This commentary considers how the special issue ‘Mobilising Language, Gender and Sexuality Studies’ contributes to recent developments in theories that demonstrate the importance of taking a posthumanist approach to sociolinguistics research. While the papers in the special issue show how mobile communities, including migrants, asylum seekers, sex workers and domestic workers, make sense of and participate in different activities in the world, this commentary shows that people in these communities also make sense of themselves with reference to different spaces – both real and imaginary, and both near and distant. Teasing out these aspects, the commentary suggests keeping research about posthumanism, the Global South and alternative ways of doing sociolinguistics at the core of the exploration of the complexities inherent in language practices, gender, sexuality, and individual and collective mobility, migration and resistance.
{"title":"Mediated by the materiality of spaces","authors":"Shaila Sultana","doi":"10.1558/genl.27300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.27300","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary considers how the special issue ‘Mobilising Language, Gender and Sexuality Studies’ contributes to recent developments in theories that demonstrate the importance of taking a posthumanist approach to sociolinguistics research. While the papers in the special issue show how mobile communities, including migrants, asylum seekers, sex workers and domestic workers, make sense of and participate in different activities in the world, this commentary shows that people in these communities also make sense of themselves with reference to different spaces – both real and imaginary, and both near and distant. Teasing out these aspects, the commentary suggests keeping research about posthumanism, the Global South and alternative ways of doing sociolinguistics at the core of the exploration of the complexities inherent in language practices, gender, sexuality, and individual and collective mobility, migration and resistance.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139532736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines how concepts of gender and sexuality are increasingly being mobilised as symbolic values in Danish immigration politics. The Danish national self-perception rests on an idea of widespread tolerance, especially regarding gender and sexuality. However, understandings of gender and sexuality as represented in Danish immigration discourse draw clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders. As of 2017, Danish asylum centres introduced compulsory teaching of so-called ‘Danish sexual morals’ as an attempt to prevent sexual violence by educating asylum seekers in sexual conduct. Based on fieldwork conducted in a language and culture class at an asylum centre, the analysis demonstrates how the teacher simultaneously reproduces and challenges concepts of differing national sexualities as they appear in the teaching material, and how the students push back against culturally specific conceptualisations of gender and sexuality by offering personal narratives countering those ascribed to them in the stereotypical representations.
{"title":"Static or mobile positions for the male asylum seeker?","authors":"Kristine Køhler Mortensen","doi":"10.1558/genl.22686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.22686","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how concepts of gender and sexuality are increasingly being mobilised as symbolic values in Danish immigration politics. The Danish national self-perception rests on an idea of widespread tolerance, especially regarding gender and sexuality. However, understandings of gender and sexuality as represented in Danish immigration discourse draw clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders. As of 2017, Danish asylum centres introduced compulsory teaching of so-called ‘Danish sexual morals’ as an attempt to prevent sexual violence by educating asylum seekers in sexual conduct. Based on fieldwork conducted in a language and culture class at an asylum centre, the analysis demonstrates how the teacher simultaneously reproduces and challenges concepts of differing national sexualities as they appear in the teaching material, and how the students push back against culturally specific conceptualisations of gender and sexuality by offering personal narratives countering those ascribed to them in the stereotypical representations.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139531843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This commentary advances the notions of passports and checkpoints as heuristics through which to theorise the external and internal push and pull of identity and desire within specific regimes of normativities and geopolitical imbalances. More specifically, passporting happens when normative regimes of representations issue what one could call discursive passports – that is, institutionalised identity bundles, which sediment over time, defining individuals as specific ‘types’. Such discursive passports are no less harmful than their material counterparts because they can constrain people’s access to resources in more pervasive and far-reaching ways than their identity documents do. On the other hand, checkpoints are interactional moments in which people police themselves and others in everyday interactions. Checkpoints can be 1) external, when one’s discursive positionings or emotional expressions are questioned or even blocked by other people, or 2) internal, when people police their sense of belonging and affective practices such as desire.
{"title":"Of discursive passports and checkpoints.","authors":"Tommaso M. Milani","doi":"10.1558/genl.26690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.26690","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary advances the notions of passports and checkpoints as heuristics through which to theorise the external and internal push and pull of identity and desire within specific regimes of normativities and geopolitical imbalances. More specifically, passporting happens when normative regimes of representations issue what one could call discursive passports – that is, institutionalised identity bundles, which sediment over time, defining individuals as specific ‘types’. Such discursive passports are no less harmful than their material counterparts because they can constrain people’s access to resources in more pervasive and far-reaching ways than their identity documents do. On the other hand, checkpoints are interactional moments in which people police themselves and others in everyday interactions. Checkpoints can be 1) external, when one’s discursive positionings or emotional expressions are questioned or even blocked by other people, or 2) internal, when people police their sense of belonging and affective practices such as desire.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139623906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language, Gender and Videogames: Using Corpora to Analyse the Representation of Gender in Fantasy VideogamesFrazer Heritage (2021)Springer Nature, 245pp.
