Redefining realness
Bringing queer performativity to the English dictionary
This paper furthers the goal of “queering lexicography” (
Nossem 2018) by
proposing a theoretical approach to analysing dictionary definitions that replaces the traditional descriptive/prescriptive binary with a
model of normativity influenced by performativity theory. This is demonstrated by a critical discourse analysis of how entries for
lesbian, gay, and
homosexual in four contemporary English dictionaries tacitly position
homosexual as a neutral term against which
lesbian and
gay are sociolinguistically
marked. The paper also stresses the need for researchers not only to analyse how normativity is embedded in dictionaries, but to recognize
the extent to which lay dictionary-users are already aware of the normative potential of lexicography, whether they embrace it or condemn
it. This is explored through an incident in which
Merriam-Webster’s addition of the word
genderqueer to
its online dictionary in 2016 became the subject of public scrutiny and contestation on social media.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Moving beyond the binary
- 3.
Lesbian, gay, homosexual, and linguistic legitimacy
- 3.1Performativity and the periphery
- 3.2Positioning usage
- 4.
Genderqueer and the heteronormative binary
- 4.1Co-constructing meaning on social media
- 4.2Contesting meaning on social media
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References (87)
References
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 2019. Retrieved from [URL] on 11 June 2019.
Atkins, B. T. Sue & Rundell, Michael. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Awan, Imran. 2014. Islamophobia and Twitter: A typology of online hate against Muslims on social media. Policy and Internet 6(2): 133–150.
Baker, Paul. 2004. “Unnatural acts”: Discourses of homosexuality within the House of Lords debates on gay male law reform. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(1): 88–106.
Baker, Paul. 2005. Public Discourses of Gay Men. New York: Routledge.
Baker, Paul. 2017. American and British English: Divided by a Common Language? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barrett, Rusty. 2002. Is queer theory important for sociolinguistic theory? In Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J. Roberts & Andrew Wong (eds), 25–43. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Barrett, Rusty. 2014. The emergence of the unmarked: Queer theory, language ideology, and formal linguistics. In Lal Zimman, Jenny L. Davis & Joshua Raclaw (eds), Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 195–224. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barrett, Rusty. 2017. From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures. New York: Oxford University Press.
Béjoint, Henri. 2010. The Lexicography of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Béjoint, Henri. 2016. Dictionaries for general users: History and development: Current issues. In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, Philip Durkin (ed), 7–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Benson, Phil. 2001. Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary. London: Routledge.
Blank, Paula. 2011. The proverbial ‘lesbian’: Queering etymology in contemporary critical practice. Modern Philology 109(1): 108–134.
Bonnet, Marie-Jo. 1997. Sappho, or the importance of culture in the language of love: Tribade, lesbienne, homosexuelle
. In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, Anna Livia & Kira Hall (eds), 147–166. New York: Oxford University Press.
Braun, Virginia & Kitzinger, Celia. 2001. Telling it straight? Dictionary definitions of women’s genitals. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(2): 214–232.
Brewer, Charlotte. 2010. Prescriptivism and descriptivism in the first, second and third editions of OED
. English Today 26(2): 24–33.
Brewer, Charlotte. 2016. Labelling and metalanguage. In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, Philip Durkin (ed), 488–500. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brunskill, Ian. 2017. The Times Style Guide, 2nd edn. Glasgow: Harper Collins.
Bucholtz, Mary & Hall, Kira. 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7(4–5): 585–614.
Butler, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 2011 [1993]. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge.
Butterfield, Jeremy. 2015. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 4th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cage, Ken. 2003. Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens: A History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa. Houghton: Lacana Media.
Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge.
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don. 2003. Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn, Podesva, Robert J., Roberts, Sarah J. & Wong, Andrew (eds). 2002. Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Chen, Wenge. 2019. Towards a discourse approach to critical lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography 32(3): 362–388.
‘Cisgender’ and ‘genderqueer’ added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. 2016. April 21. Human Rights Campaign. Retrieved from [URL] on 26 May 2019.
