Article published In: 10th Anniversary Issue: Reflections on the Field of Language and Sexuality Studies
Edited by William L. Leap and Heiko Motschenbacher
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 10:1] 2021
► pp. 25–36
Language and sexuality studies today
Why “homosexual” is a bad word and why “queer linguist” is not an identity
Published online: 15 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00011.mot
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.00011.mot
Abstract
This article presents a short overview of the field of language and sexuality since the mid-1990s and discusses two issues that have repeatedly played a role in my own work in the field during the last decade: the incompatibility of the term homosexual with non-heteronormative language use, and the question of what counts as queer linguistic work.
References (27)
Baker, Paul. 2013. From gay language to normative discourse: A diachronic corpus analysis of Lavender Linguistics conference abstracts 1994–2012. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(2): 179–205.
Bing, Janet M. & Bergvall, Victoria L. 1996. The question of questions: Beyond binary thinking. In Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice, Victoria L. Bergvall, Janet M. Bing & Alice F. Freed (eds), 1–30. London: Longman.
Braun, Virginia & Kitzinger, Celia. 2001. Telling it straight? Dictionary definitions of women’s genitals. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(2): 214–232.
Brezina, Vaclav, Timperley, Matthew & McEnery, Tony. 2020. #LancsBox v. 5.0 [software]. Available at: [URL]. Lancaster: Lancaster University.
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don. 2003. Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coffey-Glover, Laura & Handforth, Rachel. 2019. Discourses of (hetero)sexism in popular music: The legacy of Blurred Lines. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(2): 139–165.
Coombs Fine, Julia. 2019. Performing graysexuality: A segmental and prosodic analysis of three voices employed in the construction of the graysexual self. Journal of Language and Sexuality 8(1): 1–29.
Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Contemporary American English as the first reliable monitor corpus of English. Literary and Linguistic Computing 25(4): 447–464.
Grant, Tim & MacLeod, Nicci. 2016. Assuming identities online: Experimental linguistics applied to the policing of online paedophile activity. Applied Linguistics 37(1): 50–70.
Hall, Kira, Levon, Erez & Milani, Tommaso M. 2019. Navigating normativities: Gender and sexuality in text and talk. Language in Society 48(4): 481–489.
Hiramoto, Mie & Pua, Phoebe. 2019. Racializing heterosexuality: Non-normativity and East Asian characters in James Bond films. Language in Society 48(4): 541–563.
Leap, William L. 2020. Language Before Stonewall: Language, Sexuality, History. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Livia, Anna & Hall, Kira. 1997. ‘It’s a girl!’: Bringing performativity back to linguistics. In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, Anna Livia & Kira Hall (eds), 3–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McIlvenny, Paul. 2002. Critical reflections on performativity and the ‘un/doing’ of gender and sexuality in talk. In Talking Gender and Sexuality, Paul McIlvenny (ed), 111–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2012. ‘I think Houston wants a kiss right?’: Linguistic constructions of heterosexualities at Eurovision Song Contest press conferences. Journal of Language and Sexuality 1(2): 127–150.
. 2014. Focusing on normativity in language and sexuality studies: Insights from conversations on objectophilia. Critical Discourse Studies 11(1): 49–70.
. 2018. Corpus linguistics in language and sexuality studies: Taking stock and looking ahead. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7(2): 145–174.
. 2020. Language use before and after Stonewall: A corpus-based study of gay men’s pre-Stonewall narratives. Discourse Studies 22(1): 64–86.
. forthcoming. Language and sexual normativity. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, Rusty Barrett & Kira Hall (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ritchie, Ani & Barker, Meg. 2006. ‘There aren’t words for what we do or how we feel so we have to make them up’: Constructing polyamorous languages in a culture of compulsory monogamy. Sexualities 9(5): 584–601.
Schneider, Britta. 2013. ‘In Salsa, it’s okay to be a woman’: Legitimating heteronormativity in a culturally ‘other’ environment. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(2): 262–291.
Thorne, Lisa. 2013. ‘But I’m attracted to women’: Sexuality and sexual identity performance in interactional discourse among bisexual students. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(1): 70–100.
Turton, Stephen. 2019. Unlawful entries: Buggery, sodomy, and the construction of sexual normativity in Early English dictionaries. Dictionaries 40(1): 81–112.
Webster, Lexi. 2018. ‘I wanna be a toy’: Self-sexualisation in gender-variant Twitter users’ biographies. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7(2): 205–236.
Zimman, Lal. 2014. The discursive construction of sex: Remaking and reclaiming the gendered body in talk about genitals among trans men. In Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality, Lal Zimman, Jenny L. Davis & Joshua Raclaw (eds), 13–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cited by (11)
Cited by 11 other publications
Hafiz, Mohamed
Turton, Stephen
Genovese, Emma
Zhou, Qingqing
Thelwall, Mike, Tracey Jayne Devonport, Meiko Makita, Kate Russell & Lois Ferguson
Adegbola, Olubunmi Funmi
2022. The discursive construction of gay people in news reports of selected Nigerian newspapers. Journal of Language and Sexuality 11:1 ► pp. 80 ff.
Jantunen, Jarmo Harri & Samu Kytölä
2022. Online discourses of ‘homosexuality’ and religion. Journal of Language and Sexuality 11:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Lobban, Rosemary, Russell Luyt & Daragh T McDermott
Milani, Tommaso M
Motschenbacher, Heiko
Vecchio, Nicholas Lo
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.