Brian W King
The University of Hong Kong, School of English, Faculty Member
- Languages and Linguistics, Gender, Discourse Analysis, Gender and Sexuality, Queer Theory, Sociolinguistics, and 97 moreQueer Studies, Computer-Mediated Communication, Pragmatics, Space and Place, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Masculinities, Interdisciplinarity, Language and Identity, Computer Mediated Communication, Language and Power, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Language and Culture, Sex, Gender Discourse, Language in Society, Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Social Production of Space, Sexualities education, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Educational Linguistics, Intersexuality, Eroticism, Linguistic ethnography, Gender Space, Language, Space and Place, Sexual Systems, Language Learning and Identity, Language and Identity, Online Communities of Practice, Language and Sexuality, Communities of Practice (Languages And Linguistics), Language and Masculinities, Language and Place, Semiotic Social Space, Linguistics, Critical sociolinguistics, Language and Social Interaction, Language and Desire, New Zealand Studies, Critical Discourse Studies, Linguistic Anthropology, Embodiment, Language and Embodiment, Hip-Hop Studies, Sex Education, Hip Hop Culture, Sexual Agency, Geographies of sexuality, Spatio Temporal Analysis, Queer Linguistics, Queer Geography, Global South, Heteronormativity, Hegemonic Masculinity, Pacific Studies, Sexuality education, Language, Gender, and Sexuality, Applied Linguistics, Language in the Workplace, Intersex, Second Language Writing, Communities of practice, Teaching English As A Foreign Language, Language socialization, Online Communities of Practice, Wikipedia Studies, English language teaching, Language Learning motivation, Language Learning, teaching academic writing to ESL or L2 students, Publics, Writer identity, Technology In Second Language Learning, Sexuality and Second Language Learning, Virginity, Male Virginity, Abstinence, Anthropology of Food, Culinary Linguistics, Workplace Communication, New Zealand English, Quotatives, Rapport Management, Corpus Linguistics, Biopolitics, Somatechnics, Research Ethics, Discourse Studies, Citizenship Education, Critical Geopolitics, Language and Globalization, Language and Globalisation, Mobility/Mobilities, Metapragmatics, Language and Gender, Sexual Agency in Women, Biopower and Biopolitics, and Raciolinguisticsedit
- Brian's research interests include sociolinguistic investigations of second language socialization as well as languag... moreBrian's research interests include sociolinguistic investigations of second language socialization as well as language use in relation to sexuality, gender, and spatiality in both face-to-face and online interaction, as well as explorations of socio-sexual literacy. He uses ethnographic observation, discourse analysis, and corpus-based analysis in his research.edit
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The commentary authors encourage us to consider that a raciolinguistic perspective is better equipped than ‘raciolinguistics’ to interrogate the racializing aspects of liberal humanist thinking in our field and allow us to shed... more
The commentary authors encourage us to consider that a raciolinguistic perspective is better equipped than ‘raciolinguistics’ to interrogate the racializing aspects of liberal humanist thinking in our field and allow us to shed colonialist roots. I align to this standpoint, proposing Foucauldian biopolitics as a compatible critical orientation well suited to going even beyond undoing raciolinguistics to cast light on its confluences with various perspectives such as queer linguistics, trans linguistics and feminist linguistics. Foucault’s biopolitics binds racism and sexuality together in colonialism, and the pathologization of trans bodies and intersex bodies cannot be separated from racialization. Placing these perspectives in confluence will assist with the difficult structural dismantling that is still to be done, aiding in the maturing of sociolinguistics.
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This chapter considers recent advances in communications technology as part of the online/offline nexus that characterizes the contemporary social experience of those with internet access. The affordances and constraints associated with... more
This chapter considers recent advances in communications technology as part of the online/offline nexus that characterizes the contemporary social experience of those with internet access. The affordances and constraints associated with different platforms are outlined, tracing how they might have influenced pronoun use and how they may continue to do so in future. The chapter covers topics related to pronoun use such as register, politeness, character limitation, and pronoun innovation. It also explores how online discourses about pronouns, as part of movements towards gender inclusivity, have contributed to the politiciziation of pronouns.
