Lavender linguistics
Encyclopedia
Lavender linguistics is a term used by linguists, most notably William Leap
, to describe the study of language
used by gay
, lesbian
, bisexual, transgender
, and queer
(LGBTQ
) speakers. It "encompass[es] a wide range of everyday language practices" in LGBTQ communities
. The term derives from the longterm association of the color lavender
with gay and lesbian communities. The related terms lavender language and simply gay and lesbian language also refer to the language used by LGBTQ speakers. "Language" in this context may refer to any aspect of spoken or written linguistic practices, including speech patterns and pronunciation, use of certain vocabulary, and in a few cases an elaborate alternative lexicon
such as Polari
.
in 1941. In 1995 William Leap, whose work incorporates gay and lesbian culture studies, cultural theory, and linguistics
, called for scholarship to move toward a fuller and more nuanced study of gay and lesbian language use. Anna Livia and Kira Hall have noted that while research in the 1960s and 70s on the difference between men's and women's speech made the implicit assumption that gender was the relevant way to divide the social space, there is still considerable room for linguistic research based on sexual orientation
.
argues that the search for a link between sexual identity categories and language is misplaced, since studies have failed to show that the language gay men and lesbians use is unique. Although some researchers are politically motivated to imagine a gay community that is a unified whole and which is identifiable through linguistic means, this speech community
does not necessarily exist as such; the gay community is not homogeneous, nor is its language use. Features of “gay speech” are not used consistently by gay individuals, nor are they consistently absent from the speech of all heterosexual individuals. Further, he takes issue with the frequently rather circular definitions of queer speech; speech patterns cannot be labeled gay and lesbian language simply because they are used by gay and lesbian people.
Studies of a speech community that presuppose the existence of that community can reproduce stereotypes that often fail to accurately depict social reality of variance between subgroups within a community and overlapping identities for individuals. Furthermore, studies of gay male language use often look at middle class
European Americans who are "out
" to the exclusion of other subgroups of the gay community, and hence may draw misleading conclusions about the community as a whole.
Rusty Barrett suggests that the idea of the homogeneous speech community could perhaps be more accurately replaced by one of the queer community and its spirit, or cultural system, rather than trying to claim linguistic regularity. Kulick proposes, instead of research based on gay and lesbian language that he concludes "do not and cannot exist" because of methodological problems, a study of "language and desire" that examines repression in the context of linguistics by considering both what is said and what is not or cannot be said. He addresses the need for consideration of the role of sexuality in sexual identity, although some research in the field of lavender linguistics neglects it while focusing instead on other traits, such as linguistic features, that characterize the community and as such help legitimize it as an existent identity.
approach, the way we talk is considered a part of identity formation and gender identity
is variable and not fixed.
In the early 20th century, theories about language as associated with sexuality were common (Freud and Psychoanaysis, et al.), with a quite different basis than modern studies about this topic. One of these early views was that homosexuality was a pathology
, with certain speech patterns as part of its manifestation. Another was that homosexual individuals used a secret code to indicate their status as part of this group to other members. In the 1980s, the gay community was increasingly viewed as an oppressed minority group, and there were new investigations into the possibility of characterizing gay language use, influenced in part by studies of African American Vernacular English
. There was a shift in beliefs from language being a result of identity to language being employed to reflect a shared social identity and even to create identities.
is a form of social identity
, discursively constructed and represented; this shared identity can in some cases be strengthened through shared forms of language use. Language can be used to negotiate relations and contradictions of gender
and sexual identities, and indexes
identity in various ways, even if there is no specific gay or lesbian code of speaking.
The idea of a “speech community
” is a community that shares linguistic traits whose boundaries tend to coincide with social units. Membership in speech communities is often assumed based on stereotypes about the community as defined by non-linguistic factors. Speakers may resist culturally dominant languages and oppose cultural authority by maintaining their own varieties of speech.
Language use can also mimic culturally dominant forms or stereotypes; transsexuals are taught how to use conventionally accepted men’s and women’s speech patterns. Performing identity can only work as long as the indexes used are conventional and socially recognized, which is why stereotypes are sometimes adopted. A community can establish the affiliation of its people with shared ways of speaking, acting, and thinking. Such discourses can reproduce or modify social relationships. Sometimes, a code can fall out of use when it becomes widely known, because it loses its exclusive nature, as occurred with Polari
after it was used on the BBC
. Transsexuals and transvestites
often use vocabulary that includes members and excludes nonmembers to establish social identity and solidarity and to exclude outsiders. Using a private language can serve to keep identities that may be negatively viewed from being publicly apparent.
Members of a community can use stylistic and pragmatic
devices to index and exaggerate orientations and identities, but others may deliberately avoid stereotypical speech. Gender is frequently indexed indirectly, though traits that are associated with certain gender identities. In this way, for example, speaking forcefully is associated with masculinity
but also with confidence and authority.
