Cover not available
Part of
Gender, Language and the Periphery: Grammatical and social gender from the margins
Edited by Julie Abbou and Fabienne H. Baider
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 264] 2016
► pp. 323–352

Eastern boys and girls! Comparative linguistic anthropologies of lesbian and gay communities, Kuala Lumpur and Sorwool

Motivated by social inclusion, lesbian and gay communities have long attempted to negotiate languages and connected discourses. Social ascriptions act to oppress these communities, thus grounding Cameron’s (1985) Feminism and Linguistic theory. This practice of language negotiation significantly intensifies in regions where religious piety (Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam) interacts with rigid social structure (Confucianism, Interdependency), mediating social and cultural positioning. Consequently, members of LG communities build linguistic affordances, thus (re)positioning selves so to negotiate ascribed identities and marginalizations. Paradoxically, these communities model, or draw from, discourses and dynamics of those larger sociocultural networks with which intercommunal boundaries exist, so to contest or alleviate marginalizations, thus repositioning self and other in sociocultural interstices. Through a comparative framework, the current study employs ethnography, as well as conversation and discourse analyses, of LG communities, to explore ways in which these communities in Kuala Lumpur and Sorwool (Seoul) develop and employ adroit language practices to struggle within social spaces, and to contest positivist ascriptions.

Keywords: discourse, gay, Kuala Lumpur, lesbian, linguistic anthropology, Malaysia, Seoul, South Korea
Published online: 16 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.264.12had
References
Abe, Hideko
2010 Queer Japanese: Gender and Sexual Identities through Linguistic Practices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Agha, Asif
2003 “The Social Life of a Cultural Value.” Language and Communication 23: 231–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Baskaran, Loga Mahesan
2005 A Malaysian English Primer. Kuala Lumpur: University Malaya Press.Google Scholar
Besnier, Niko
2003 “Crossing Genders, Mixing Languages: The Linguistic Construction of Transgenderism in Tonga.” In Handbook of Language and Gender, ed. by Janet Holmes, and Miriam Meyerhoff, 279–301. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bodine, Ann
1975 “Sex differentiation in language.” In Language and sex: Difference and dominance, ed. by Barrie Thorne, and Nancy Henley, 130–151. Rowaley: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Boellstorff, Tom
2007 A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Departures and Arrivals.” American Anthropologist 114: 563–566. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith
2004 Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Buzo, Adrian
2007 The Making of Modern Korea (Asia’s Transformations). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah
1985 Feminism and Linguistic Theory. New York: Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, Kathie
1991 “Later rather than sooner: extralinguistic categories in the acquisition of Thai classifiers.” Journal of Child language 18(1): 93–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chang, Wohnsork, and Leah Kalmansan
2010 Confucianism in Context: Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, East Asia and Beyond. New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani
2012 “When ‘Sexuality’ Floated Free of Histories in South Asia.” The Journal of Asian Studies 71(4): 945–962. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chuang, Tzui-I
2005 “The Power of Cuteness: Female Infantilization in Urban Taiwan.” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 5(2): 21–28Google Scholar
Connell, Robert W
1987 Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas
2012 “Bilingualism on display: The framing of Welsh and English in Welsh public spaces.” Language in Society 41: 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Covington, Martin V
1992 Making the Grade: A Self-Worth Perspective on Motivation and School Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalley, Phyllis, and Mark David Campbell
2006 “Constructing and Contesting Discourses of Heteronormativity: An Ethnographic Study of Youth in a Francophone High School in Canada.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 5: 11–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalton, Pen
2001 The gendering of art education: Modernism, identity and critical feminism. Buckingham; Philadelphia: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Carter J
2001 “Epilogue: Exorcising Hegel’s ghosts: toward a pastnational historiography of Korea.” In Colonial Modernity in Korea, ed. by Gi-Wook Shin, and Michael Edson Robinson, 363–380. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2002 “Demystifying sexuality and desire.” In Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, ed. by Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Robert J. Podesva, Sarah J. Roberts, and Andrew Wong, 99–110. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Farris, Catherine