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The human body displays an array of variations of sex characteristics, ranging from expected, normalized variations to minority ones that do not meet medical and/or social norms of binary male and female. Terminology’s use in society is... more
The human body displays an array of variations of sex characteristics, ranging from expected, normalized variations to minority ones that do not meet medical and/or social norms of binary male and female. Terminology’s use in society is at the heart of coping and agency in the embodied experience of people with minority sex characteristics. Naming and classification systems have material consequences for general access to health care but also mental wellbeing. To date, the small amount of language-focused scholarship on sex characteristics and variation has been epistemologically oriented to the metropole. That is, theories developed in ‘global centres’ have been applied to data in ‘peripheral locales’ rather than being reframed or broadened by the ideas there encountered. This study uses metapragmatic discourse analysis (i.e. analysis of talk about language) to mitigate cultural appropriation and commodification, treating interviewees as subjects who analyze language instead of as mere voices in data. Analysis of interview data with a Hong Kong intersex-bodied health professional serves to reveal affordances and constraints of the globally circulating yet locally interpreted terminology that is available in English and/or Cantonese, a focus that brings Asian and multilingual perspectives into the conversation. Links are drawn to findings in other geopolitical regions not by providing ‘cases’ for further universalizing discourses but via an interdependent cross-fertilization of ideas.
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In this article, we query binaries of mobility and immobility in language studies via an empirical focus on language/social practices in a site that bridges the global North and global South. To do so, we work from a Southern praxis... more
In this article, we query binaries of mobility and immobility in language studies via an empirical focus on language/social practices in a site that bridges the global North and global South. To do so, we work from a Southern praxis perspective to analyze discourses/knowledges informing the performance of accounts from Cambodian men, interviewed about transactional same-sex relationship practices between (ostensibly immobile) local men and (ostensibly mobile) male tourists to Cambodia from the global North. The analysis focuses on a process in which participants' chronotopic awareness of language shapes a negotiation of power, knowledge, and action with respect to these relationships. Encompassing the discursive positioning of selves and others through the deployment of relevant and affective chronotopes, the talk from these Cambodian men allows us to challenge assumptions about (im)mobility, awareness, agency, sexuality, and power, and demonstrate how these are accessed in multiple ways at this site of North/South contact.
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This chapter provides a critical reflection, with a focus on the geopolitical aspect of its aims. Two notions of 'geopolitical context' are identified in the chapters. One approach views it as a single political entity of some description... more
This chapter provides a critical reflection, with a focus on the geopolitical aspect of its aims. Two notions of 'geopolitical context' are identified in the chapters. One approach views it as a single political entity of some description (e.g. Australia, Indonesia). The other approach views it as a relational process, a type of politics that crosses borders and reflects global power relations (e.g. Australian-ness and Indonesian-ness merging and/or colliding). A critical set of questions is posed. What is a geopolitical lens, and can geopolitical practices be distinguished from ethnic or cultural practices? Do we need geopolitics? Or do we really just mean sociocultural and national contexts? Might we fruitfully theorize a ‘geopolitical order’ alongside the gender and culture orders explored in the chapters? Finally, it is asserted that a feminist approach to geopolitics is needed, but one that is radical enough to join hands with subaltern geopolitics and decolonizing interventions. We must look away from our 'lens' into the geopolitical mirror, taking seriously the notion that our academic fields are geopolitical apparatuses themselves. We must create permanent ruptures in academic geopolitical injustice while also rupturing the gender order in the workplace. It is a truly feminist geopolitical intervention.
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This study aims to develop a more fully theorised concept of biocitizenship as part of the teaching of intersex in critical approaches to sex education. It advances a perspective in which the options of students, as future parents and as... more
This study aims to develop a more fully theorised concept of biocitizenship as part of the teaching of intersex in critical approaches to sex education. It advances a perspective in which the options of students, as future parents and as biocitizens, are not limited to compliance to biomedicine, but one in which formal education experiences might prepare them to be neighbours and parents who, as allies of intersex family/community members, can engage in political activism to effect change where deemed necessary. Data take the form of classroom talk drawn from a study based in an Aotearoa/New Zealand secondary school, focusing on transgressive acts of citizenship by an intersex activist visiting the sex education classroom and assisting students with social justice projects. Transcripts of audio-recorded classroom interactions are analysed using a version of critical discourse analysis that directs attention to semiotic modes such as visual cues of bodies as well as affect. Findings reveal that biocitizenship can also include those who accept intersex bodies, altering established practices to accommodate those bodies and the people who live them.