Most studies of lesbian speech patterns focus on conversational patterns, as in Coates and Jordan (1997) and Morrish and Saunton (2007). Women can draw on a variety of discourses, particularly feminist discourses, to establish themselves as not submissive to heteropatriarchy, by using cooperative all-female talk, which is marked by less distinct turns and a more collaborative conversational floor. Often the bond the conversational participants have as women overrides their sexual identities. However, the content of Lesbian discourse can serve to separate the speakers from heterosexuality and the values of dominant cultures. Collaborative discourse involves resisting dominant gender norms through more subtle creation of solidarity, and not necessarily resisting “gender-typical” linguistic behavior.
An example of a distinctive way of speaking for a female community is that of female bikers. Both Dykes on Bikes
, a mostly lesbian group, and Ladies of Harley, a mostly heterosexual group, have shared experiences, though different cultures; both have a focus on female bonding and motorcycles, and have a shared female biker language. Their shared language helps to establish their shared identity in a largely male dominated domain and to mark boundaries between them and traditional femininity.
, can indicate when individuals want to foreground a certain identity. Choices of language use among gay men depend on the audience and context, and shift depending on situational needs, like demonstrating or concealing gay identity, when being read in different ways could be to the benefit or detriment of the speaker. Likewise, women identifying as lesbians can foreground this identity in some contexts but not others. Podesva discusses as an example the language use of a gay lawyer in a radio interview about anti-gay discrimination; he balanced the situational demands to sound recognizably gay, but also to sound recognizably like an educated and professional lawyer, because “gay speech” is stereotypically associated with less academic characteristics, like frivolity.
“Exploratory switching” can be used to determine whether an interlocutor belongs to the same group identity as the speaker. In this way, for example, a gay man could use certain lexicon and mannerisms shared within his community, and judge whether his interlocutor recognizes the indexical power of these forms. In this way, a member of the gay community can potentially establish solidarity with fellow members of the community, while avoiding explicitly telling his orientation to people outside the gay community. However, lack of consistency of language use between different sub-groups of the gay community, and even within smaller communities, along with non-members who can be familiar with a mode of speech, can make such interpretation difficult.
People can also switch styles of language use to comment on society or for entertainment. Black drag performers often use stereotypical “female white English”, to disrupt societal assumptions about gender and ethnicity and to express criticisms about these assumptions. Imitations do not necessarily represent actual language use of a group, but rather the generally recognized stereotypical speech of that group. In the language of drag performers, language play is also marked by juxtaposition of contradictory aspects like very proper language mixed with cursing, which adds to their deliberate disruption of cultural and linguistic norms.
to feminine
. However, these descriptors alone do not comprehensively describe the range of vocal characteristics. Additionally, it is difficult to isolate the markers of gay speech, since the gay community
consists of many smaller groups that make up a diverse subculture
. Therefore, categorizing leather daddies, drag queens, circuit boys, gay prostitutes, activists, and “straight-acting” males into one group would inaccurately homogenize the diversity within the gay community. Despite these hurdles, linguists have studied gay men’s speech, almost always in contrast to straight male speech and in comparison to female speech, following the precedent set in the early 20th century.
not only compares gay male speech with women’s speech traits, but she claims that gay men deliberately imitate these traits. According to Lakoff, stereotypical gay male speech takes on the characteristics of her own description of women’s speech, such as an increased use of expletives
(e.g. divine), inflected intonation
, and lisping. However, later linguists have reevaluated Lakoff's claims and concluded that these characterizations are not consistent for all women or in all contexts. These characterizations reflect commonly held beliefs about how women speak, which have social meaning and importance, even though they do not fully capture the actual situation of gendered language use.
David Crystal
also describes gay male speech as “effeminate.” He states "a 'simpering' voice, for instance, largely reduces to the use of a wider pitch
-range than normal (for men), with glissando
effects between stressed syllables, a more frequent use of complex tones
(e.g. the fall-rise and the rise-fall), the use of breathiness and huskiness in the voice, and switching to a higher (falsetto
) register from time to time." The relationship of gay men's speech to women's speech is not always addressed as positive or as an indicator that gay men identify with women; mimicking women's speech and using female pronouns has sometimes been judged as derogatory, trivializing women.
The problem with the studies that focus on gay male speech is that they simply compare gay speech with women’s speech in hopes of categorizing how masculine or feminine these types of speech are, without actually defining the terms that they use. They claim that the deviance from the norm (though undefined) makes one effeminate. In early works, the comparison of "masculine" and "feminine" speech can be based on rather biased views and must be considered as such instead of taken as truth, particularly when claims are not supported by empirical evidence. In Lee Edward Travis’ work, a speech pathologist claims:
from a play entitled Torch Song Trilogy
by Harvey Fierstein
. The volunteers were asked to read the first passage (accounting passage) as if they were giving a lecture to an accounting class, and the second passage (dramatic passage) as if they were reciting lines for a play. After the volunteers were recorded reading the two passages, they each had a private interview where they were asked general questions about their lives.
