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How to Make a Black Woman Come to the Center: A Social History of Pleasure Activism for Black Women’s Sexual Liberation
No full textPleasure activism, coined by arienne marie brown, is a growing movement to encourage the historically disenfranchised, specifically Black women, to demand “radical love” and pleasure by “nourishing the orgasmic yes.” This study is a historical review of Black women’s role in the movement of pleasure activism in the United States, with special attention on initiatives taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. Theorist and activist bell hooks discusses the issues of power differences based on sex, in which those with power were closer to the center and marginalized groups have limited access to the center. Paulo Freire identifies the ways in which oppressive language has been used as a tool to sustain oppression of marginalized groups. The history of language in relation to social factors will be considered to offer a sociohistorical linguistic lens to approach the pleasure activism movement. Building on this concept, this qualitative study used interviews and net-ethnography to explore the following questions: How is pleasure activism responding to Black women’s intersectional experiences in the United States? How do Black women fare in the social movement of pleasure activism? Thus, a distinct emphasis was on intracommunity power dynamics within the pleasure activism movement, especially as found in Atlanta among Black women. This research is centrally informed by the premise that the denial of sexual pleasure and bodily autonomy contributes to increased experiences of sexual objectification, hypersexualization, and sexual abuse historically suffered by black women and to which pleasure activists seek to ameliorate
The queerest of clicks: lessons in linguistic marginalia from Drag Queens
No full textIn linguistics as in popular culture, “the periphery” is making its way to the centre stage. The internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) has been widely applauded for its contribution to the mainstream visibility of Drag (and LGBT+) subculture over the last decade. In linguistics, certain sounds and words that were long considered marginal and eccentric are also enjoying a heyday (see e.g., Ameka 2020). Clicks are speech sounds that are used phonemically in only a handful of (endangered) languages but occur frequently, perhaps even universally, as paralinguistic expressions. Interjections are words that have long been neglected by language studies: once deemed “non-words”, linguists now see interjections as a core part of language systems. In this presentation, I shall show what we can learn about clicks, about interjections, and what the Queens mean when they tongue pop.
Part of the fabulously camp, performative language use of Drag Queens on RPDR, the click interjection known as a “tongue pop” is a small performance in itself: a complex medley of phonetics, gesture, and language to encode a (socio)pragmatically marked and contextually bound expression. In this presentation, I provide a first linguistic analysis of the tongue pop, from its phonetic form to its discourse-pragmatic and socio-pragmatic function in the language of Drag Queens (literally) and the international LGBT+ community. I will also discuss what click genesis in Queer English means for certain theories about these phonemic clicks in African languages and language evolution. More generally, this talk serves as an important reminder of the contribution of non-standard language varieties, including genderlects, to the study of spoken language
Di/s/identity and Cross-Modal Negotiation of Race and Gender: Dynamics of /s/ Production in Miami Latinx Drag
No full textMiami Latinx Drag”
Sociophonetic work on the production of /s/ has shown an indexical link between feminine gender expression and higher centers of gravity and negative spectral skew, corresponding to a fronted articulation of [s+] (Hazenberg 2012; Podesva and Van Hofwegen 2014). In perception studies, speakers also have linked [s+] with femme-coded speech, corresponding to a deviation from heteronormative expectations of masculinity. However, the indexical associations of fronted /s/ have been shown to differ depending on socioethnic context (Pharao et al. 2014). This work adds to the literature on the use of /s/ in communities of drag queens (Calder 2019) by demonstrating how its gendered associations get mediated and complicated by the Latinx body.
I examine the production of /s/ amongst four Cuban-American drag queens that perform primarily in Wynwood, an art-oriented neighborhood in Miami known for a variety of queer-friendly venues and a prevalence of Latinx music. Each queen participated in sociolinguistic interviews in English and Spanish while in drag, preparing for a digital performance. The interviews were recorded, and the center of gravity and skewness were calculated for each extracted token of /s/ presented during the exchanges. The measurements were taken from spectral slices of each token of /s/ at the consonant’s midpoint (Hazenberg 2012) as determined by analysis on Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2019).
