Review of ‘Speaking in queer tongues: Globalization and gay language’

Abstract

Reviews the book, Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and gay language edited by William L. Leap and Tom Boellstorff (2004). It is difficult to overstate the contributions anthropologist William L. Leap has made to the empirical study of how language is used by and against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender men and women. His 1995 edited volume, Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, imagination and appropriation in lesbian and gay languages, and his 1996 book, Word's Out: Gay men's English, gave focus and method to the field and inspired seasoned researchers and a generation of students to document and theorize the subjective, cultural, historical and political projects of sexuality evident in and constructed through the use of language. The ten papers presented in this text highlight local language usage in France, Germany, Canada, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and the United States, and each is what Leap and Boellstorff term in their introduction to the collection, 'an ethnographic statement as well as a commentary on the articulations of language and same-sex desire in a globalizing world'. In other words, the authors situate words in particular contexts and social relations while also interpreting those words as symptomatic of how globalization is shaping same-sex desires, affiliations, movements and citizenships. Language mixing is a kind of gesture to or evocation of another place and is, therefore, a way to announce differences and perform affiliations both locally and transnationally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)