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Article published In: Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 13:1 (2024) ► pp.1–23

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Affective distress and heteronormative futurity in American puberty video discourse

ORCiD logo with link | University of PittsburghPittsburghPA, USA
Published online: 30 January 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.22005.non
Abstract
Since their inception in the years following World War II, American puberty videos have discursively manufactured affective distress in several generations of on-screen children. The patterns of talk found in eight films from 1947 to 2016 demonstrate that affect may de-link itself from specific talk and diffuse into a broader discourse through the recirculation of parallel structures in new semiotic spaces. I use queer critical discourse analysis (Jones, Lucy & Collins, Luke. 2020. PrEP in the press: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how users of HIV-prevention treatment are represented in British newspapers. Journal of Language & Sexuality 9(2): 201–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and language socialization theory (Ochs, Elinor & Schieffelin, Bambi. 2011. The theory of language socialization. In The Handbook of Language Socialization, Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, & Bambi Schieffelin (eds), 1–21. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) to argue that puberty videos first manufacture distress in the on-screen child before swiftly introducing a trusted adult to mitigate and recast distress as a normal part of growing up. Further, puberty videos reify cis- / heteronormativity and reproductive futurity in adulthood as the necessary outcomes of development. This paper explores the connection between affect and temporality in talk by critically attending to the historical stability of American puberty video discourse.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.American puberty videos
  • 3.Language, gender/sexuality and childhood
  • 4.Affect, temporality, and distress
  • 5.Methods
  • 6.Discursive patterns of affective distress in puberty videos
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
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