Dealing with 'community' in queer linguistics research

Lucy Jones

6th BAAL Gender and Language Special Interest Group, Aston University, 10.04.2013

Why ‘community’?

• ‘The gay community’– Ideological/imagined

• Gay 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)

Why ‘community’?

• Gay contexts– E.g. Podesva (2007): gay identities produced

within gay spaces– E.g. Queen (1998): ‘the gay community’ often

reified through local interaction

‘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 community

Communities of practice

• Barrett (1997) speech community cannot account for differences within demographic groups

• Coupland (2003) we engage in multiple communities and have multiple identities as a result

• CoP: 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.

CoP

Local gay scene

Global gay community

Instantiated through interaction

Typical lesbian

Sociocultural linguistics

• “the social positioning of the self and other” (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 586)

• POSITIONALITY PRINCIPLE– Identities emerge from interaction– Ethnographic context (CoP)– Macro-level demographic categories

The Sapphic Stompers

• Lesbian hiking group: middle-aged, middle-class, white, British women

• Stomper practice– Conformity to some lesbian stereotypes– Articulation of feminist values– Production of a binary• dyke/girl– CoP-specific reworking of butch/femme

Dolls or teddies?

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 community

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 community

Conclusions

• ‘Community’ should remain a research question– We might benefit from explicitly recognising the relevance of

the imagined gay community• E.g. Stompers drawing on ideologies of lesbians as masculine/gender

inversion

– We 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’

“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