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In this chapter, I contribute to this volume by addressing the potential for applied linguistics to participate in the critical investigation of biopolitics. More specifically, I ask how epistemologies and ethical aspirations of applied... more
In this chapter, I contribute to this volume by addressing the potential for applied linguistics to participate in the critical investigation of biopolitics. More specifically, I ask how epistemologies and ethical aspirations of applied linguistics might assist researchers to contribute responsibly to knowledge about the “anatomo-politics of the human body” (Foucault, 1980, p. 139). I prioritize, as a set of localized biopolitical social justice projects in multiple geopolitical locations, the human rights of people who live intersex embodiments. Thus, I narrow the focus in this case to the widespread hegemonic regulation of intersex bodies by biomedicine whereby intersex people (i.e. those whose natural bodies do not fit in the male/female binary) are forced into a heteronormative and bionormative system of hegemonic coercion. Biomedicine is the dominant contemporary technology of the body and therefore at the centre of biopolitics.
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Embodiment has long been of interest to scholars of language in society, and yet theoretical discussions of the inseparability of language and the body have been paradoxically minimal until quite recently. Focusing on the processes by... more
Embodiment has long been of interest to scholars of language in society, and yet theoretical discussions of the inseparability of language and the body have been paradoxically minimal until quite recently. Focusing on the processes by which sexualized bodies are understood, this chapter examines two research case studies—intersex bodies and male bodies—to outline the ways that language and sexuality scholarship can contribute to knowledge of the confluence of the social and the soma during social interaction. Bodies are both subjective and social: in one sense we have subjective, embodied knowledge of what it means to live in our sexualized bodies and 'speak from' them as part of lived experience, and in another sense our bodies are also observed from outside and 'spoken about' as sexual. The analysis presented here explores the relationship between physical features of bodies, language, and power, and links these insights to notions of confluence, demonstrating that bodies can be unruly, obtrusive, overdetermined, and excessive. The chapter considers the implications of this analysis for language use, intelligibility, and sexual agency.
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This study examines Hip Hop styling, gender, and sexual agency in a sex education class. The focus is on the indirect indexing of gender by a female-bodied student through the Hip Hop cultural personas of braggadocio and swagger,... more
This study examines Hip Hop styling, gender, and sexual agency in a sex education class. The focus is on the indirect indexing of gender by a female-bodied student through the Hip Hop cultural personas of braggadocio and swagger, providing a rare look at 'mundane' performances of Hip Hop and its relationship to gender. Discourse analysis demonstrates that she used Hip Hop styling to manage ascriptions of sexual agency during a discussion task as she repeatedly recontextualized the telling of a classroom incident. Her language use afforded the trying out of identity meanings and required complex discursive work in relation to constructs such as masculinity, femininity, straight and lesbian. These processes assisted her to negotiate how sexual agency might fit with her various identifications and identities. Therefore, the potential for Hip Hop styling to connect identities with language has implications for both sexuality education and the study of sociolinguistics.
Research Interests: Critical Discourse Studies, New Zealand Studies, Language and Gender, Sexualities education, Gender and Sexuality, and 10 moreGender Discourse, Language in Society, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Critical sociolinguistics, Language and Sexuality, Hip-Hop Studies, Sex Education, Hip Hop Culture, Sexual Agency, and Sexual Agency in Women
This study focuses on language in interaction to investigate digital queer geographies. Data analysis focuses on temporal aspects of online text-only chatting in addition to the spatial and discursive. Discourse analysis is applied to... more
This study focuses on language in interaction to investigate digital queer geographies. Data analysis focuses on temporal aspects of online text-only chatting in addition to the spatial and discursive. Discourse analysis is applied to interactions in which men who desire men interact in a specific type of place semiotics. Extracts are taken from a corpus of 300,000 words of chatting data that was gathered from online chat rooms. Ongoing dialogues occur simultaneously in these conversations but in layers created by different scales of time, and discursive links are made to yet higher timescales via references to spatialities both within and outside of the chat room. Different experiences of space and time (i.e. chronotopes) intersect periodically in a process in which the constant use of language shapes a negotiation of normativities. The analysis in this study will examine conversations to explore how this particular process relates to the subversion or continuance of homonormativity by the participants, shedding light on the role of language and semiotics in queer geographies.
