). This paper answers the call for studies on the cross-cultural dimension of language and sexuality (Cameron & Kulick, 2003). The findings show that coming out to self and coming out to others are inseparable for their gay identities to emerge. Also, while their relational positioning contributes to the emergence of gay identities, their immigrant identities do not gain as much saliency due to the lack of cultural reference to their own backgrounds. This suggests that, first, identities are emergent and not always present even when participants can be ascribed to certain categories, and that, secondly, coming out may remain to them a Western social construct that does not directly reflect their immigrant status. This study adds to positioning theory and the research on coming out as a communicative act through an interactional level of narrative analysis, thereby complementing the tradition of formulating coming-out models
It’s just a gay thing : A comparative kinematic analysis of gestures and signs in Israel
No full textSign languages show considerably examples of lexical variation, systematically constrained by a number of social factors, such as age, region and language background (Stamp et al., 2014; Lucas et al., 2001). Despite this rich variation, few studies to date have found any example of accent variation – that is, variation in the way the sign is produced and constrained by the signer’s social background. One such study in American Sign Language claimed that there are motion-specific features, such as a larger volume of signing space, which are characteristic of the Black deaf community (McCaskill, Lucas, Bayley, & Hill, 2011). However, this study did not consider whether the features of this sign language ‘accent’ are unique to the signing Black community or whether they are just a feature of the wider hearing Black population (e.g., ‘gesturers’). Our study explores the motions produced by signers of Gay Sign Variant (GSV), a sign language accent used by gay male signers and identified across multiple sign languages (Blau, 2015; Rudner, 1981; Kleinfeld & Warner, 1996). In a preliminary study, we compared the kinematic motions of six gay Israeli Sign Language (ISL) signers and six straight ISL signers, using Microsoft Kinect motion-tracking technology. We found that there are differences between gay and straight ISL signers; signs produced by gay individuals were longer in distance travelled (
isiNgqumo : South Africa’s Undocumented Gay Language
No full textFrom Bajub in Brazil to Swardspeak in the Philippines, queer communities all around the world have been creating and expanding their very own “languages” — known as lavender languages — much to the joy of lavender linguists whose main goal is to study, analyse and document them.
The dissertation at hand sought to unveil, discuss and add to existing research done concerning isiNgqumo: a lavender language created and spoken within the Zulu queer community of modern day South Africa. Although there is still much debate amongst linguists as to whether isiNgqumo can be considered a true language instead of a dialect, slang or jargon, many of its speakers vehemently declare that isiNgqumo is, in fact, a fully-fledged language, and wish for it to be recognized as such. However, it appears that this lavender language has remained almost entirely undocumented, with very little research having been carried out on the subject. This dissertation was therefore the first linguistic approach towards the study of isiNgqumo and is an attempt to weigh into the debate among lavender linguists questioning whether it is a real language or not — for defining the linguistic “status” of isiNgqumo is paramount to setting a necessary and determining premise for subsequent study and documentation of the South African lavender language
The Dubious Index: Moral Citizenship and West African Pornography
No full textThis paper explores interpretive frameworks for moral selfhood and national belonging that emerge through orientations to pornographic images. I focus on Senegalese sex workers’ interactions with Senegal’s first porn website. The site deploys nationality “tags” – Ivoirian, Senegalese, Nigerian – to index videos that purportedly feature actors of the corresponding nationality. My interlocutors are deeply invested in these indexical relationships. Within the Senegalese ethic of sutura (discretion or modesty), both moral personhood and national belonging depend on the projection and management of a boundary between “public” and “intimate” life. By conspicuously blending intimate and impersonal address, semiotic modalities classed as porno transgress sutura, and in turn, jeopardize performers’ claims to moral and national belonging. Nevertheless, some Senegalese women who participate in sex work weigh the economic opportunities of porn performance against its risks to moral citizenship. As they research online porn content, they look for both linguistic and bodily signifiers of nationality. In this paper, I interpret the website’s interplay of image and text alongside my interlocutors, exploring the semiotic practices that both naturalize nationalist interpretation frameworks for illicit images and also enregister linkages between particular classes of images and forms of (im)moral personhood. Next, I explore the instability of these interpretive frameworks. Some interlocutors contend that tags’ indexical linkages cannot be trusted; the site, they suggest, manipulates viewers through linguistic and visual cues that misrepresent some Senegalese actors as foreign. Within the rubric of sutura, non-citizens are indiscreet, more “hardcore,” and better clickbait. This paper explores the semiotic processes through which nationality-based interpretation frameworks for illicit images are naturalized and undermined. I argue that these interpretive practices undergird emerging forms of intimate citizenship
Sexual learning in the multilingual margins: A case study of language socialization across time and space
No full textIn this talk I set out to account for the analytical purchase that second language socialization perspectives can offer us when exploring learning about sex and sexualities in informal settings at peripheral intersections of the global North and South. Specifically, this is via an empirical focus on the learning trajectories of a young man, whose encounters in the multilingual, queer contact zones (hotels, bars, saunas) of a tourist city in Cambodia have afforded him actionable knowledges related to how sexualities intersect with a social practice of economic support formed between tourists and locals in these spaces. In doing so, I bring into question the central tenets of second language socialization research paradigms that have continued to foreground normative notions of (sexual) identity and community in socialization processes. This is by shifting the focus to how this man may, in contrast, be socialized into this sexualized practice through the ongoing semiotic production of time and place. In this way, the analysis attends to how the sexual learning he describes is impacted across multiple time/space scales, from the microsocial encounters with tourists and colleagues in hotels and bars to the macrosocial time/space scales of histories and cultural ideologies. The analysis therefore seeks to demonstrate how various global/local meanings invested in interrelated time/spaces are seen to converge in his talk to account for the language socialization processes that mediate and legitimize sexual knowledges informing social action in the multilingual margins