Sixteen segments of the recordings were created for analysis, which was to be done by thirteen undergraduate volunteer listener-subjects. The sixteen segments could be divided up in two groups: the first eight segments were recordings of each speaker reading the accounting passage, and the second eight were recordings of each speaker reading the dramatic passage. Listener-subjects were to categorize each of the recorded speeches using four semantic differential pairs (straight/gay, effeminate/masculine, reserved/emotional, and ordinary/affected) that resemble the commonly held stereotypes of gay men in the United States. The polar adjective pairs were then used to rate how effeminate or masculine the speech was based on the listener-subjects’ choices.
of the speakers based on the recorded speech segments. The listener-subjects’ ratings of the recorded speech segment using the four set of polar adjective pairs resembled common American stereotypes of gay and straight men’s speech.
Though the experiment did not isolate what exactly makes up gay male speech, it seemed to indicate that variations in intonation
and pitch
affect the judgment of men’s speech as “gay” or “straight.” However, the difference was not statistically significant and did not occur in all speech contexts. It seems for this reason that the differences the listeners were identifying were not intonational, if indeed differences existed, which is unclear in such a small study.
While the researchers found some correlation with these speech traits and gay language, they clarify that these characterize only one of the many speech styles that exist in the language variety spoken by homosexual males.
speech," though much debated, have not been unanimously established or agreed upon. Though there exists a common stereotype that homosexual females speak at a lower pitch than heterosexual females (contributing to the perception that homosexuals have more in common with the other sex than their own), there have not been studies to support this.
Robin Queen argues that analyses have been too simplistic, and that a uniquely lesbian language is constructed through the combination of sometimes conflicting stylistic tropes: stereotypical women's language (e.g. hypercorrect grammar), stereotypical nonstandard forms associated with the (male) working class (e.g. contractions), stereotypical gay male lexical items, and stereotypical lesbian language (e.g. flat intonation, cursing). Sometimes lesbians deliberately avoid stereotypical female speech, to distance themselves from "normative" heterosexual female speech patterns. It is more often believed that clothing and physical mannerisms can be used as indicators of female sexualities. Because femininity is a marked style, adopting it is more noticeable than avoiding it, which could also add to why certain stereotypically gay male speech styles are socially identifiable, but there are no such socially salient styles for lesbians.
Birch Moonwomon conducted an experiment asking listeners to identify female speakers as either lesbian or straight based solely on voice. The listeners were unable to successfully distinguish the lesbian women from the heterosexual woman based on the recordings they listened to, but unlike Gaudio, Moonwomon did not analyze the intonational features of the speaker's voices. Moonwomon chose to interpret the lack of differentiation as the listeners' "unwillingness to acknowledge lesbian presence," but the results could also be taken as evidence that there are no salient distinctions between the speech of lesbian and heterosexual women, or that listener evaluation of female sexuality depends on more than intonation.
said of nuns in cloisters, that they have developed their own slang (amusing but of course genteel) can, on the whole, be said of lesbians."
The most prominent example of "lesbian slang" is the rising reappropriation
of the word dyke
. Though still in many contexts considered a pejorative
word, dyke has become a symbol for the increasing acceptance of the lesbian movement and identity. Homosexual women, themselves, have used it in order to further solidarity and unity among their community. Examples include dyke marches (which are female-exclusive gay pride parades) and "dykes with tykes" (describing lesbian motherhood). Like other minorities, female homosexuals are slowly reclaiming a word that was once used to hurt them in the past.
s are homosexual Filipino
men; however, the concept is not exactly the same as homosexuality as it is understood in the West. With Baklas, sexual identity is tied up with gender identity. Baklas often assume female attributes and dress like women. They also use females terms for themselves and occasionally for their body parts, and are sometimes are referred to and refer to themselves as not being “real men”.
Although they have contact with other gay cultures through technology, the culture of baklas remains fairly distinct. They have their own rapidly shifting linguistic code, called Swardspeak
, which shows global influence in its Spanish and English borrowings. This code mostly consists of lexical items, but also includes sound changes such as [p] to [f]. It continued to be used by some when they move to America to maintain some consistency though their move, but others abandon it, regarding it as a Filipino custom that is out of place in America, and they replace it with aspects of American gay culture.
William Leap
William Leap also known as Bill Leap is a professor of anthropology at American University who works in the field of gay and lesbian linguistics.- Education :...
