Taking Queer Linguistics further: sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research
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Heiko Motschenbacher
Abstract
This article provides an overview of the young discipline of Queer Linguistics and discusses how it may be fruitfully applied in sociolinguistics as a contribution to critical heteronormativity research. After locating Queer Linguistics historically as a reaction to earlier essentialist approaches in the field of language and sexuality, its theoretical underpinnings are outlined. Queer Linguistics is not to be equalled with a “gay and lesbian” approach to language. It rather transfers ideas from Queer Theory to linguistic research, building on the integration of work by poststructuralist scholars such as Foucault, Butler and Derrida in order to provide a critical investigation of the discursive formation of heteronormativity. Three potential criticisms against Queer Linguistics as a poststructuralist approach are addressed: its supposedly low relevance, issues of political agency, and its alleged lack of empirical applicability. Finally, methodological suggestions are made as to how sociolinguists may proceed from a Queer Linguistic point of view, focusing on ethnographically oriented studies of local identity negotiation, critical approaches to Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Sociolinguistics.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Dutch and Afrikaans as post-pluricentric languages
- On the correlation between socioeconomics and policies of languages in official contexts
- Development and the national language question: a case study
- Linguistic divergence in Bosnia: considerations about vertical and horizontal leveling
- Beliefs about language status and corpus in focus group discussions on the Ukrainian language policy
- Language attitudes, migrant identities and space
- Heavenly singing: the practice of naat and nasheed and its possible contribution to reversing language shift among young Muslim multilinguals in the UK
- Taking Queer Linguistics further: sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research
- New perspectives on endangered languages, edited by José Antonio Flores Farfán and Fernando Ramallo
- Keeping the fire alive: a decade of language revitalization in Mexico