Arguing that drag is a discursive space (Rodríguez 2003) to negotiate aspects of ethnoracial and gendered identity, I demonstrate that Latinx queens in Miami navigate the acoustic production of /s/ via a process of disidentification (Muñoz 1999). The emergence of a retracted or fronted /s/ is dependent on moments in discourse referencing alignment, either with the aesthetic style of Wynwood drag related to the racialized chonga persona (Hernandez 2020), or the normative constructs of femininity that are intimately connected to whiteness. All but one queen demonstrate average center of gravity values below 7,000 Hz, well within the range established by Flipsen et al. (1999) as typically masculine, raising questions about how queer of color subjects fit into accounts of gendered variation. Additionally, /s/ productions pattern similarly across English and Spanish, providing evidence that speakers in bilingual contexts utilize sociophonetic variables cross-linguistically
A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Corpus Data from Reddit Discussions of ‘Gay Voice’
No full textIn the last decade, there have been a number of public discussions about “gay voice” and “sounding gay.” These two phrases often serve as a shorthand for the belief that a listener can determine the sexuality of a speaker based on phonetic qualities found in their vocal output. However, these expressions are more accurately described as catch-all terms for speech that contains features associated with non-gender conforming stances and personae (Zimman, 2013). Notions about gender and sexuality are often conflated when discussing gay-sounding voices, namely through an “ideological link between femininity and male homosexuality” (Zimman, 2013, p. 8; emphasis in original). Investigating popular discussions about the relationship between “gay voice” and femininity could provide information on what people are trying to convey when they use this phrase, the ways that commonly circulated discourses about gender and sexuality inform its definition, and the relationship between social categorization and language-based stereotypes.
This study examines discourses surrounding the phrases “gay voice” and “sound gay” in conversations found on the popular U.S.-based online forum Reddit. A statistical technique known as topic modeling is used to identify salient themes from a corpus of text to meaningfully sample a subset of online discussions for qualitative analysis. The study found that the conversations in which Reddit users discuss “sounding gay” and femininity center around two main themes: (1) origins of this way of speaking and its cross-linguistic occurrence, and (2) the sociosexual capital of having a “gay voice” and ways to change one’s own voice to conform more closely with normative ideals. Discussions about the first theme are found in subforums with an academic orientation (i.e. r/AskHistorians, r/linguistics), while dialogues about the second theme occur in LGBTQIA-related subforums (i.e. r/askgaybros, r/ftm). Interactions across both topics equate gay-sounding voices with other social groups/personae to explore the concepts of markedness and stigmatization. These findings suggest that Reddit users reconfigure existing discourses related to “gay voice” and femininity to provide space for new conceptions about identity to emerge
The library is open : Pragmatic performativity and drag queen identity in RuPaul’s Drag Race
No full textThe queer art form of drag performance is one that has been traditionally marginalized, but with the growing popularity of reality competition television shows, such as RuPaul’s Drag Race (RDR), drag performance has become a part of mainstream popular culture. Since RDR began airing in 2009, spectators have witnessed the different types of verbal interactions between drag queens as the contestants compete to be crowned the top queen; competition often involves linguistic and verbal performance, in addition to visual and embodied displays. In particular, the drag queens of RDR often perform their identities through various pragmatic stylizations of critique, including “reading” each other, “throwing shade,” and verbally attacking one another. While similar in that these stylizations function as face-threatening acts (FTAs) (Brown and Levinson, 1987), drag queens interpret these various linguistic practices as categorically different, with the perceived performance and interpretation of such practices being directly linked to successful queer artistic expression in this community. Drawing from Barrett’s (2017) discussions of indexicality and identity in drag communities, in this poster, we address a gap in the current research on the pragmatics of drag performance art, and particularly, on the sociolinguistics of drag as it has entered popular mainstream culture. To this end, we examine FTAs from 25 episodes of Season 11 of RDR. Informed by interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and queer theory, we use discourse analysis to analyze the differences among these nuanced FTAs. We then classify FTAs as identity performances along a discursive and indexical continuum, distinguishing between what is perceived as being a harmless or playful speech act, a negative but non-face-threatening speech act, and a deliberately face-threatening speech act, and what is considered skilled, successful, and less successful drag performances. Ultimately, we argue that the differences in these FTAs are essential to the linguistic repertoire of drag queens and to their perceived discursive success as drag artists
Sacred Natural Sites as Nodes of Resistance and Resilience
No full textAs throughout the Himalayas, protector deities and local spirits are perceived to inhabit various features of the landscape in Bhutan, causing these places to be treated with reverence and respect. Vajrayana Buddhism and local spiritual beliefs are central to the cultural identity of the Kingdom, informing into government planning documents, town planning negotiations, and the 2008 Constitution. This elevation of local spiritual belief has been central to the maintenance and preservation of Bhutanese culture in its encounter with globally hegemonic social, economic, and political norms. Grounding spiritual beliefs in specific sites of the landscape, protector deity abodes, or citadels, sanctify the landscape, creating nodes of resistance and resilience in Bhutan, even as the pressures of global integration seek to impose hegemonic Western norms
Aurality and Quinault\u27s Adaptation to Climate Change: The Case for an Aurally-Focused Land Ethic
No full textIn this presentation, I will explore the relational dimensions of Quinault auralities, ecology, and tribal sovereignty in the Pacific Northwest coast. Through multigenerational acts of musicking, Quinault auralities assert territorial authority, trace Quinault hydrographic traversal and geospatial realities, and articulate relationships between human and other-than-human beings. In the wake of colonial encroachments on Quinault sovereignty, including the disproportionate effects of climate change on Quinault peoples living on the coastline, the creation, performance and reclamation of Quinault song and dance is uniquely positioned to catalyze a relationality-centered political philosophy in tribal governance. Drawing from autoethnographic accounts and Indigenized sound and music studies theory, I propose that Quinault aural praxes are both inextricable from Indigeneity-centered land/water ethics and a meaningful approach to addressing the effects of climate change
Toward Trans Applied Linguistics
No full textAbstract: Language teaching and learning represents a site for identity (re)construction, mediated through the process of language acquisition and use (Atkinson, 2011; Norton, 2013). As students develop linguistic abilities, they also develop a multilingual sense of self. In keeping with this view, the field has begun to advance pedagogies that engage with students as whole persons, encouraging students to reflect on their own evolving identities and potentially encouraging more ethical teaching (Moore, 2016; Presenter, 2017). To scaffold educators, a limited, though growing, body of literature that particularly considers sexual diversity and its role in language curricula, textbooks, research, and pedagogy has emerged (Paiz, 2019; Cahnmann-Taylor & Coda, 2017; Coda, 2019; Nelson, 2009). In, through, and alongside this work, queer applied linguistics (ALx) has begun to be a veritable subfield. However, narratives about LGBTQ+ lives and concerns have not historically attended equally to all segments of the acronym. Specifically, ALx has tended to be dominated by considerations of sexuality, often excising, effacing, or treating trans people as a monolith—perpetuating trans, non-binary, gender-non conforming invisibility (Presenter, 2020; Paiz, 2020). Scholars in education have begun to address what trans-affirming pedagogies could look like (Agid & Rand, 2011; Spade, 2011; Nicolazzo, Marine, & Galarte, 2015), however, such research has extended to applied linguistics in scant ways (Presenter, 2020; Presenter & Co-author, 2021). This paper begins with a review of the field of ALx vis-à-vis questions of gender diversity. Establishing the current state of the field, the paper then moves to consider how trans positionalities can be made a visible component of language education and the importance of trans knowledges for applied linguistics, language teachers, and learners. Particular attention is paid to the limits of visibility and the liberatory potential of invisibilities (see also Nicolazzo, 2019). Ultimately, the presenter outlines what trans applied linguistics could look like, in relationship with ALx, and how this field can contribute to creating more critical and equitable pedagogies