Abstract
This study investigates British and US gay men's comments on certain types of speech acts in their life narratives. This procedure yields folk linguistic evidence of the relationship between language and sexuality from a pragmatic point of view. At the theoretical level, the concept of “sexual speech act” (SSA) is introduced, distinguishing identity-related and desire-related SSAs. The analysis concentrates on gay men's comments on coming out as an identity-related SSA, and on seducing and flirting as desire-related SSAs. The narrated speech acts are analyzed quantitatively with respect to agency patterns, while a qualitative analysis of data extracts studies how narrators construct the illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects of SSAs, and how the SSAs are integrated in the contextual discursive construction of sexuality.
Highlights
Research on language and sexuality from a pragmatic point of view has gained ground since the mid-1990s
It is interesting to note that there is a substantial share of seducing activities involving under-age people. 39 out of 137 seductive acts (28.5%) are constructed as involving a boy or a child, which indicates that age differences e and, connected to it, power differences e play a key role for this type of sexual speech act” (SSA)
Another aspect that distinguishes flirting from seducing is that it occurs in constructions in the data that entail mutuality
Summary
Research on language and sexuality from a pragmatic point of view has gained ground since the mid-1990s. This study seeks to advance the pragmatic investigation of language and sexuality by offering a theoretical discussion of the notion of “sexual speech act” and by analyzing comments about such speech acts in the pre-Stonewall life narratives of British and US gay men. On one hand, this investigation is important because it addresses the lack of pragmatic research on heterosexual language users. The analysis shows that metalinguistic comments on speech acts provide better access to the functions and consequences of speech acts than observational language data
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