Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay LanguageWilliam Leap, Tom Boellstorff Language is a fundamental tool for shaping identity and community, including the expression (or repression) of sexual desire. Speaking in Queer Tongues investigates the tensions and adaptations that occur when processes of globalization bring one system of gay or lesbian language into contact with another. Western constructions of gay culture are now circulating widely beyond the boundaries of Western nations due to influences as diverse as Internet communication, global dissemination of entertainment and other media, increased travel and tourism, migration, displacement, and transnational citizenship. The authority claimed by these constructions, and by the linguistic codes embedded in them, is causing them to have a profound impact on public and private expressions of homosexuality in locations as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and Israel. Examining a wide range of global cultures, Speaking in Queer Tongues presents essays on topics that include old versus new sexual vocabularies, the rhetoric of gay-oriented magazines and news media, verbal and nonverbalized sexual imagery in poetry and popular culture, and the linguistic consequences of the globalized gay rights movement. |
Other editions - View all
Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language William Leap,Tom Boellstorff No preview available - 2004 |
Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language William Leap,Tom Boellstorff No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
Afrikaans Anglophones authenticity bahasa gay bilingual bisexual black gay borrowing Cape City Centre clubs code-switching contemporary context cooperative discourse Cuban American Cuban American gay Cuban gay Dana International discussion dominant emergence erotic example expressions female feminine Francophones French gay gay and lesbian gay community gay culture gay English gay language gay men's gay world gender gender/sex genre German global guage Hebrew heteronormative heterosexual homosexual Indonesian interaction interviews Israel Israeli kathoey Kira Hall La Bayamesa label Latin Latino lavender lesbian Lesbian and Gay lexical LGBT linguistic practices Māori masculine meaning Montreal mother political Quebec Québécois queen queer refer relationship same-sex desire sense seua bai sex/gender sexual citizenship sexual cultures sexual identity social society South African speak speakers takatapui te Reo Māori term gay Têtu text-making Thai Thailand tion transgender translation transsexuals University Press vernacular Western women word Xhosa York Zulu
Popular passages
Page 5 - A social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.
Page 10 - The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sexdesire, but bodies and pleasures.
Page 1 - As with translation of a text, one does not simply get a reproduction of identity. The acquisition of new forms of language from the modern west— whether by forcible imposition, insidious insertion, or voluntary borrowing— is part of what makes for new possibilities of action in non-Western societies.