Abstract
This article is a critical engagement with Heiko Motschenbacher’s Linguistic Dimensions of Sexual Normativity (2022), which examines the discursive construction of sexuality through the lens of normativity in the aim of empiricizing queer linguistic data via corpus methods. Underpinned by a lexicalist stance based on a novel Foucauldian argument and a readaptation of sociological “labeling theory”, the book argues for a lexically based construction of sexual normativity through the words used to describe sexual beings or practices. Critiques are proposed here concerning the work’s treatment of Foucauldian theory, labeling theory, and lexical history. By opposing normativity but also enacting it via guidelines for inclusive language use, the work under study raises political questions about linguistic authority. A sociolexicological approach, seeing the lexicon as the site of structured variation as for any other language feature, offers a way out of binary essentialist/constructivist thinking and opens alternate perspectives on interrogating the queer past and present.
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