, to describe the study of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
used by gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, bisexual, transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
, and queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
(LGBTQ
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
) speakers. It "encompass[es] a wide range of everyday language practices" in LGBTQ communities
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...
. The term derives from the longterm association of the color lavender
Lavender (color)
Lavender is a pale tint of violet. It applies particularly to the color of the flower of the same name. The web color called lavender is displayed at right—it matches the color of the very palest part of the lavender flower; however, the more saturated color shown below as floral lavender more...
with gay and lesbian communities. The related terms lavender language and simply gay and lesbian language also refer to the language used by LGBTQ speakers. "Language" in this context may refer to any aspect of spoken or written linguistic practices, including speech patterns and pronunciation, use of certain vocabulary, and in a few cases an elaborate alternative lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
such as Polari
Polari
Polari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...
.
Emergence of the field of lavender linguistics
Early studies in the field of lavender linguistics were dominated by the concept of "lavender lexicons" such as that recorded by Gershon LegmanGershon Legman
Gershon Legman was an American cultural critic and folklorist.-Life and work:Legman was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Emil and Julia Friedman Legman, both of Hungarian/Romanian Jewish descent; his father was a railroad clerk and butcher...
in 1941. In 1995 William Leap, whose work incorporates gay and lesbian culture studies, cultural theory, and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, called for scholarship to move toward a fuller and more nuanced study of gay and lesbian language use. Anna Livia and Kira Hall have noted that while research in the 1960s and 70s on the difference between men's and women's speech made the implicit assumption that gender was the relevant way to divide the social space, there is still considerable room for linguistic research based on sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
.
Issues with studying speech patterns in relation to sexuality and sexual identity
Don KulickDon Kulick
Don Kulick is professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Kulick received his B.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics from Lund University in Sweden in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stockholm University in 1990. Previous academic positions include both Stockholm and Linköping...
argues that the search for a link between sexual identity categories and language is misplaced, since studies have failed to show that the language gay men and lesbians use is unique. Although some researchers are politically motivated to imagine a gay community that is a unified whole and which is identifiable through linguistic means, this speech community
Speech community
Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon, distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans , or even tight-knit groups like families and...
does not necessarily exist as such; the gay community is not homogeneous, nor is its language use. Features of “gay speech” are not used consistently by gay individuals, nor are they consistently absent from the speech of all heterosexual individuals. Further, he takes issue with the frequently rather circular definitions of queer speech; speech patterns cannot be labeled gay and lesbian language simply because they are used by gay and lesbian people.
Studies of a speech community that presuppose the existence of that community can reproduce stereotypes that often fail to accurately depict social reality of variance between subgroups within a community and overlapping identities for individuals. Furthermore, studies of gay male language use often look at middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
European Americans who are "out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
" to the exclusion of other subgroups of the gay community, and hence may draw misleading conclusions about the community as a whole.
Rusty Barrett suggests that the idea of the homogeneous speech community could perhaps be more accurately replaced by one of the queer community and its spirit, or cultural system, rather than trying to claim linguistic regularity. Kulick proposes, instead of research based on gay and lesbian language that he concludes "do not and cannot exist" because of methodological problems, a study of "language and desire" that examines repression in the context of linguistics by considering both what is said and what is not or cannot be said. He addresses the need for consideration of the role of sexuality in sexual identity, although some research in the field of lavender linguistics neglects it while focusing instead on other traits, such as linguistic features, that characterize the community and as such help legitimize it as an existent identity.
Theories about the reasons for differences in language use
Traditionally it was believed that one's way of speaking is a result of one's identity, but in the postmodernistPostmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
approach, the way we talk is considered a part of identity formation and gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
is variable and not fixed.
In the early 20th century, theories about language as associated with sexuality were common (Freud and Psychoanaysis, et al.), with a quite different basis than modern studies about this topic. One of these early views was that homosexuality was a pathology
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...
, with certain speech patterns as part of its manifestation. Another was that homosexual individuals used a secret code to indicate their status as part of this group to other members. In the 1980s, the gay community was increasingly viewed as an oppressed minority group, and there were new investigations into the possibility of characterizing gay language use, influenced in part by studies of African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
. There was a shift in beliefs from language being a result of identity to language being employed to reflect a shared social identity and even to create identities.
Language use as performance
A shared way of speaking can be used to create a single, cohesive identity to organize political struggle. SexualityHuman sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
is a form of social identity
Social identity
A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to...
, discursively constructed and represented; this shared identity can in some cases be strengthened through shared forms of language use. Language can be used to negotiate relations and contradictions of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and sexual identities, and indexes
Indexicality
In linguistics and in philosophy of language, an indexical behavior or utterance points to some state of affairs. For example, I refers to whoever is speaking; now refers to the time at which that word is uttered; and here refers to the place of utterance...
identity in various ways, even if there is no specific gay or lesbian code of speaking.