{"title":"'Language, Gender and Videogames: Using Corpora to Analyse the Representation of Gender in Fantasy Videogames' Frazer Heritage (2021)","authors":"Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd","doi":"10.1558/genl.27559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.27559","url":null,"abstract":"Language, Gender and Videogames: Using Corpora to Analyse the Representation of Gender in Fantasy VideogamesFrazer Heritage (2021)Springer Nature, 245pp.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139533285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores how mobility shapes language, gender and sexuality during periods of indeterminacy, focusing on the discursive construction of masculinities. Using styling/‘styling the other’ as an interpretive framework, the article analyses how economic precarity leads to ambivalence in the masculinities of Zimbabwean heterosexual-identifying male migrants (ages 26–30 years) in Johannesburg. Interview data suggests that these men engaged in male-to-male sex work to achieve economic security. To solicit wealthy white men, the men performed stereotypical Black hypermasculinity and sophisticated, cosmopolitan gay subjectivities through language crossing and physical styling. These performances ultimately aimed to achieve the normative masculine identity of being a husband and provider. The article elucidates the paradox in which the men appropriated Polari, a British gay patois, and foreign or white understandings of Black/African masculinity to style the ‘other’ while fulfilling traditional Zimbabwean notions of masculinity.
{"title":"Metalinguistic discourses of ‘styling the other’","authors":"Busi Makoni","doi":"10.1558/genl.22690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.22690","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how mobility shapes language, gender and sexuality during periods of indeterminacy, focusing on the discursive construction of masculinities. Using styling/‘styling the other’ as an interpretive framework, the article analyses how economic precarity leads to ambivalence in the masculinities of Zimbabwean heterosexual-identifying male migrants (ages 26–30 years) in Johannesburg. Interview data suggests that these men engaged in male-to-male sex work to achieve economic security. To solicit wealthy white men, the men performed stereotypical Black hypermasculinity and sophisticated, cosmopolitan gay subjectivities through language crossing and physical styling. These performances ultimately aimed to achieve the normative masculine identity of being a husband and provider. The article elucidates the paradox in which the men appropriated Polari, a British gay patois, and foreign or white understandings of Black/African masculinity to style the ‘other’ while fulfilling traditional Zimbabwean notions of masculinity.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139624875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Using a multimodal discursive approach supplemented with semi-structured interviews, this article analyses the identity work of Hong Kong-based Filipina labour migrants on social media. The study is premised on the representational potential of these media forms to circulate ideas that either challenge or reinforce dominant notions of migrant life. The intersections of gender, race and class in the participants’ discourses are salient as they attempt to make sense of their lives in the host city through online signifying affordances. Further, a desire to differentiate themselves from dominant notions of being a Filipino woman in Hong Kong is prominent, illustrating the need to interrogate limiting and oppressive characterisations of migrants that are emplaced in both online and offline realities.
{"title":"'We also have lives, you know'","authors":"Alwin C. Aguirre","doi":"10.1558/genl.22688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.22688","url":null,"abstract":"Using a multimodal discursive approach supplemented with semi-structured interviews, this article analyses the identity work of Hong Kong-based Filipina labour migrants on social media. The study is premised on the representational potential of these media forms to circulate ideas that either challenge or reinforce dominant notions of migrant life. The intersections of gender, race and class in the participants’ discourses are salient as they attempt to make sense of their lives in the host city through online signifying affordances. Further, a desire to differentiate themselves from dominant notions of being a Filipino woman in Hong Kong is prominent, illustrating the need to interrogate limiting and oppressive characterisations of migrants that are emplaced in both online and offline realities.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139624375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Fritzl to #metoo: Twelve Years of Rape Coverage in the British Press. Alessia Tranchese (2023)","authors":"Nicole Tanquary","doi":"10.1558/genl.27064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.27064","url":null,"abstract":"From Fritzl to #metoo: Twelve Years of Rape Coverage in the British PressAlessia Tranchese (2023)Palgrave Macmillan, 436pp.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139259319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on data from ethnographic fieldwork at an English language school for young learners in South Korea, this article examines the relationship between emotional labour and gender in English language teaching (ELT). It takes note of how bilingual speakers’ emotional work was constructed as suitable for women and rendered invisible in their respective working contexts. The findings show that: 1) the job requires the female bilingual teachers to not only teach English but also engage in invisible, gendered childcare; and 2) amid the paradoxical situation in which bilingual teachers are expected to reproduce the ideology of native speakerism to be recognized as proficient English speakers, their anxiety about linguistic and cultural hybridity also deepened. The precarious labour conditions of female bilingual teachers in the school epitomise a broader trend in the contemporary South Korean ELT market, where female bilingual teachers’ emotional labour is naturalised in the name of caring.