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This study aims to contribute to emerging dialogues on language, sexuality and gender, focusing on the performance and subversion of gender and sexual normativities in a New Zealand sexuality education classroom. In terms of theory, the... more
This study aims to contribute to emerging dialogues on language, sexuality and gender, focusing on the performance and subversion of gender and sexual normativities in a New Zealand sexuality education classroom. In terms of theory, the aim is to focus on New Zealand's outlying, unsettled 'global Southern' status. It also aims to heuristically separate New Zealand from the global North to explore local relationships between sexuality and gender that might otherwise be imperceptible in the glare of globalization. In two critical incidents, transnational Pasifika boys use language to perform what appears to be sexual fluidity and sexual objectification of the self. A transformation occurs in which a local version of hegemonic masculinity is countered, and the analytical purchase of the concept of heteronormativity becomes questionable in this context. Existing Southern theories from Oceania provide a possible pathway to better understanding the sociolinguistics of gender and sexuality in New Zealand and in the world at large.
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This chapter examines the wide and fruitful deployment of the community of practice framework in language and the workplace research. Past research is critically reviewed in order to explore the affordances and constraints of positioning... more
This chapter examines the wide and fruitful deployment of the community of practice framework in language and the workplace research. Past research is critically reviewed in order to explore the affordances and constraints of positioning aggregates of co-workers in this way. During the earliest applications of the notion of communities of practice in workplace research it became obvious that it can be a powerful theoretical model for examining both the actions of workplace participants and the social structures that they reproduce and resist. Building on such insight, the author recommends that a nuanced and layered understanding of ‘communities’ or ‘groups’ and their practices can further enrich research in language and the workplace as the field moves forward. Future directions are suggested as a way to expand understanding of communities of practice at work (and their frontiers), including research into mobile workplaces, workplaces with mostly transient membership, and the relationship between workplaces, community belonging, layered timescales and spatial trajectories.
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This chapter explores some of the ways in which sociopragmatic research has made an increasingly valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between language and gender over the last few decades. We use the term... more
This chapter explores some of the ways in which sociopragmatic research has made an increasingly valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between language and gender over the last few decades. We use the term sociopragmatics to cover research which examines the relationship between social context and discourse, and we focus in particular on the pragmatics of power and politeness in language and gender research.
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Although genitalia only make up a tiny portion of the human body’s surface area, their shape and appearance have great consequence for life trajectories and the ways in which bodies and people are understood. Intersex people, born with... more
Although genitalia only make up a tiny portion of the human body’s surface area, their shape and appearance have great consequence for life trajectories and the ways in which bodies and people are understood. Intersex people, born with bodies that are not classifiable under a binary male/female construct, are increasingly embracing intersex identities, but intelligibility in society can be difficult to realize because cultural models and language serve to render their bodies unintelligible. This study explores a case study from New Zealand, deploying discourse analysis to examine two sources of data: recordings in a secondary school sexuality education classroom and published government documents. Cultural models of binary male-female hold sway in both data sources, but by looking past this apparent dissonance during analysis it becomes clear that the classroom participants stop orienting to the binary. In this way they speak intersex genitals and bodies into view despite the lack of specific lexical items for the task.
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This study explores the writing of Wikipedia articles as a form of authentic writing for learners of English in Hong Kong. Adopting Second Language Socialization and Identity approaches to language learning inquiry, it responds to an... more
This study explores the writing of Wikipedia articles as a form of authentic writing for learners of English in Hong Kong. Adopting Second Language Socialization and Identity approaches to language learning inquiry, it responds to an identified shortage of research on computer-mediated socialization and language socialization. Focus is placed on the development of participant identities as valid writers of English texts for a perceived mass public. As part of Wikipedia writing praxis, writers are, to varying degrees, socialized into the community of Wikipedians. This study focuses on Hong Kong university students’ reported experiences as legitimate peripheral participants, looking at the early stages of potential community membership. Ethnographic observations serve to provide a description of both the classroom and the Wikipedia site as dynamic social settings. Data sources include field notes, participant- generated written reflections, and transcripts of focus group interviews. Through these various channels it becomes clear that perception of a potentially vast reading public wields a subtle but important influence, and experiences with the Wikipedia community also play a role, motivating some participants to think deeply about their writing and prompting them to invest in writer identities online and in their local context.