The idea of a “speech community
Speech community
Speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language. Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon, distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans , or even tight-knit groups like families and...
” is a community that shares linguistic traits whose boundaries tend to coincide with social units. Membership in speech communities is often assumed based on stereotypes about the community as defined by non-linguistic factors. Speakers may resist culturally dominant languages and oppose cultural authority by maintaining their own varieties of speech.
Language use can also mimic culturally dominant forms or stereotypes; transsexuals are taught how to use conventionally accepted men’s and women’s speech patterns. Performing identity can only work as long as the indexes used are conventional and socially recognized, which is why stereotypes are sometimes adopted. A community can establish the affiliation of its people with shared ways of speaking, acting, and thinking. Such discourses can reproduce or modify social relationships. Sometimes, a code can fall out of use when it becomes widely known, because it loses its exclusive nature, as occurred with Polari
Polari
Polari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...
after it was used on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Transsexuals and transvestites
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
often use vocabulary that includes members and excludes nonmembers to establish social identity and solidarity and to exclude outsiders. Using a private language can serve to keep identities that may be negatively viewed from being publicly apparent.
Members of a community can use stylistic and pragmatic
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
devices to index and exaggerate orientations and identities, but others may deliberately avoid stereotypical speech. Gender is frequently indexed indirectly, though traits that are associated with certain gender identities. In this way, for example, speaking forcefully is associated with masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
but also with confidence and authority.
Goals of distinctive language use among gay men
People often are members of multiple communities, and which community they want to be most closely associated with can vary. For some gay men, the primary self-categorization is their identity as gay men. To achieve recognition as having this identity, they can recognize and imitate forms of language that reflect the social identity of the group they want to be identified with, or which are stereotypically considered to be characteristic of this group. Using female pronouns is used by some gay men to dissociate themselves from heterosexual norms and designate themselves as opposed to heterosexual masculinity. Use of female pronouns by gay men is variable and can be done for a variety of reasons, such as in jest or as stabilizing and bonding elements with in a group.Goals of distinctive language use among lesbians and heterosexual women
Developing gay identity is different for men and women; for many women, both heterosexual woman and lesbians, the identity that is important to them is as women and not as lesbians or heterosexual women. It is often more important to gay men to distance themselves from heterosexual masculinity, because male roles are more rigidly enforced in Western society than female roles.Most studies of lesbian speech patterns focus on conversational patterns, as in Coates and Jordan (1997) and Morrish and Saunton (2007). Women can draw on a variety of discourses, particularly feminist discourses, to establish themselves as not submissive to heteropatriarchy, by using cooperative all-female talk, which is marked by less distinct turns and a more collaborative conversational floor. Often the bond the conversational participants have as women overrides their sexual identities. However, the content of Lesbian discourse can serve to separate the speakers from heterosexuality and the values of dominant cultures. Collaborative discourse involves resisting dominant gender norms through more subtle creation of solidarity, and not necessarily resisting “gender-typical” linguistic behavior.
An example of a distinctive way of speaking for a female community is that of female bikers. Both Dykes on Bikes
Dykes on Bikes
Dykes on Bikes is a loosely affiliated international network of mostly lesbian and dyke motorcycle clubs, Dykes on Bikes in Portland, and the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent in San Francisco...
, a mostly lesbian group, and Ladies of Harley, a mostly heterosexual group, have shared experiences, though different cultures; both have a focus on female bonding and motorcycles, and have a shared female biker language. Their shared language helps to establish their shared identity in a largely male dominated domain and to mark boundaries between them and traditional femininity.
Changing styles of speech
Changing speech styles, or codeswitchingCode-switching
In linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
, can indicate when individuals want to foreground a certain identity. Choices of language use among gay men depend on the audience and context, and shift depending on situational needs, like demonstrating or concealing gay identity, when being read in different ways could be to the benefit or detriment of the speaker. Likewise, women identifying as lesbians can foreground this identity in some contexts but not others. Podesva discusses as an example the language use of a gay lawyer in a radio interview about anti-gay discrimination; he balanced the situational demands to sound recognizably gay, but also to sound recognizably like an educated and professional lawyer, because “gay speech” is stereotypically associated with less academic characteristics, like frivolity.
“Exploratory switching” can be used to determine whether an interlocutor belongs to the same group identity as the speaker. In this way, for example, a gay man could use certain lexicon and mannerisms shared within his community, and judge whether his interlocutor recognizes the indexical power of these forms. In this way, a member of the gay community can potentially establish solidarity with fellow members of the community, while avoiding explicitly telling his orientation to people outside the gay community. However, lack of consistency of language use between different sub-groups of the gay community, and even within smaller communities, along with non-members who can be familiar with a mode of speech, can make such interpretation difficult.
