Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality

This volume showcases ten years of research on language, gender and sexuality informed by queer theory. In line with a queer dislike for any normalizing discourse and practice, the book gives a multi-faceted set of applications of queer theoretical ideas to linguistic analysis. The chapters that open the book engage with theoretical debates about identity and desire, and the relationships between these concepts. The following contributions offer linguistic precision to two key areas of queer theoretical interest, namely the critique of heteronormativity and the deconstruction of the gender binary. The final chapters pick up on some of the thematic threads of the book, but locate them within recent developments in the study of language and space. With examples from a variety of sociopolitical contexts – Denmark, Greece, Serbia, Sweden, South Africa, USA – and discursive sites – phrasebooks, school interactions, literary texts, as well as online dating sites and chats – the book gives a critical overview of how gender, sexuality and power can be queered through linguistic analysis.