Research Interests: Teaching English as a Second Language, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Computer-Mediated Communication, Second Language Writing, Communities of practice, and 13 moreTeaching English As A Foreign Language, Language Learning and Identity, Language socialization, Online Communities of Practice, Wikipedia Studies, English language teaching, Language Learning motivation, Language Learning, teaching academic writing to ESL or L2 students, ICT in teaching and learning English language, Publics, Writer identity, and Technology In Second Language Learning
Language use mediates knowledge of sexuality, a fact that leads to important questions about the “putting into words” of sex and sexuality in educational contexts. In the broader institutional environment of “school,” language plays a key... more
Language use mediates knowledge of sexuality, a fact that leads to important questions about the “putting into words” of sex and sexuality in educational contexts. In the broader institutional environment of “school,” language plays a key role in the narrowly gendered construction of heterosexualities and the problematic othering of non-normative sexualities. In sexuality education classes (i.e., classes where sexuality enjoys a sustained pedagogical focus), the same themes arise, but it is through talk that students begin to come to terms with their own identities as sexual subjects in control of their desires. Talk plays a similarly important role during the learning of additional languages, for sexuality cannot be separated from the formation of identities in the new language. Through inquiry into cultural discourses around sexuality, learners can acquire an understanding of socio-sexual literacy in a target culture. Sexual desires and identities can also be closely tied to language learning investments and motivations, thereby influencing success or failure with language learning as well as specific learning pathways.
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This paper applies a queer lens to one person’s account of an intersex body and self in order to examine the ‘intersections’ of masculinity with constructions of biologically grounded innateness. The approach taken to the analysis of... more
This paper applies a queer lens to one person’s account of an intersex body and self in order to examine the ‘intersections’ of masculinity with constructions of biologically grounded innateness. The approach taken to the analysis of discourse is poststructuralist in orientation, drawing on data from media interviews and group discussion recordings. Its application reveals the limitations of the social category ‘man’ as a location for masculinity. Through narrative and talk in interaction the informant strategically mobilises normative discourses of masculinity, appropriating these dominant discourses and constructing a subject position as intersex while drawing upon binary terminology (both biological and social) in order to construct a non-binary body and self. The examination of masculinity in this person’s case cannot be separated from questions of the innate. This is because innate difference forms an important part of the informant’s experience with masculinity. To some extent, masculinity and femininity ‘float free’ of body parts or characteristics which have been consolidated as direct indexes of maleness and femaleness, yet this case study supports the idea that the freedom to float has limits. Therefore, to dismiss innateness from discussions of masculinity is to place limits upon our ability to hear and see, and thus to perpetuate the unintelligibility of intersex experience.
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This study examines the language-driven aspects of the formation of a classroom-based community of practice (CofP), placing emphasis on ways in which researchers can verify the status of observed practices. Discourse analysis is... more
This study examines the language-driven aspects of the formation of a classroom-based community of practice (CofP), placing emphasis on ways in which researchers can verify the status of observed practices. Discourse analysis is reinforced by such an evidence-based understanding of the social milieu of a research site. However, when determining whether an aggregate of people is functioning as a CofP, the nature of the measuring stick is a vital question. When institutional forces have brought a group of participants together, how can an observer verify empirically the dynamic development of mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire? In a sample case study, representative features outlined by Wenger (1998:130–31) are identified, and their emergence traced, via analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes and audio recordings. These features provide evidence of the development of localised practices (i.e. ways of doing grounded in this community) as distinct from more widely recognisable practices. Identifying the difference increases the likelihood that results of discourse analysis can be useful to educators.
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This study examines youth sexual agency during sexuality lessons in a New Zealand secondary school. Employing poststructuralist discourse analysis, examples are highlighted in which girls (and boys) gain access to sexual agency. Through... more
This study examines youth sexual agency during sexuality lessons in a New Zealand secondary school. Employing poststructuralist discourse analysis, examples are highlighted in which girls (and boys) gain access to sexual agency. Through conversation, girls are simultaneously positioned as ‘asked’ and ‘pursuer’ and boys as ‘asker’ and ‘pursued’ whilst abstinence and virginity are imbued with sexual agency for both sexes. This study demonstrates that it is discursive versions of agency which hold central importance in youth sexual development. Thus the ‘capacities for sexual action’ which are fostered in classroom conversation cannot plausibly be separated from agentive sexual practices of young people beyond the classroom’s walls.
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Talk about food has often been overlooked in existing research of workplace discourse. In earlier research, we established that food talk clearly ‘indexes’ interactional boundaries and informality in typical New Zealand workplaces. In... more
Talk about food has often been overlooked in existing research of workplace discourse. In earlier research, we established that food talk clearly ‘indexes’ interactional boundaries and informality in typical New Zealand workplaces. In this paper we identify the very different status of food as a legitimate topic in Māori workplaces. Within the normative constraints of the meeting genre, analysis compares food talk as mundane in a Maori organisation, but trivial in a Pākehā (majority group) context. Food talk thus provides an unexpected means of accessing information about distinctive cultural norms, offering an innovative lens on areas of cross-cultural sensitivity.