1988 “Gender and Grammar in Chinese, with Implications for Language Universals.” Modern China 14(3): 277–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1984 “What is enlightenment?” In The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 32–50. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Frankel, James
2009 “Benevolence for Obedience: Policies on Muslims in Late Imperial and Modern China.” ASIANetwork EXCHANGE: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 16(3): 25–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gee, James Paul
2002 Introduction to Discourse Analysis. New York: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1989 “The interaction order.” American Sociological Review 48: 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graddol, David, and Joan Swann
1989 Gender voices. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Greco, Luca
2012 “Production, Circulation and Deconstruction of Gender Norms in LGBTQ Speech Practices.” Discourse Studies 14(5): 567–585. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gwee, Thiam Hock William
1993 Mas Sepuloh: Baba Conversational Genres. Singapore: Armour Publications.Google Scholar
2006 A Baba Malay Dictionary. Singapore: The Peranakan Association; Tuttle Publishing.Google Scholar
Hadzantonis, Dimitrios Michael
2013 English Language Pedagogies for a Northeast Asian Context: Developing and Contextually Framing the Transition Theory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Forthcoming. The Linguistic Anthropologies of LGBT communities in East Asian contexts; Developing and Contextually Framing the Vergence Theory. New York: Routledge.
Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames
1987 Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Kira
2009 “ ‘Boys’ Talk: Hindi, Moustaches and Masculinity in New Delhi.” In Gender and Spoken Interaction, ed. by Pia Pichler, and Eva Eppler, 139–162. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael, Alexander Kirkwood, and James R. Martin
1994 Writing science: Literacy and discursive power vol. 8. London; Washington DC: The Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M
1995 Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David
2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, Keith
1998a “You’re swishing so much you’re going to make a hurricane: The pragmatics of the put-down in verbal camp.” Paper presented at the Sixth Conference on Lavender Languages and Linguistics . American University.
1998b “Translating Camp talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translator 4(2): 295–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet
2007 “Social Constructionism, Postmodernism and Feminist Sociolinguistics.” Gender and Language 1(1): 51–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet, and Miriam Meyerhoff
2003 The Handbook of Language and Gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hui, Tan Beng
2012 Sexuality, Islam and Politics in Malaysia: A Study on the Shifting Strategies of Regulation. PhD dissertation. Singapore: National University of Singapore.Google Scholar
Hultgren, Anna Kristina
2008 “Reconstructing the sex dichotomy in language and gender research: some advantages of using correlational sociolinguistics.” In Gender and Language Research Methodologies, ed. by Kate Harrington, Lia Litosseliti, Helen Stauntson, and Jane Sunderland, 29–42. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako
2004 “What does Language Remember?: Indexical Inversion and the Naturalized History of Japanese Women.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(1): 39–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Peter A
2009 “Capitalism, Global Queering, and the Production of Sex-Cultural Difference.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15(3): 357–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra
(ed) 2009 Stance: sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rodney H
2013 “Verbal hygiene in the Hong Kong gay community.” World Englishes 32(1): 75–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kanno, Yasuko, and Bonny Norton
2003 “Imagined Communities and Educational Possibilities: Introduction.” Journal of Language, Identity and Education 2: 241–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, Brian W
2008 “Being Gay Guy, That is the Advantage: Queer Korean Language Learning and Identity Construction.” Journal of Language, Identity and Education 7(3/4): 230–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kling, Zainal
2010 Kerangka Konsep untuk Paradigma Baru Perpaduan Nasional. Kuala Lumpur: Kertas Prosiding Persidangan Nasional Paradigma BaruPerpaduan Bangsa.Google Scholar
Kong Travis S., Dan Mahoney, and Ken Plummer
2003 “Queering the Interview.” In Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns, ed. by James Holstein, and Jaber F. Gubrium, 91–110. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Leap, William L
1996 Word’s out: Gay men’s English. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Leap, William L. and Tom Boellstorff
(eds) 2004 Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language. Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Ji Eun
