Language, gender and sexuality in South Africa

Tommaso M Milani

doi:10.5842/46-0-672

Abstract

This special issue on the theme of language, and sexuality in South Africa does not emerge in an academic vacuum. It is the continuation of a long-standing academic dialogue which has played out, inter alia, in two issues of the journal Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies dedicated to and (de Kadt 2002), and and gender (Reddy and de Kadt 2006), respectively1, as well as in a recent edited collection entitled Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change (Atanga, Ellece, Litosseliti and Sunderland 2013). In contrast, this special issue seeks explicitly to foreground sexuality as a category of investigation in its own right alongside gender. Of course, this is not to say that previous scholarship has ignored sexuality - quite the contrary (see e.g. Reddy (2002) onhomophobia in Southern Africa, and Reddy and Potgieter (2006) on the Zuma rape trial). Yet it is striking how analyses of language and sexuality have generally been framed under the umbrella titles of and gender/gender and language.

Highlights

Critical discourse analyst Teun van Dijk (1998, cited in Wodak 2000: 196) reminds us that titles are ideological tools; they constitute “macro-propositions” that frame, summarise, and foreground what will be said later
Like van Dijk, Gal is not writing about academic discourse, but her considerations on the politics of naming are inescapably germane for any reflection on labelling practices, including
To quote Rubin (1984: 149) once again, “[a] radical theory of sex must identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual oppression”. It is precisely issues of erotic injustice and sexual oppression that are addressed by the two articles that open this special issue, which look at media representations of rape and sex workers, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Critical discourse analyst Teun van Dijk (1998, cited in Wodak 2000: 196) reminds us that titles are ideological tools; they constitute “macro-propositions” that frame, summarise, and foreground what will be said later. To foreground sexuality alongside gender in this special issue is not a terminological triviality, but is a linguistic choice with a political aim.

Results

Conclusion