Talk about food at work is typically overlooked as peripheral, just like other relationally-oriented discourse (e.g. small talk and humour). Drawing on a data set of workplace interactions recorded in formal and informal settings, we... more
Talk about food at work is typically overlooked as peripheral, just like other relationally-oriented discourse (e.g. small talk and humour). Drawing on a data set of workplace interactions recorded in formal and informal settings, we demonstrate how food talk erodes and troubles formality boundaries. The distinctive distribution of food talk at the boundaries of workplace interaction
creates a duality: because it occurs at boundaries, food talk is regarded as irrelevant; when it occurs in non-boundary positions, it has the interactional effect of reducing formality, regardless of its legitimacy as a business topic. In practice, food talk “indexes” boundaries and informality. Each time it occurs at boundaries, or creates informality, this indexicality is reinforced. We demonstrate just how food talk indexes informality in meeting talk.
creates a duality: because it occurs at boundaries, food talk is regarded as irrelevant; when it occurs in non-boundary positions, it has the interactional effect of reducing formality, regardless of its legitimacy as a business topic. In practice, food talk “indexes” boundaries and informality. Each time it occurs at boundaries, or creates informality, this indexicality is reinforced. We demonstrate just how food talk indexes informality in meeting talk.
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This study explores the notion that we become sexual subjects within our surroundings rather than being a priori sexualised subjects. It addresses the questions of how the erotic and ‘place’ (our socially understood surroundings) interact... more
This study explores the notion that we become sexual subjects within our surroundings rather than being a priori sexualised subjects. It addresses the questions of how the erotic and ‘place’ (our socially understood surroundings) interact in an online, text-only, mostly linguistic environment to create an erotic atmosphere, and how eroticised atmosphere relates to sexual subject formation. This article focuses on discourse analyses of extracts from a corpus in which public erotic discussions unfold between participants who are (ostensibly) men who desire men. During online conversation, a ‘room’ spatiality is continually performed, sometimes relying upon idealised images of ‘erotic oases’ from the offline world to build an erotic atmosphere. These offline erotic oases are places of ‘deviance’ characterised by semi-public sex (e.g. parks, public washrooms, and saunas). This type of atmosphere is contested by some participants as a ‘back room’ construction, inappropriate for the public chat room, while others embrace it. Analysis demonstrates that eroticism, spatiality, and language adapt to one another along a reformulating path. The ‘where’ of the erotic is seen to be as important as what is said or done. This suggests that a more nuanced understanding of language and the erotic depends on spatial investigations as much as discursive theory.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Social Sciences, Sociolinguistics, Social Networking, Language and Gender, and 12 moreSpace and Place, Virtual Communities, Gender and Sexuality, Computer-Mediated Communication, Gender, Political communication, Eroticism, Language and Sexuality, Political Identity, Online Media, Media theory and Research, and Mobile and Location-Based Media
This study attempts to use space/place as a tool in discourse analysis, focusing on the immediate surroundings of interaction. It investigates the ongoing performance of sexualised place (and place-based sexuality) through the use of... more
This study attempts to use space/place as a tool in discourse analysis, focusing on the immediate surroundings of interaction. It investigates the ongoing performance of sexualised place (and place-based sexuality) through the use of language in online chat-rooms. The central questions focus on how the shared imaginary of a room helps to shape the performances of genders and sexualities unfolding ‘there’ and how the gendered and sexualised discourses sexualise the room. Guided by the triangle of space model (Gotved, 2002, 2006), attention is paid to the chat rooms’ user interface, the spatial metaphor of the ‘room,’ and to participant interaction as part of the three dimensions of online spatiality. Analysis focuses on data taken from a corpus of computer-mediated chat-room interaction. These are queer places for performances (in this case) of non-heterosexual, masculine identities and desires, which are marginalized in our heteronormative society. Gotved’s model of online spatiality allows linguistic analysis to demonstrate that social understandings of space and place interact with individuals and communities on a mutually reformulating path.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Queer Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Social Sciences, Pragmatics, and 13 moreSociolinguistics, Social Networking, Queer Theory, Space and Place, Virtual Communities, Gender and Sexuality, Computer-Mediated Communication, Gender, Political communication, Political Identity, Online Media, Media theory and Research, and Mobile and Location-Based Media
The prolific use of vernacular like in the speech of teenagers in New Zealand (and abroad) has stimulated some debate concerning the efficacy and desirability of its various forms. Sociolinguists have traced the origin and development of... more
The prolific use of vernacular like in the speech of teenagers in New Zealand (and abroad) has stimulated some debate concerning the efficacy and desirability of its various forms. Sociolinguists have traced the origin and development of one form (i.e. be like as a quotative marker), convincingly demonstrating that it is put to systematic use by speakers. The contribution of the present study is to examine ways in which quotative be like is deployed as a meaningful resource during talk in interaction. The data have been taken from recordings of classroom sexuality-education activities in a Year 12 Health programme in New Zealand. Participants deploy be like as a resource for the management of conversation, using it to frame their contributions as versions of opinions which are up for analysis. Be like stimulates collaboration and/or evaluation from the other participants, and after debate the original version can be modified or retracted without fear of censure. Concurrently be like enables rapport management, allowing for face work and the fulfilling of role-based responsibilities while speakers pursue the transactional goals of a sexuality-focused lesson. These findings demonstrate that be like is a means to social and communicative ends for these adolescent speakers of English, adding to a factual knowledge base about vernacular like which can critically inform value judgments about its desirability.