People can also switch styles of language use to comment on society or for entertainment. Black drag performers often use stereotypical “female white English”, to disrupt societal assumptions about gender and ethnicity and to express criticisms about these assumptions. Imitations do not necessarily represent actual language use of a group, but rather the generally recognized stereotypical speech of that group. In the language of drag performers, language play is also marked by juxtaposition of contradictory aspects like very proper language mixed with cursing, which adds to their deliberate disruption of cultural and linguistic norms.
Overview
Linguists have attempted to isolate exactly what makes gay men's language different from that of their heterosexual counterparts. They find though that this is a difficult process, because there are many variations within each of these two groups. That is, for both the gay and straight category, there exists a wide spectrum that characterizes speech into degrees ranging from masculineMasculine
Masculine or masculinity, normally refer to qualities positively associated with men.Masculine may also refer to:*Masculine , a grammatical gender*Masculine cadence, a final chord occurring on a strong beat in music...
to feminine
Feminine
Feminine, or femininity, normally refers to qualities positively associated with women.Feminine may also refer to:*Feminine , a grammatical gender*Feminine cadence, a final chord falling in a metrically weak position...
. However, these descriptors alone do not comprehensively describe the range of vocal characteristics. Additionally, it is difficult to isolate the markers of gay speech, since the gay community
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...
consists of many smaller groups that make up a diverse subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
. Therefore, categorizing leather daddies, drag queens, circuit boys, gay prostitutes, activists, and “straight-acting” males into one group would inaccurately homogenize the diversity within the gay community. Despite these hurdles, linguists have studied gay men’s speech, almost always in contrast to straight male speech and in comparison to female speech, following the precedent set in the early 20th century.
Comparison to female speech
Gay speech has stereotypically been thought of as resembling women’s speech. In her work Language and Woman’s Place, Robin LakoffRobin Lakoff
Robin Tolmach Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.Lakoff's writings have become the basis for much research on the subject of women's language. In a 1973 article , she published ten basic assumptions about what she felt constituted a special women's...
not only compares gay male speech with women’s speech traits, but she claims that gay men deliberately imitate these traits. According to Lakoff, stereotypical gay male speech takes on the characteristics of her own description of women’s speech, such as an increased use of expletives
Expletive attributive
Expletive comes from the Latin verb explere, meaning "to fill", via expletivus, "filling out". It was introduced into English in the seventeenth century to refer to various kinds of padding—the padding out of a book with peripheral material, the addition of syllables to a line of poetry for...
(e.g. divine), inflected intonation
Intonation
Intonation may refer to:*Intonation , the variation of tone used when speaking*Intonation , a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument*Intonation Music Festival, held in Chicago...
, and lisping. However, later linguists have reevaluated Lakoff's claims and concluded that these characterizations are not consistent for all women or in all contexts. These characterizations reflect commonly held beliefs about how women speak, which have social meaning and importance, even though they do not fully capture the actual situation of gendered language use.
David Crystal
David Crystal
David Crystal OBE FLSW FBA is a linguist, academic and author.-Background and career:Crystal was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He grew up in Holyhead, North Wales, and Liverpool, England where he attended St Mary's College from 1951....
also describes gay male speech as “effeminate.” He states "a 'simpering' voice, for instance, largely reduces to the use of a wider pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
-range than normal (for men), with glissando
Glissando
In music, a glissando is a glide from one pitch to another. It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, to glide. In some contexts it is distinguished from the continuous portamento...
effects between stressed syllables, a more frequent use of complex tones
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
(e.g. the fall-rise and the rise-fall), the use of breathiness and huskiness in the voice, and switching to a higher (falsetto
Falsetto
Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
) register from time to time." The relationship of gay men's speech to women's speech is not always addressed as positive or as an indicator that gay men identify with women; mimicking women's speech and using female pronouns has sometimes been judged as derogatory, trivializing women.
The problem with the studies that focus on gay male speech is that they simply compare gay speech with women’s speech in hopes of categorizing how masculine or feminine these types of speech are, without actually defining the terms that they use. They claim that the deviance from the norm (though undefined) makes one effeminate. In early works, the comparison of "masculine" and "feminine" speech can be based on rather biased views and must be considered as such instead of taken as truth, particularly when claims are not supported by empirical evidence. In Lee Edward Travis’ work, a speech pathologist claims:
"A consistently high-pitched voice in the late adolescent and adult male is one of the most distressing of voice defects. The resemblance to the female voice suggests a lack of masculinity."
