Beyond heteronormativity and towards Intersectionality

The current chapter introduces the area of language and sexuality, which in many ways is closely connected to topics and approaches in language and gender studies. Early observations of language and sexuality mirror several of the issues in early language and gender scholarship. For example, language and gender pioneer Robin Lakoff’s (1975) concept of ‘women’s language’ has long since been critiqued for implying that all women use language in the same way (see Chapter 2). As we will see, early attempts to describe ‘homosexual slang’ or ‘gayspeak’ or ‘gay men’s English’ have also been superseded by research that does not aim to correlate specific linguistic features with a speaker’s sexuality, but instead views language as a resource for speakers to index sexual desires, practices and identities. In this chapter we will give a brief overview of the history of language and sexuality studies. We will look at a range of research and extracts of talk, mostly focusing on conversational style and discourse, although we will briefly also introduce some of the sociophonetic work on the idea of the ‘gay voice’. This chapter will also introduce you to a range of important concepts which underpin research on language, gender and sexuality, including ‘heteronormativity’ and ‘intersectionality’. The chapter will highlight the importance of language and sexuality scholarship to move beyond its historical focus on speakers from North America and Europe to include perspectives from the ‘Global South’.