Clayton, Susan. 1991. A word defined speaks a mind: Social images of male homosexuality in dictionaries. Franco-British Studies: Journal of the British Institute in Paris 121: 55–75.
Collins Dictionary. 2019. Retrieved from [URL] on 11 June 2019.
Craigie, William A. 1934. Sir William Craigie’s response. The Periodical 19(173): 24–26.
Eckert, Penny & McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1995. Constructing meaning, constructing selves: Snapshots of language, gender, and class from Belten High. In Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, Kira Hall & Mary Bucholtz (eds), 469–507. New York: Routledge.
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
Frege, Gottlob. 1948 [1892]. On sense and reference. Philosophical Review 57(3): 209–230.
Genderqueer. n.d. Merriam-Webster. [Internet Archive]. Retrieved from [URL][URL] on 6 June 2019.
George, Gloria. 1999. Sexual orientation and the Oxford Dictionary of Slang. English Today 15(3): 52–57.
GLAAD media reference guide – lesbian/gay/bisexual glossary of terms. n.d. GLAAD. Retrieved from [URL] on 10 June 2019.
Glossary of terms. 2017. Stonewall. Retrieved from [URL] on 10 June 2019.
Goldstein, Norm. 2006. Associated Press Stylebook, 41st edn. New York: Associated Press.
Green, Emma. 2016, April 25. Does adding ‘genderqueer’ to the dictionary make it ‘real’? Atlantic. Retrieved from [URL] on 21 May 2019.
Hall, Kira & Barrett, Rusty (eds). forthcoming. The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hall, Kira, Levon, Erez & Milani, Tommaso M. 2019. Navigating normativities: Gender and sexuality in text and talk. Language in Society 48(4): 481–489.
Hanks, Patrick. 2000. Contributions of lexicography and corpus linguistics to a theory of language performance. In Proceedings of the Ninth EURALEX International Congress, Ulrich Heid, Stefan Evert, Egbert Lehmann & Christian Rohrer (eds), 3–135. Bolzano: Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism.
Heffer, Simon (ed). 2010. The Telegraph Style Guide. London: Aurum Press.
Heller, Monica. 2010. Media, the state and linguistic authority. In Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics, Sally Johnson & Tommaso M. Milani (eds), 277–282. London: Continuum.
Hornscheidt, Antje. 2008. A concrete research agenda for critical lexicographic research within critical discourse studies: An investigation into racism/colonialism in monolingual Danish, German, and Swedish dictionaries. Critical Discourse Studies 5(2): 107–132.
Iedema, Rick. 2003. Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2(1): 29–57.
Irvine, Judith T. & Gal, Susan. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, Identities, Paul V. Kroskrity (ed), 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Jagose, Annamarie. 1996. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press.
Jagose, Annamarie. 2015. The trouble with antinormativity. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 26(1): 26–47.
Johnson, Sally. 2001. Who’s misunderstanding whom? Sociolinguistics, public debate and the media. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(4): 591–610.
Kramarae, Cheris. 1992. Punctuating the dictionary. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 941: 135–154.
Kulick, Don. 2000. Gay and lesbian language. Annual Review of Anthropology 291: 243–285.
Kulick, Don. 2014. Language and desire. In The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2nd edn, Susan Ehrlich, Miriam Meyerhoff & Janet Holmes (eds), 68–84. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Leap, William L. 2012. Queer linguistics, sexuality, and discourse analysis. In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, James Paul Gee & Michael Handford (eds), 558–572. New York: Routledge.
Leap, William L. 2020. Language Before Stonewall: Language, Sexuality, History. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lexico. 2019. Retrieved from [URL] on 9 June 2019.
Livia, Anna & Hall, Kira (eds). 1997. Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
McCormick, Tracey Lee. 2009. A Queer analysis of the discursive construction of gay identity in Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens: A History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa
(2003). Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 27(2): 149–161.
McCracken, Allison. 2017. Tumblr youth subcultures and media engagement. Cinema Journal 57(1): 151–161.
