Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper begins by introducing the Special Issue of theJournal of Language and Sexuality. Then the paper shifts focus, to consider concerns that have shaped studies of language and sexuality over the past ten years and are shaping these studies' immediate and emerging interests. The paper also considers how theJournalcould support these interests in language and sexuality oriented in terms of a "mesh of possibilities …" (Sedgwick 1993: 8) rather than psychosocial processes, masculine/feminine binaries, or hetero/homosexual hierarchies.

Abstract
The papers in this special issue examine the relationships between language, sexuality and affect. Using examples of language use from Argentine cinema, bounce music performance, a university classroom, a BDSM community, and Black women's urban queer space, the papers show how various forms of linguistic practice allow affect to remain comfortably nested on "the cusp of semantic availability" (Williams 1977: 134), rather than being reduced to tightly defined categories or messages. The discussions of these examples also show how various forms of linguistic practice allow sexuality to unfold as a messy formation (Giffney 2009, Manalansan 2014), thereby remaining resistant to boundaries and precise definitions. The basis for these parallels between affect and sexuality are explored in these papers, as are their implications for future studies of language, affect, and sexuality.

Gay men's stories about homophobic violence will, at times, disguise reference to the persons who initiate harassment and injury. Instead, these stories emphasize the details of location or allow the victim of narrated violence to confirm the status of narrative hero. Each approach to story-telling has noticeable effects on the connections between sexual sameness and violence as displayed within the narrative. This paper examines these approaches to story-telling and their effects on homophobic formation (Leap, introduction, this volume), and traces the broader implications of these narrative styles within contemporary politics of gay visibility, assimilation and whiteness.

Homophobic messages circulate widely in contemporary society. This essay introduces a set of papers that examine the linguistic dimensions of that circulation. These papers build on the idea that messages expressing disdain, disgust or hatred for homosexuals or for persons believed to be homosexual, are often derived from contextual clues or inference, rather than explicitly worded anti-gay commentary. Paraphrasing Eve Sedgwick (1990), any text may convey a homophobic message, and most texts probably do. Following various approaches to critical analysis of discourse and text, these papers examine the conditions under which the formation of homophobic messages is favored or discouraged, and they identify the conditions under which these formation enhance or conflict with racist language, anti-Semitic language, or "hate speech" in other forms?