Language, Gender and Sexual Identity: Poststructuralist PerspectivesThis book makes an innovative contribution to the relatively young field of Queer Linguistics. Subscribing to a poststructuralist framework, it presents a critical, deconstructionist perspective on the discursive construction of heteronormativity and gender binarism from a linguistic point of view. On the one hand, the book provides an outline of Queer approaches to issues of language, gender and sexual identity that is of interest to students and scholars new to the field. On the other hand, the empirical analyses of language data represent material that also appeals to experts in the field. The book deals with repercussions of the discursive materialisation of heteronormativity and gender binarism in various kinds of linguistic data. These include stereotypical genderlects, structural linguistic gender categories (especially from a contrastive linguistic point of view), the discursive sedimentation of female and feminine generics, linguistic constructions of the gendered body in advertising and the usage of personal reference forms to create characters in Queer Cinema. Throughout the book, readers become aware of the wounding potential that gendered linguistic forms may possess in certain contexts. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Queer Linguistics | 5 |
Queer approaches in linguistic research | 21 |
Redefining Genderlects | 45 |
The sedimentation of structural gender categories | 61 |
The discursive materialisation of feminine and female generics | 89 |
The discursive construction of the gendered body | 123 |
Linguistic identity construction in queer cinema | 141 |
Language Gender and Wounding | 169 |
| 201 | |
| 203 | |
Studies in language and society | 211 |
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Language, Gender and Sexual Identity: Poststructuralist perspectives Heiko Motschenbacher Limited preview - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
a-stems advertising agreement analysis anaphoric approaches behaviour binary gender Boys Don't Cry Brandon chapter characters conceptualisation contexts Cosmo Croatian discursive materialisation discussion dominant discourses English epicenes example female and feminine female and male female forms female personal nouns female/feminine feminine forms feminist film gay male gender and sexual gender binarism gender construction gender face gender identities gender languages genderisation genderlect German girl grammatical gender grammatically masculine hegemonic heteronormative heterosexual homosexual Hornscheidt I'm a Cheerleader identity construction Lana language and gender lesbian lexemes Lexical field lexical gender lexically female lexically gender-neutral lexically male male body male-specific markedness MASC meaning mechanisms Megan Megan's father Men’s Men's Health Motschenbacher normative gender personal reference forms politeness poststructuralist practices pronouns Queer Linguistics Queer Theory referential gender role semantic sexual identities social gender socially female socially male sociolinguistics speakers stereotypically strictly binary structures style Teena Brandon tion whereas woman women