Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality

Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics

by Anna Livia (Editor), Kira Hall (Editor)

This pioneering collection of previously unpublished articles on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender language combines queer theory and feminist theory with the latest thinking on language and gender. The book expands the field well beyond the study of "gay slang" to consider gay dialects (such as Polari in England), early modern discourse on gay practices, and late twentieth-century descriptions of homosexuality. These essays examine the conversational patterns of queer speakers in a wide variety of settings, from women's friendship groups to university rap groups and electronic mail postings.

Taking a global--rather than regional--approach, the contributors herein study the language usage of sexually liminal communities in a variety of linguistic and cultural contexts, such as lesbian speakers of American Sign Language, Japanese gay male couples, Hindi-speaking hijras (eunuchs) in North India, Hausa-speaking 'yan daudu (feminine men) in Nigeria, and French and Yiddish gay groups. The most accessible and diverse collection of its kind, Queerly Language, Gender, and Sexuality sets a new standard in the study of language's impact on the construction of sexuality.

Genres: Language, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Gender, Gender and Sexuality

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Anna Livia was a lesbian feminist writer and linguistic theorist. Born in Ireland, she grew up in London, England and Swaziland. As a professor, she taught at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Ossian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very evidently of its time, Queerly Phrased still contains some chapters with interesting information relevant to modern understandings. It also contains more transmisogyny and colonialism than I would have liked.

[Hallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's about gay linguistics. It's me if I were a book.

[Dante Uribe Rico · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books by far. It's the book that got me into Sociocultural Linguistics, which has been the main field in my work, and it hopefully will be so for a long time.