The sociolinguistics of formal sex(uality) education: Doing ‘it’ differently
No full textThis study contributes to the panel by reviewing language-oriented research into the affordances and constraints of formal sexuality education in classrooms. Analysis will focus on a meta-analysis of published sociocultural language research, conducted in classrooms, where sex and sexuality enjoy a sustained focus. Findings demonstrate that constraints can be mitigated in such institutional settings by fostering sexual agency, framing it as the formation of sexually agentive subjects during interaction. Providing students with ample talking time around sexuality, in an academic forum, can allow for the development of a self who has the capacity to act sexually and be in control of those actions regardless of gender. These are also selves who have been given the opportunity to ‘juggle’ elements of their subjectivities that might pose problems in the process and sort out a way to reconcile those elements with sexual agency. In other words, it allows them the intellectual and social space to sort out what it means to have the capacity to act in relation to sexuality and how this capacity fits with (or forms a poor fit with) other aspects of selfhood such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, class, ethnicity, or religious belief. Relinquishing a didactic approach to sexuality education and embracing a community-based, discussion-oriented paradigm can result in reconciliation between sexual agency and the circulating discourses that complicate its realisation. Classrooms can be organized in such a way that localized community practice can be negotiated around how to have constructive discussions about sexuality
The commodifiability of Japanese masculinity: Young male idol talk on- and off-stage
No full textJapanese idols [aidoru] are tasked with presenting a healthy, young, easily-commodifiable image in order to be successful. Previous research has argued that young popular Japanese men in the public eye demonstrate an alternative masculinity, which is at odds with the ‘samurai in a business suit’ ideals that define Japanese masculinity more broadly-speaking. Most research into these forms of alternative masculinity production has remained superficial, and are uncommonly ethnographically-motivated. The present study aims to rectify this by introducing data from a year-long participant ethnography of the Japanese male underground idol group, astral☆code. Using field notes, recorded practice sessions/concerts, and social networking data, this research contends that traditional Japanese masculinity traits were common in the members’ private talk (e.g. sexualizing the female body, internalized group hierarchy, habitualized drinking, etc.), while traits more commonly ascribed to alternative Japanese masculinities were more commonly posted on social networking (e.g. fashion, grooming, shopping, etc.). Conclusions are drawn as to how these two facets of Japanese masculinity are negotiated through private (off-stage) banter. The research concludes that such a duality can be gleaned only from having access to men’s private talk, as in the public eye, individuals are expected to promote an easily-commodifiable image, and distance themselves from anything potentially harmful to said image
The style shifting of /s/ among men beauty vloggers on YouTube
No full textThis paper studies the interaction between sociophonetic variant /s/ in American English and visual transformation of men beauty vloggers on YouTube. Sibilant fricative /s/ in English is a well-studied index of gender identity. Men beauty vloggers are men who apply makeup to themselves in their vlogs in order to teach makeup skills or to recommend beauty products. In their makeup tutorial videos, they usually transform from relative masculine looks to rather feminine looks. Therefore it is expected that the visual transformation would correlate with changes of their productions of /s/. This paper selects 15 sample videos of 3 vloggers and collects the Center of Gravity of their /s/. Both intra-speaker style shifts and inter-speaker differences in /s/ are found, which suggests that besides gender identity, /s/ is also related to contextualized personae building among the community of men beauty vloggers
Locating the Embodied Sense of Self and Examining its Relationship with Psychological Well-Being
Get PDFWesterners tend to localize their sense of self in the head, and, to a lesser degree, in the chest. However, single-point, localization studies of the self omit direct exploration of the size and shape of the embodied self. This study explored a) beliefs about the location and spatial distribution of the embodied sense of self, and b) whether individual differences in how the embodied self was represented were associated with psychological and subjective well-being. Results from a sample of 206 American adults confirm extant reports, indicating that the embodied sense of self is most often located in the head and chest. However, results from this study extend previous findings by suggesting that the majority of respondents (70%) located their embodied sense of self in multiple body regions, and individuals that reported a more widely distributed sense of self reported greater well-being. Specifically, a more widely distributed sense of self in the torso was most strongly associated with psychological well-being. No relationship emerged between the distribution of the sense of self in the head and psychological well-being. Results from this study indicate that the sense of self may be located throughout the body, and that locating the sense of self in the torso may have psychological benefit. As such, exploring methods of shifting the sense of self out of the head and into the body may have therapeutic value
Transpersonal Psychology: Trends in Empirical Research and Diversity During the First Five Decades of the Field (corrected)
Get PDFPrior research on the role of empirical research in transpersonal psychology is updated, along with trends in gender diversity and geographical distribution of authorships. Data was compiled from a review of articles published in the two main journals of the field, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, over the first five decades of the field. Based on these records of the field\u27s published work, it appears that empirical research has played a small though gradually growing role in the literature, and that there has been substantive correction from early skews toward male authorship in North America. Despite this, gender imbalance remains somewhat greater in the transpersonal field than within the broader field of psychology. While there is continued growth of international authorship, it has not kept pace with growth in North American authorship