Methodology
Rudolf Gaudio’s social perception experiment was conducted for the analysis of the acoustics of male speech and listeners’ perception of it. The study consisted of eight male volunteers from the age of 21–31. Four of the men identified as gay, and the other four as straight. The volunteers were individually asked to read two passages while being recorded. The first passage was a short paragraph from an accounting text, while the other was an emotional monologueMonologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
from a play entitled Torch Song Trilogy
Torch Song Trilogy
Torch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Harvey Fierstein rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a torch song-singing Jewish drag queen living in New York City in the late 1970 and 1980s...
by Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is a U.S. actor and playwright, noted for the early distinction of winning Tony Awards for both writing and originating the lead role in his long-running play Torch Song Trilogy, about a gay drag-performer and his quest for true love and family, as well as writing the...
. The volunteers were asked to read the first passage (accounting passage) as if they were giving a lecture to an accounting class, and the second passage (dramatic passage) as if they were reciting lines for a play. After the volunteers were recorded reading the two passages, they each had a private interview where they were asked general questions about their lives.
Sixteen segments of the recordings were created for analysis, which was to be done by thirteen undergraduate volunteer listener-subjects. The sixteen segments could be divided up in two groups: the first eight segments were recordings of each speaker reading the accounting passage, and the second eight were recordings of each speaker reading the dramatic passage. Listener-subjects were to categorize each of the recorded speeches using four semantic differential pairs (straight/gay, effeminate/masculine, reserved/emotional, and ordinary/affected) that resemble the commonly held stereotypes of gay men in the United States. The polar adjective pairs were then used to rate how effeminate or masculine the speech was based on the listener-subjects’ choices.
Results of the study
The listener-subjects were generally able to correctly identify the sexual orientationSexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
of the speakers based on the recorded speech segments. The listener-subjects’ ratings of the recorded speech segment using the four set of polar adjective pairs resembled common American stereotypes of gay and straight men’s speech.
Though the experiment did not isolate what exactly makes up gay male speech, it seemed to indicate that variations in intonation
Intonation
Intonation may refer to:*Intonation , the variation of tone used when speaking*Intonation , a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument*Intonation Music Festival, held in Chicago...
and pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
affect the judgment of men’s speech as “gay” or “straight.” However, the difference was not statistically significant and did not occur in all speech contexts. It seems for this reason that the differences the listeners were identifying were not intonational, if indeed differences existed, which is unclear in such a small study.
Traits believed to characterize the speech of gay men
Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J, Roberts, and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler have also studied difference in gay male speech and have looked at the following traits to do so in their work Sharing Resources and Indexing Meanings in the Production of Gay Styles:- Duration of /æ/, /eɪ/
- Duration of onset /s/, /l/
- Fundamental frequencyFrequencyFrequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
(f0) properties (max, min, range, and value at vowel midpoint) of stressed vowels - Voice onset timeVoice onset timeIn phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between when a stop consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, according to the authors, periodicity begins...
(VOT) of voicelessVoicelessIn linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
aspiratedAspiration (phonetics)In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
stop consonants - Release of word-final stops
While the researchers found some correlation with these speech traits and gay language, they clarify that these characterize only one of the many speech styles that exist in the language variety spoken by homosexual males.
Distinctions of "lesbian speech"
Distinguishing characteristics of "lesbianLesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
speech," though much debated, have not been unanimously established or agreed upon. Though there exists a common stereotype that homosexual females speak at a lower pitch than heterosexual females (contributing to the perception that homosexuals have more in common with the other sex than their own), there have not been studies to support this.
Robin Queen argues that analyses have been too simplistic, and that a uniquely lesbian language is constructed through the combination of sometimes conflicting stylistic tropes: stereotypical women's language (e.g. hypercorrect grammar), stereotypical nonstandard forms associated with the (male) working class (e.g. contractions), stereotypical gay male lexical items, and stereotypical lesbian language (e.g. flat intonation, cursing). Sometimes lesbians deliberately avoid stereotypical female speech, to distance themselves from "normative" heterosexual female speech patterns. It is more often believed that clothing and physical mannerisms can be used as indicators of female sexualities. Because femininity is a marked style, adopting it is more noticeable than avoiding it, which could also add to why certain stereotypically gay male speech styles are socially identifiable, but there are no such socially salient styles for lesbians.
Birch Moonwomon conducted an experiment asking listeners to identify female speakers as either lesbian or straight based solely on voice. The listeners were unable to successfully distinguish the lesbian women from the heterosexual woman based on the recordings they listened to, but unlike Gaudio, Moonwomon did not analyze the intonational features of the speaker's voices. Moonwomon chose to interpret the lack of differentiation as the listeners' "unwillingness to acknowledge lesbian presence," but the results could also be taken as evidence that there are no salient distinctions between the speech of lesbian and heterosexual women, or that listener evaluation of female sexuality depends on more than intonation.
