Can You Be Gay and Lesbian in Australian English?

Abstract

The use of the expression gay and lesbian in a corpus of televised spoken Australian English is examined. It is shown that speakers treat this as a lexicalized expression, rather than a productively created conjunct of gay and lesbian . The meaning of the whole expression is not predictable from the meaning of the parts, in that gay and lesbian is used to refer to a broader set of people than the sets covered by the terms gay and lesbian individually. Gay and lesbian is also used in reference to a single non-specific individual, where a disjunct phrase with or would normally be appropriate. Additional support for the lexicalized status of this expression comes from the occasional use of gay and lesbians, with a single marker of plurality on what appears to be a conjoined noun phrase.