Merriam-Webster. [@MerriamWebster]. 2016a. April 25. People keep 1) saying they don’t know what ‘genderqueer’ means then 2) asking why we added it to the dictionary. Retrieved from [URL] on 26 May 2019.
Merriam-Webster. [@MerriamWebster]. 2016b. April 25. Nomophobia: fear of being without access to a working cell phone [URL]. Retrieved from [URL] on 26 May 2019.
Merriam-Webster. 2019. Retrieved from [URL] on 11 June 2019.
Milani, Tommaso M. forthcoming. Queer performativity. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, Kira Hall & Rusty Barrett (eds). New York: Oxford University Press.
Milroy, James & Milroy, Lesley. 1985. Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21(2): 339–384.
Mock, Janet. 2014. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. New York: Atria.
Moon, Rosamund. 1989. Objective or objectionable? Ideological aspects of dictionaries. ELR Journal 31: 59–94.
Moon, Rosamund. 2014. Meanings, ideologies, and learners’ dictionaries. In Proceedings of the XVI EURALEX International Congress: The User in Focus, 15–19 July 2014, Andrea Abel, Chiara Vettori & Natascia Ralli (eds), 85–105. Bolzano: Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism.
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2011. Taking Queer Linguistics further: Sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2121: 149–179.
Motschenbacher, Heiko. forthcoming. Language and sexual normativity. In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, Kira Hall & Rusty Barrett (eds). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mugglestone, Lynda. 2016. Description and prescription in dictionaries. In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, Philip Durkin (ed), 546–560. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nossem, Eva. 2018. Queering lexicography: Balancing power relations in dictionaries. In Queering Translation, Translating the Queer: Theory, Practice, Activism, Brian James Baer & Klaus Kaindl (eds), 172–187. New York: Routledge.
Nunn, Gary. 2015. February 23. Clarity about ‘the gay thing’. Oxford Dictionaries Online. [Internet Archive]. Retrieved from [URL][URL] on 6 June 2019.
Oxford Dictionaries Online. [@OxfordWords]. 2016. March 19. @garynunn1 on why it’s so important to use neutral language when writing about gay people: [URL]. Retrieved from [URL] on 12 June 2019.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Siegal, Allan M., Connolly, William G., Corbett, Philip B., Taylor, Jill, LaForge, Patrick & Wessling, Susan. 2015. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 5th edn. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Simpson, John. 2000. Preface to the Third Edition of the OED. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from [URL] on 21 May 2019.
Taylor, Talbot J. 1990. Which is to be master? The institutionalization of authority in the science of language. In Ideologies of Language, John E. Joseph & Talbot J. Taylor (eds), 9–26. New York: Routledge.
Turton, Stephen. 2019a. “Improper words”: Silencing same-sex desire in eighteenth-century general English dictionaries. Oxford Research in English 81: 9–36.
Turton, Stephen. 2019b. Unlawful entries: Buggery, sodomy, and the construction of sexual normativity in early English dictionaries. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 40(1): 81–112.
Turton, Stephen. forthcoming. Deadnaming as disformative utterance: The redefinition of trans womanhood on Urban Dictionary. Gender and Language 14(4).
Zimman, Lal, Davis, Jenny L. & Raclaw, Joshua (eds). 2014. Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Zimman, Lal. 2015. Transmasculinity and the voice: Gender assignment, identity, and presentation. In Language and Masculinities: Performance, Intersections, Dislocations, Tommaso M. Milani (ed), 197–219. New York: Routledge.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Maree, Claire, Jotaro Arimori & Megumi Watanabe
2024.
Towards Sustainable Practices of Diversity and Inclusion of SOGIESC in Japanese Language Education & Japanese Studies.
Japanese Studies ► pp. 1 ff.
Turton, Stephen
2021.
Segregating sex.
Journal of Language and Discrimination 5:1
Vişan, Ruxandra
2021.
On Dictionaries and Gender Representations.
Gender Studies 20:1
► pp. 149 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 september 2024. 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.