“Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice.

Jones, Lucy (2014) “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 3 (2). pp. 161-190. ISSN 2211-3770

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Abstract

The concept of ‘community’ often presents a problem for queer linguists. ‘The gay community’ is often viewed as an impossible site for research due to its imagined status,

whilst local communities of gay people have been considered too heterogeneous and idiosyncratic to draw conclusions from. In this article, however, it is argued that both of these aspects of community can, and should, be a central focus of an investigation into language and sexual identity. Through the analysis of a conversation emerging from a lesbian group, using a sociocultural linguistics framework, it is argued here that the community of practice

approach can play a crucial role in understanding how ideologies from ‘the gay community’ are used to construct a coherent sexual identity on a local level. The analysis reveals how the group engages in practices that enable them to construct micro-level personas in direct response to broader, ideological structures of heteronormativity.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/998963
Additional Information: © John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jones, L. (2014) “Dolls or teddies?” Constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 3(2): 161-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jls.3.2.01jon Please contact the publisher for permission to reuse this article in any form.
Keywords: identity, lesbian discourse, sociocultural linguistics, community of practice, gay community, gender binary, persona
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Arts > School of English
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.3.2.01jon
Depositing User: Jones, Lucy
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2015 12:22
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 20:16
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/29759

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