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Article published In:
Nonbinary pronouns as a site of advocacy in research and teaching
Edited by Lex Konnelly, Bronwyn M. Bjorkman and Lee Airton
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 11:2] 2022
► pp. 165–189

Language ideologies and legitimacy among nonbinary YouTubers

| University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

This paper explores how ten nonbinary North American YouTubers appeal to legitimizing discourses (van Leeuwen & Wodak 1999) as rationalizations for their choices regarding identity labels and pronouns. Given the local cultural salience of the implications of their language choices, the YouTubers rationalize their terminological choices through legitimizing discourses that prioritize historical facts, lexical definitions, and personal feelings. I examine how these discourses presuppose particular language ideologies, or implicit assumptions about what language users view as “appropriate” language practices. In the case of the nonbinary YouTubers, I illustrate that the vloggers’ legitimizing discourses appeal to and juxtapose a referentialist ideology (Hill 2008, Silverstein 1979), according to which words should describe the world truthfully, and an ideology of self-identification (Zimman 2019), which prioritizes individual agency. Crucially, deploying these legitimizing discourses is an important strategy that nonbinary YouTubers draw on as part of their advocacy and education projects.

Keywords: nonbinary, transgender, language ideology, legitimization, YouTube, discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic activism and gender
  • 3.Language and legitimacy
  • 4.Language ideologies and semiotic ideologies
  • 5.Nonbinary communities and YouTube
  • 6.Methods
  • 7.Legitimizing discourses
    • 7.1Discourse of historical fact
    • 7.2Discourse of lexical definition
    • 7.3Discourse of personal feeling
    • 7.4Feelings about definitions
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 August 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.20021.cro
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