Production, circulation and deconstruction of gender norms in LGBTQ speech practices

Abstract

This paper investigates interdiscursivity in talk about gender norms in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ) community. Drawing from field work conducted among gay and lesbian parents, transgender people, and the Drag King community, I show how accounts like les hommes sont comme ça (‘Men are like that’) or les femmes sont comme ça (‘Women act that way’) emerging in discourse about pregnancy reveal gender-based norms and their relationship to social conditions. Adopting a linguistic anthropology perspective, while paying particular attention to agency, categorization, circulation, and recontextualization processes, I show how gender norms are constructed and deconstructed through interactional, semantic, and morphosyntactic patterns found in a variety of multisemiotic mediums (e.g. texts, multiparty conversations and forum exchanges, images) and in a diversity of contexts. In addition to its contribution to the study of gender and language, this article takes new steps in the ongoing development of membership categorization analysis and queer linguistics.