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This article addresses problems encountered during the construction and analysis of a synchronic corpus of computer-mediated discourse. The purpose of creating this corpus was to conduct a study of conversational interaction,... more
This article addresses problems encountered during the construction and analysis of a synchronic corpus of computer-mediated discourse. The purpose of creating this corpus was to conduct a study of conversational interaction, particularly in the synchronous online chat medium (i.e. real-time typed conversation). This corpus is not primarily for the examination of the linguistic idiosyncrasies of the online chatting medium; rather it is to be used for corpus-based sociolinguistic inquiry into gendered and sexualised discourses. Therefore the corpus data needed considerable adaptation during compilation and analysis to prevent those idiosyncrasies from acting as noise in the data. Adaptations include responses to spam (in the form of ‘adbots’), cyber-orthography, the ubiquity of names, over-lapping conversations, and challenges of annotation. Difficulties with gaining participant permissions and demographic information also required significant attention. Attempted solutions to these corpus construction and analysis challenges, which are closely bound to the fields of both cyber-research and corpus linguistics, are outlined.
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This study works against heteronormativity, which is prevalent in the SLA field, adding queer perspectives to the growing body of research which is questioning a narrower, one-dimensional view of the language learner. There is a common... more
This study works against heteronormativity, which is prevalent in the SLA field, adding queer perspectives to the growing body of research which is questioning a narrower, one-dimensional view of the language learner. There is a common belief that learning an additional language (L2) while surrounded by the L2 in a naturalistic setting is best. Theories of identity and language learning have destabilized this notion, pointing to the effects of ongoing identity construction on learning. While forming identities in the L2, a learner invests in certain groups of speakers (often imagined communities), leading them to seek out such speakers. Access to speakers in real naturalistic settings is not guaranteed, and social marginalization often prevents learning. This qualitative study explores the naturalistic language-learning experiences of three Korean gay men, whose marginalized sexual identities assist them with access while articulating with other aspects of their identities (race, nationality) as well as sexual desire.
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The proposed project will be the first research study to investigate the use of intersex/DSD (and related) terminology in an Asian context or a multilingual context through a focus on Hong Kong. In alignment with international trends, in... more
The proposed project will be the first research study to investigate the use of intersex/DSD (and related) terminology in an Asian context or a multilingual context through a focus on Hong Kong. In alignment with international trends, in 2016 the UN Committee against Torture released a report on Hong Kong in which they unequivocally identified intersex children as a group being “subject to unnecessary and irreversible surgery” and expressing concern about the “long term physical and psychological suffering caused by such practices” (UN Committee against Torture (CAT), 2016, sec. 28). The committee made the strong recommendation that the HKSAR should guarantee respect for the bodily autonomy and psychological well-being of intersex people via sound communication.
The proposed project builds on insights from published research by the Principal Investigator. Participants (in the USA) identified medicalized language as a key barrier to their efforts to convey intersex lived experience as part of the logic of understanding intersex bodies. The nature and scope of such communication across stakeholders in Hong Kong has not been studied empirically. In light of the existing plethora of competing/flexible language in English, the proposed research is interested in how communication in Hong Kong might further be affected by the combined use of English and Cantonese across language domains (e.g. home, hospital, or clinic).