2007 “Beyond pain and protection.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 10(3/4): 49–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Mi Jorng
1998 Women in Korea. Sorwool: Sorwool University Press.Google Scholar
Lim, Teck Ghee, Alberto G. Gomes, and Azly Abdul Rahman
(eds) 2009 Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present and Future. Petaling Jaya; Kuala Lumpur: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre and USCI University.Google Scholar
Martin, Fran, Peter Jackson, Mark McLelland, and Audrey Yue
2008 AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in the Asia-Pacific. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Maznah, Mohamad, Syed Muhd, and Khairudin Aljunied
(eds) 2011 Melayu: The Politics, Poetics, and Paradoxes of Malayness. Singapore: NUS Press.Google Scholar
Moody, Andrew
2010 “The Englishes of Popular Culture.” In Handbook of World Englishes, ed. by Andy Kirkpatrick, 535–549. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1993 Social motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
1999 “Putting it all together: The Matrix Language and more.” In Language Encounters Across Time and Space, ed. by Bernt Brendemoen, Elizabeth Lanza, and Else Ryen, 13–28. Oslo: Novus Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
1992 “Indexing gender.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa
1999 Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
2006 Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Othman, Norani, Mavis Puthucheary, and Clive Kessler
2008 Sharing the Nation: Faith, Difference, Power and the State 50 Years After Merdeka. Petaling Jaya: SIRD Publications.Google Scholar
Pahk-Kim, Soo Jihn, Soo Yohn Lee-Kim, and Eun Jorng Kwohn-Lee
2006 “The Lesbian Rights Movement and Feminism in South Korea.” In “Lesbians” in East Asia: Diversity, Identities, and Resistance, ed. by Diana Khor, and Saori Kamano, 161–191. New York: Haworth Press.Google Scholar
Peletz, Michael
2009 Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times. New York; London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2011 “Islamization in Malaysia: Piety and Consumption, Politics and Law.” South East Asia Research 19(1): 125–148. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia.” The Journal of Asian Studies 71(4): 895–917. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pharr, Susan I
1984 “Status Conflict: The Rebellion of the Tea Pourers.” In Conflict in Japan, ed. by Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, and Patricia G. Steinhoff, 214–240. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Provencher, Denis M
2004 “Vague English Creole: (Gay English) Cooperative Discourse in the French Gay Press.” In Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language, ed. by William L. Leap, and Tom Boellstorff, 23–45. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Rofel, Lisa
2007 Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sauntson, Helen
2008 “The contributions of Queer Theory to gender and language research.” In Gender and Language Research Methodologies, ed. by Kate Harrington, Lia Litosseliti, Helen Saunston, and Jane Sunderland, 271–282. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Seo, Dohng Jin
2001 “Mapping the vicissitudes of homosexual identities in South Korea.” Journal of Homosexuality 40 (3/4): 65–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shin, Gi-Wook
2006 Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter, and Noemi Kintana
(eds) 2008 Language contact and contact languages vol. 7. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigley, Robert, and Janet Holmes
2002 “Girl-watching in Corpora of English.” Journal of English Linguistics 30(2): 138–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
1998 “Contemporary transformations of local linguistic communities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 401–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sloane, Patricia
1999 Islam, modernity, and entrepreneurship among the Malays. New York: St. Martin’s Press; St. Antony’s College. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann
2002 Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Swann, Joan, and Janet Maybin
2008 “Sociolinguistic and ethnographic approaches to language and gender.” In Gender and Language Research Methodologies, ed. by Kate Harrington, Lia Litosseliti, Helen Saunston, and Jane Sunderland, 21–28. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tan, Chee Beng
1980 “Baba Malay Dialect.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 53(1): 150–165.Google Scholar
Tan, Siew Imm
2009 Malaysian English: Language Contact and Change. Pieterlen: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah Grey, and Terence Kaufman
1988 Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
1992 Introducing Language and Society. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Tu, Wei Ming
1985 Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven
2009 Transnationalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zhang, Lihong, and Young Min
2013 “Effects of entertainment media framing on support for gay rights in China: Mechanisms of attribution and value framing.” Asian Journal of Communication 23(3): 248–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar