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Language, Gender, and Sexuality in the 21st Century
No full textIn the seminal 1972 book Language and Woman’s Place, Robin Lakoff theorizes a framework of gendered language, indicating that men and women exhibit distinctive lexical characteristics in their speech. Lakoff’s ‘women’s language’, or WL, is characterised by linguistic hedging and the use of lexicon belonging to traditionally feminine domains, such as child-rearing, housekeeping, and cooking. In contrast, ‘men’s language’, or ML, is associated with direct speech and vulgarity. Lakoff’s theory of gendered language has inspired further investigation into the relationship between language and gender, which has propmted new theories in queer linguistics, including that proposed by Queen in her 1997 article ‘I Don’t Speak Spritch: Locating Lesbian Language’. Drawing from stereotyped conceptualizations of queer language, Queen suggests that lesbian women exhibit characteristics of men’s language at a much higher rate than heterosexual women.
The present study seeks to determine the relevance of Queen’s theory in today’s evolving social and linguistic landscape. The following questions are proposed: (1) Do previously identified examples of lesbian speech remain relevant today? (2) What, if any, other examples of lexical items or syntatic structures are associated with lesbian speech? To examine these topics, a short Qualtrics survey was distributed to student organizations at a large southern university. 34 participants completed the survey, which focused on two themes: (1) ‘Is x (phrase) an example of lesbian language?’and (2) ‘Do you associate x (phrase) with the speech of males, females, neither, or both?’. Phrase samples were adapted from Lakoff (1972) and Queen (1997) in order to facilitate comparisons with previous findings. Analysis of the responses failed to exhibit a significant effect for marked lesbian language. Similarly, participants failed to identify a significant lexical or syntactic association with gendered language.
The failure of the survey to elicit decisive bias towards gendered speech must be investigated further, given the findings outlined in Coates (2017), which suggest that gendered differences in speech remain salient. In order to further investigate these topics, we intend to distribute an additional survey to explore the effect of implicit meaning in gendered language
Reexamining They Attitudes Research with an Aversive Prejudice Theory Lens
No full textAversive prejudice theory ascribes to the idea that prejudice can be expressed indirectly by a person blaming their dislike for a people group on some other issue. Previously, aversive prejudice theory research has mostly focused on racism (e.g., Pearson, Dovidio, & Gaertner, 2009), but a few researchers have also investigated this theory as it applies to gay men (e.g., Hoffarth, 2014). Also, a handful of studies have examined attitudes toward nonbinary transgender people and using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun (e.g., Hekanaho, 2019). However, to my knowledge, no prior research has applied aversive prejudice theory to bias against transgender individuals. I propose that this theory can be applied to trans people in this way: People may say that they have no prejudice against nonbinary transgender people and that they merely strongly believe that ‘they’ cannot be used as a singular pronoun because of their prescriptive grammar mentality. In reality, though, the problem for those people is that they are biased against transgender individuals.
I conducted a research study that gives evidence that aversive prejudice theory can be applied to situations involving transgender people. In an online survey, 722 participants answered questions about attitudes toward using \u27they\u27 as a gender neutral singular pronoun, prescriptive grammar, and transgender individuals. Regression analyses revealed that negative attitudes towards \u27they\u27 in a queer context are best predicted by prejudice against transgender individuals (B = -.632, p \u3c .001), whereas in a general context, both prescriptive grammar mentality (B = -.325, p \u3c .001) and attitudes towards transgender people (B = -.420, p \u3c .001) similarly predict \u27they\u27 attitudes. This would not be the case if negative \u27they\u27 attitudes were merely an issue of taking a principled stance against what prescriptivists see as \u27improper grammar\u27
When these and other results of this survey are interpreted with the lens of aversive prejudice theory, it becomes clear that these findings have important implications for understanding people\u27s language ideologies and how they can reveal more ingrained attitudes toward transgender people
Linguistic and Social Expectation Beyond The Gender Binary
No full textPrevious sociophonetic research has demonstrated that social information affects listeners’ linguistic decision-making. In particular, Strand and Johnson (1996) show that imputed (binary) gender shifts listeners’ sibilant category boundaries: listeners categorized ambiguous synthesized sibilants as /s/ more often when listening to a male speaker. Further research has shown sibilant identity influences how listeners categorize speakers’ (binary) gender, demonstrating a bidirectional relationship between social and linguistic information (Bouavichith et al 2019).
Although listeners use categorical social information when it is explicitly given in a task, it is not understood how listeners perform when the same acoustic information is socially contextualized in two distinct ways. This study examines how sibilant category boundaries are shifted by acoustically masculinized speech: this manipulation is explained in one condition as the speaker’s gender transition and in the second as a digital manipulation. Participants complete a binary forced-choice linguistic decision task. Participants listen to ambiguous sibilant-initial lexical items (e.g., shack-sack) and indicate on a button-box which words they hear. Each token is created by splicing together one synthesized sibilant (from a /ʃ/-/s/ continuum) with a naturalistic production of the rime. Each rime, produced by a cis woman, is acoustically manipulated across two blocks to vary the perceived gender of the speaker. In Block 1, the rime of each stimulus is minimally manipulated. All listeners are told that the speaker identified as female at the time of the recording. In Block 2, the rimes are masculinized. Listeners are presented with either Condition 1) the same speaker no longer identified as female at the time of a second recording, or Condition 2) the acoustic stimuli have been digitally manipulated.
In line with previous results, we hypothesize that listeners will shift their category boundaries between Blocks 1 and 2, toward more male-like sibilant boundaries. Further, we predict a greater degree of shift, in this direction, for listeners who were assigned Condition 1. This prediction assumes that listeners are sensitive to how speakers use phonetic variation to convey social meaning.
This experiment serves as an effort to engage sociophonetic perception research with richer treatments of gender
Bilal Hassani and the Eurovision Song Contest 2019: Tackling Homophobia in the French Press
No full textIn France, Bilal Hassani, YouTuber and French entrant for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) represents a striking and high-profile example of popular music artists who publicly disclose their same-sex attraction. Hassani may also be situated in terms of the growing ‘visibility of non-normative gender and sexual identities in the ESC’, which has ‘significantly contributed to the discursive construction of Europe as a tolerant society, even though the respective performances often garnered considerably less support in their home countries, where certain audience segments received them in less positive or different ways’ (Motschenbacher 2016). My paper considers how French press coverage - from the start of the internal Eurovision selection process through to the ESC final in Tel Aviv - locates Hassani particularly in terms of ongoing debates concerning homophobia and LGBTQ rights in France. Existing studies of media coverage of homophobia in a variety of contexts have emphasised ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Wright and Clarke 1999); the ‘invisibility’ of gay people (Rédai 2012); the under-representation of particular groups and categories (Paceley and Flynn 2012); ‘ambivalent’ and ‘contradictory’ discourses (Hughson and Free 2011); and the contrasting approaches of government- and private-owned media outlets (Strand 2012). Accounts have also emphasised the possibilities of anti-homophobia media initiatives such as social marketing campaigns (Hull, Gasiorowicz, Hollander and Short 2017). Moreover, looking beyond established notions of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘symbolic annihilation’, Venzo and Hess (2013) emphasise ‘social artillery’ - ‘sexual minorities utilizing their expanding and more readily accessible social connections in digital space to combat instances of homophobia’. The media has also been identified as a ‘catalyst for resilience by buffering discriminatory experiences’ of young people (Craig, McInroy, McCready and Alaggia 2015). While Bilal Hassani is certainly represented in French press coverage as a young victim of homophobia, generated particularly in social media, he is also viewed as developing ‘social artillery’ and ‘resilience’ notably through two of Craig et al’s. categories: ‘escapism’ and ‘fighting back’. Coverage also generates a tension between ‘the language of non-specific difference in a French republican tradition’ (Provencher 2007) and more particularist, communitarian and multicultural approaches, given Hassani’s own ethnic and sexual identity
Creating queer moments at a Brazilian school by forging innovative sociolinguistic scalar perspectives in classrooms
No full textThis paper is written at a pivotal time in queer studies. On the one hand, they face a theoretical inflection oriented by the belief that there is no alternative to queer life other than giving in to what may be called queer negativity . On the other hand, there has been a strong reaction on the part of extremist political and religious groups in many countries against diversity. Such is the case of Brazil where, besides the upsurge of homophobia and racism, these groups have been lobbying against what they refer to as “gender ideology” in education. Nevertheless, more and more teachers have been concerned with queer questions because of students\u27 online-offline LGBTIQ+ experiences and social justice reasons. To this background, this talk reports on a collaborative interventionist research project developed in a Brazilian high school in 2014–2016. More specifically, it focuses on an educational blog designed for the project to promote reflexive discussions on sexuality-based identity-difference dynamics. Of the many interactions carried out by students in this digital environment, we explore one in which ‘queer moments’ (Doty, 1993) are created as students are led into entextualizing-decontextualizing-recontextualizing narratives on sexualities. By tracking the intense textual trajectory movements in which blog participants get involved and by making recourse to a scale-sensitive approach to meaning-making, the analysis of blog posts highlights 1) the fluidity of meaning regarding sexuality; 2) its queer nature; and 3) the way students’ scalar projections indicate an understanding of multiple gender and sexuality performances
Using LEGOs® in Research Facilitation: An Advanced Scripted Research Method
No full textTranspersonal research methods can help individuals access useful information and material that typically reside out of conscious awareness. The playful activity of LEGO® block-building can be adapted for research purposes and used to overcome research impasses, for example. This paper presents a novel transpersonal LEGO® building process for facilitation in each of the four major phases of research. Readers are provided with a 6-step script that takes between 30 minutes and 1 hour to complete. Steps include: Prepare to Exercise; Set Intentions; Build While Intending Solution; Appreciate/Take In; Project and Actively Imagine; and Reflect and Ease Out. Future studies could identify actual benefits of LEGO® building protocols for research and the instruction script could be adapted for use in play therapy
Relative and Absolute: States of Consciousness and Turiya
Get PDFThis paper aims to explore the phenomena of dreaming, waking, sleeping and the witness-consciousness that is exists in and through all three states. It draws from current and past literature about consciousness, helping to build a framework for both psychological and spiritual development. It correlates the pause between the inhale and exhale to the self-evident junction between dreaming, sleep and waking states
Nondual Writing: A Perspective on Who Owns Ideas, and a Way to Write with Greater Ease
Get PDFThe act of writing can cause great anxiety, stoking flames of perfectionism and fears of criticism, narcissistic injury, or indifference. While Buddhist teachings provide liberation from such egoic loneliness, it is not often recognized that postmodern and post-structural thought may also put the “author” and their “writing” in a less-individualized context—one in which a written work is understood to be in fact an ongoing process taking shape in interactions among writer, reader, critic, fan, and the world of literature at large. Keeping such a model in mind can help return joy to the act of writing as it poses the question, “To whom does this work belong?
Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: V. Socio-Cultural Bases of a Globalizing Neo-Shamanism and its Relation to Climate Crisis: Possibilities, Inevitabilities, Barriers
Get PDFExtending this series of papers on a futural spirituality, and considering the numinous as an inherent human capacity for an awe that confers a sense of all-inclusive meaning, communality, and humility, the question arises whether, in the face of a secularization of traditional world religions, globalization of a techno/capitalist economy of perpetual commodification of planet and person, and a widening sense of loss of meaning and higher purpose, some collective re-newal of the sense of the sacred might be possible —or not. While Jung, Toynbee, and Sorokin regarded such a movement as inevitable, bringing forward to the degree possible the full spectrum of the numinous in an originary ur-shamanism, Bourguignon, Weber, and the later Heidegger foresaw its necessary blockage by the unique complexity and hyper-rationalism of a globalizing materialist economy. The further question becomes whether any such renewal would be constrained to the more “adjustive” movements of Stoicism/Neoplatonism and much of current New Age spirituality—as mainly mirroring the hyper-individualism of Rome and modernity. Or, might it open toward the more revolutionary impact of an early Christianity, and in the present as the futural neo-shamanism variously anticipated by Jung, Reich, Toynbee, and Heidegger? Could such a neo-shamanism, especially as energized by the collective use of now widely available entheogens, resacralize planet and nature in time to address this looming crisis of a human generated climate change and help to inspire its containment