Intersex traits are statistically uncommon body traits that do not meet medical and social norms for genital and/or chromosomal arrangements. Such traits are also sometimes described, mainly in medical contexts, as “Disorders of Sex Development” or “DSDs” whereas large numbers of those born with intersex traits reject this terminology as unnecessarily pathologizing (because it conflates benign bodily variations with malignant medical threats) and prefer “Differences of Sex Development” (InterAct & Lambda Legal, 2018). This varied terminology and its deployment has serious material consequences for intersex-bodied people worldwide. To investigate communication of these bodily variations, the project proposes an innovative research design that: (a) integrates the insights from a range of disciplines; (b) draws on a large corpus of recorded interview and focus group data; (c) uses a metapragmatic discourse analytic framework; and (d) examines the sociocultural dimensions of the local perception of intersex traits. Perspectives on localized structures around intersex embodiment will be sought through up to 50 recorded interviews with Hong Kong stakeholders.
The proposed research has great potential to manifest itself in policy changes surrounding health care practice and public understanding of intersex traits.
surrounding health care practice and public understanding of intersex traits.
The proposed project builds on insights from published research by the Principal Investigator. Participants (in the USA) identified medicalized language as a key barrier to their efforts to convey intersex lived experience as part of the logic of understanding intersex bodies. The nature and scope of such communication across stakeholders in Hong Kong has not been studied empirically. In light of the existing plethora of competing/flexible language in English, the proposed research is interested in how communication in Hong Kong might further be affected by the combined use of English and Cantonese across language domains (e.g. home, hospital, or clinic).
Intersex traits are statistically uncommon body traits that do not meet medical and social norms for genital and/or chromosomal arrangements. Such traits are also sometimes described, mainly in medical contexts, as “Disorders of Sex Development” or “DSDs” whereas large numbers of those born with intersex traits reject this terminology as unnecessarily pathologizing (because it conflates benign bodily variations with malignant medical threats) and prefer “Differences of Sex Development” (InterAct & Lambda Legal, 2018). This varied terminology and its deployment has serious material consequences for intersex-bodied people worldwide. To investigate communication of these bodily variations, the project proposes an innovative research design that: (a) integrates the insights from a range of disciplines; (b) draws on a large corpus of recorded interview and focus group data; (c) uses a metapragmatic discourse analytic framework; and (d) examines the sociocultural dimensions of the local perception of intersex traits. Perspectives on localized structures around intersex embodiment will be sought through up to 50 recorded interviews with Hong Kong stakeholders.
The proposed research has great potential to manifest itself in policy changes surrounding health care practice and public understanding of intersex traits.
surrounding health care practice and public understanding of intersex traits.
Research Interests:
Three closely related questions are addressed in this paper: (1) Do secondary-school students who discuss sex, love and desire during classroom activities use linguistic and discursive processes to position self and other as agents in... more
Three closely related questions are addressed in this paper: (1) Do secondary-school students who discuss sex, love and desire during classroom activities use linguistic and discursive processes to position self and other as agents in relation to youth sexuality? (2) If so, what processes do they employ to perform or ascribe youth sexual agency in this context, and (3) if not, then what processes do they employ to deconstruct or preclude youth sexual agency? The data analysed in this presentation were collected during one activity in a Year-12 Health class in New Zealand, conducted in week five of an eight-week unit on sexuality. Extracts have been drawn from a 40-minute discussion activity in which students worked in small groups, answering questions about heterosexuality and heterosexual desire. This presentation will focus on discourse analyses of these excerpts; insights gained from five months of participant observation in the classroom (and the wider school community) also inform the analysis.
This research aims to fill a knowledge gap concerning the interaction of language with the social construction of genders, sexual identities and sexual desires during interactive classroom talk. It has been suggested (by Education researchers both in New Zealand and abroad) that humanities-based approaches to sexuality education, which are organized around inquiry-driven learning, allow students to develop sexual agency, and therefore to make safer decisions about sex. Therefore, the results of this project are important for the improvement of sexuality education in New Zealand, and will add new perspectives to the language and sexuality field.
This research aims to fill a knowledge gap concerning the interaction of language with the social construction of genders, sexual identities and sexual desires during interactive classroom talk. It has been suggested (by Education researchers both in New Zealand and abroad) that humanities-based approaches to sexuality education, which are organized around inquiry-driven learning, allow students to develop sexual agency, and therefore to make safer decisions about sex. Therefore, the results of this project are important for the improvement of sexuality education in New Zealand, and will add new perspectives to the language and sexuality field.