Event Details

We are welcoming Professor William Leap (American University, Washington DC and Florida Atlantic University) to give a talk entitled ‘Disgruntled flamingos and the “… kindness of strangers”’

The seminar will take place On Teams.

Abstract

Lavender Languages studies emerged in the 1990s when mainstream academic research and social policy were still pathologizing gendered and sexual diversity(s). Queer linguistics added much needed frameworks for theorizing the richness of linguistic practices that lavender language/linguistic inquiry then began to affirm. There have been points of tension between lavender language studies and queer linguistics, including: How and where does research position the gendered/sexual speaking subject (the language user) in linguistic description and linguistic theory:? Can there “be” a gendered/sexualized speaking subject if gender and sexuality are performative outcomes of language use? Does the language of sexuality reflect interiorized process (e.g. desire), or, material conditions e.g. (lived experience)? If gender is not a binary formation, then language and gender is not organized in binary terms; so what organizing principles can we turn to for gender-related discourse and text-making? With certain exceptions, workers in lavender language studies and in queer linguistics have addressed these tensions, mutually dependent “on the kindness of strangers” to find resolutions to joint problems. The effectiveness of these resolutions will be found in how effectively the resolutions lead lavender/queer scholars to upstage efforts to demonize gendered and sexual non-normativity coming from today’s neo-liberal and neoconservative voices.

Speaker biography

William L. Leap established the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, the nowinternational, annual forum for LGBTQ language studies. He manages the annual Lavender Languages Summer Institute at Florida Atlantic University. The founding senior editor (emeritus) of the Journal of Language & Sexuality (2011-2021), he has authored or edited 10 books and edited collections addressing language, sexuality and social inequalities, and additional publications on American Indian English and (with Ellen Lewin) lesbian and gay practice in anthropology. His current research focuses on the queer linguistic potential associated with translanguaging practices found in American Indian reservation settings, in Black townships in the Capetown ZA metropolitan area, and in the Pashto-speaking villages in northwestern Pakistan during the “War on Terror”.