Lesbian slang
There is, however, a stronger argument for "lesbian slang." In his article entitled "Dyke Diction," Leonard R.N. Ashley lists nearly eighty "slang words commonly used among lesbians" that are typically synonymous for the female genitalia and sex acts. "What H. L. MenckenH. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
said of nuns in cloisters, that they have developed their own slang (amusing but of course genteel) can, on the whole, be said of lesbians."
The most prominent example of "lesbian slang" is the rising reappropriation
Reappropriation
Reappropriation is the cultural process by which a group reclaims—re-appropriates—terms or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. For example, since the early 1970s, much terminology referring to homosexuality—such as gay, queer, and faggot—has been reappropriated...
of the word dyke
Dyke (slang)
Dyke is slang terminology referring to a lesbian or lesbianism. It originated as a derogatory label for a masculine woman, and this usage still exists. However, some attempt to use it in a manner they see as positive, or simply as a neutral synonym for lesbian...
. Though still in many contexts considered a pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
word, dyke has become a symbol for the increasing acceptance of the lesbian movement and identity. Homosexual women, themselves, have used it in order to further solidarity and unity among their community. Examples include dyke marches (which are female-exclusive gay pride parades) and "dykes with tykes" (describing lesbian motherhood). Like other minorities, female homosexuals are slowly reclaiming a word that was once used to hurt them in the past.
Issues with culturally specific ideas about sexual identity
According to many language scholars, it is misleading to assume that all sex and gender roles are the same as those that are salient within Western society or that the linguistic styles associated with given groups will be like the styles associated with similarly identified Western groups.Baklàs
BaklàBakla (Philippines)
In the Philippines, a baklà is a male-bodied person who is exclusively attracted to men. Baklas are often considered a third gender, and many baklas display feminine mannerisms and dress as women. Some actually identify as women....
s are homosexual Filipino
Filipino people
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....
men; however, the concept is not exactly the same as homosexuality as it is understood in the West. With Baklas, sexual identity is tied up with gender identity. Baklas often assume female attributes and dress like women. They also use females terms for themselves and occasionally for their body parts, and are sometimes are referred to and refer to themselves as not being “real men”.
Although they have contact with other gay cultures through technology, the culture of baklas remains fairly distinct. They have their own rapidly shifting linguistic code, called Swardspeak
Swardspeak
Swardspeak is an argot or cant slang derived from Englog and used by a number of homosexuals in the Philippines.-Description:...
, which shows global influence in its Spanish and English borrowings. This code mostly consists of lexical items, but also includes sound changes such as [p] to [f]. It continued to be used by some when they move to America to maintain some consistency though their move, but others abandon it, regarding it as a Filipino custom that is out of place in America, and they replace it with aspects of American gay culture.
Hijras
There are a group of individuals in India called hijras, who often refer to themselves as neither man nor woman. Because of this, some describe them as a “third sex.” Their identity is distinct from the American gay identity, although many of them have male sexual partners. There is a distinctive mode of speech often attributed to them, though frequently in a stereotyped or derogatory way. They sometimes adopt feminine mannerisms and pronouns, depending on context and their interlocutors, to create solidarity or distance. They also use stereotypically male elements of speech, such as vulgarity. Their combined use of masculine and feminine speech styles can be see as reflecting their ambiguous sexual identities, and challenging dominant sexuality and gender ideologies.See also
- Bahasa BinanBahasa BinanBahasa Binan is a dialect of Indonesian originating with the gay community. It has several regular patterns of word formation and is documented in both writing and speech....
- Gail languageGail languageGayle, or Gail, is an English and Afrikaans-based gay argot or cant slang used primarily by English and Afrikaans-speaking homosexual men in urban communities of South Africa, and is similar in some respects to Polari in the United Kingdom, from which some lexical items have been borrowed...
- Gay lispGay lispGay lisp is a stereotypical speech attribute associated with gay males in English-speaking countries. The phenomenon of "gay lisp" and its study are poorly understood similar to other secondary external attributes or verbal and non-verbal mannerisms of both gay and straight people...
- LGBT cultureLGBT cultureLGBT culture, is the common culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It is sometimes also referred to as Queer culture. The term gay culture, though not synonymous, is sometimes also used though this may also apply specifically to the culture of homosexual men.LGBT...
- LGBT slang
- LGBT stereotypesLGBT stereotypesStereotypes about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are conventional, formulaic generalizations, opinions, or images about persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Stereotypes and homophobia are a learned outlook, i.e...
- PolariPolariPolari is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and by the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne...
- Queer theoryQueer theoryQueer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
- Sexual identitySexual identitySexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...
- SociolinguisticsSociolinguisticsSociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
- SwardspeakSwardspeakSwardspeak is an argot or cant slang derived from Englog and used by a number of homosexuals in the Philippines.-Description:...