{"title":"English teaching as gendered care work","authors":"Jinsuk Yang","doi":"10.1558/genl.23143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.23143","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on data from ethnographic fieldwork at an English language school for young learners in South Korea, this article examines the relationship between emotional labour and gender in English language teaching (ELT). It takes note of how bilingual speakers’ emotional work was constructed as suitable for women and rendered invisible in their respective working contexts. The findings show that: 1) the job requires the female bilingual teachers to not only teach English but also engage in invisible, gendered childcare; and 2) amid the paradoxical situation in which bilingual teachers are expected to reproduce the ideology of native speakerism to be recognized as proficient English speakers, their anxiety about linguistic and cultural hybridity also deepened. The precarious labour conditions of female bilingual teachers in the school epitomise a broader trend in the contemporary South Korean ELT market, where female bilingual teachers’ emotional labour is naturalised in the name of caring.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139255077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Japanese essayist Maki Fukasawa coined the term sôshoku danshi ‘herbivore men’ to refer to men who are not assertive or proactive in engaging with romantic or sexual relationships with women. Since her 2006 article, dozens of related kei ‘types’ have proliferated across the digital landscape, creating a taxonomy of binary-based gender classifications. This article describes the kei system through an analysis of digital texts, first providing the historical context of this discourse, then overviewing its grammar and taxonomic structure. An analysis of heuristic types then reveals how heteronormativity and gender hegemony emerge and limit the subversive potential of this system. Finally, the article discusses how neoliberalism creates the niche occupied by kei and enables its sustained appeal. The article contributes to research on both kei and identity by analysing kei as a system, attending to the ways in which broad social forces shape self-identification.
{"title":"Sôshokukei kara asuparabêkon made! ‘From herbivores to bacon-wrapped asparagus!’","authors":"C. Willis","doi":"10.1558/genl.20946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.20946","url":null,"abstract":"Japanese essayist Maki Fukasawa coined the term sôshoku danshi ‘herbivore men’ to refer to men who are not assertive or proactive in engaging with romantic or sexual relationships with women. Since her 2006 article, dozens of related kei ‘types’ have proliferated across the digital landscape, creating a taxonomy of binary-based gender classifications. This article describes the kei system through an analysis of digital texts, first providing the historical context of this discourse, then overviewing its grammar and taxonomic structure. An analysis of heuristic types then reveals how heteronormativity and gender hegemony emerge and limit the subversive potential of this system. Finally, the article discusses how neoliberalism creates the niche occupied by kei and enables its sustained appeal. The article contributes to research on both kei and identity by analysing kei as a system, attending to the ways in which broad social forces shape self-identification.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139255734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thus ended the legal protection of access to abortion at the federal level. Using techniques of corpus linguistics paired with critical discourse analysis, this article examines how the word abortion is used in a corpus of newspaper reports covering the decision. The analysis uncovers a staunch position of the right to abortion as an abstracted notion, alongside a simultaneous legitimation of individuals acting on those rights in order to construct them as worthy. In essence, the news media discursively reproduce a hegemonic order that demands adherence to the system, valorises responsible subjects and obscures structural inequities of gender, race and class in the name of freedom of choice. Echoing the call of Black and Indigenous feminist activists, this article argues for a shift in discourse towards one of reproductive justice.
{"title":"The social meaning of abortion and the perils of a neoliberal rights-based discourse","authors":"Maeve Eberhardt","doi":"10.1558/genl.24480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.24480","url":null,"abstract":"In 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thus ended the legal protection of access to abortion at the federal level. Using techniques of corpus linguistics paired with critical discourse analysis, this article examines how the word abortion is used in a corpus of newspaper reports covering the decision. The analysis uncovers a staunch position of the right to abortion as an abstracted notion, alongside a simultaneous legitimation of individuals acting on those rights in order to construct them as worthy. In essence, the news media discursively reproduce a hegemonic order that demands adherence to the system, valorises responsible subjects and obscures structural inequities of gender, race and class in the name of freedom of choice. Echoing the call of Black and Indigenous feminist activists, this article argues for a shift in discourse towards one of reproductive justice.","PeriodicalId":44706,"journal":{"name":"Gender and Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139258821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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