Lavender linguistics is a branch of linguistic studies that analyses speech in gay communities. One of the most used slangs among gay speech was Polari. Polari was prominent in the 1950’s and 1960’s and was principally used by gay men. These men used Polari to communicate among themselves and exclude heterosexual people from their conversations in a time that homosexuality was illegal. In 2010, the World Oral Literature Project labelled Polari as an endangered language. However, some linguists argue that Polari cannot be labelled a language, as it has not constructed its own grammar nor did it construct a comprehensive vocabulary. Although, people who heard fluently spoken Polari often thought it was a foreign language. To clarify the position of Polari an analysis will be given on the origins of Polari, its purpose, its decline in popularity, and whether there is a revival of Polari.
“The homosexual subculture of the Eighteenth Century mixed with the gypsies, tramps & thieves of popular song to produce a rich cross-fertilisation of customs, phrases and traditions” (Scott, 2013). This ‘cross-fertilisation’ had for effect that the gay community based Polari on a number of slangs from various stigmatized peoples. One of the slangs is ‘Cant’ and it was used by thieves in Great Britain during the Elizabethan era. Also, Polari is heavily based on the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a pidgin that enabled travellers, merchants and sailors to communicate. It is probable that the gay sailor men (sea-queens) brought the Lingua Franca to the British ports. Chesney suggests, as quoted in Hancock’s Language in the British Isle page 395, that the link between homosexuality and sailors can be made as it is in the seaports that most male prostit...
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William L. Leap PhD & Denis M. Provencher PhD (2011) Language Matters: An Introduction, Journal of Homosexuality, 58:6-7, 709-718. Web. 9 Nov. 2013 .
Language Matters. Third ed. Southlake: Fountain Head, 2010. 148-58. Print.
Successes and Failures of Sexual Offences Act 2003 The Sexual Offences Act 2003 was heralded as a response to shifting social attitudes, encompassing the broad libertarian approach towards sexual behaviour that has become increasingly dominant since the Act that preceded it whilst attempting to account for the myriad of more widespread sexual deviancies and abusive practices that were otherwise poorly regulated by existing statute. It was designed as a regularisation of the law on sexual offences giving a modern and consistent perspective upon the particular offences; one that would allow the courts to proceed on a fairer and less discriminatory basis, both in its prosecution of offenders and it in treatment of victims. Few statutes can have been subjected to the same level of public scrutiny as this Act, emerging from a climate of public concern over the adequate protection of their children and the proliferation of paedophilia. The abnormally low conviction rate for rape as well as socio-criminal phenomena like 'date-rape' or the effect of immigration on acceptable sexual practices were yet more facets of a many-handed debate about how the law should respond to a changing world. Understanding these issues is central to finding the coherent thread upon which different changes in the Act attempt to hang.
Nilsen began this study of the dictionary not with the intention of prescribing language change but simply to see what the language would reveal about sexism to her. Sexism is not something that existing independently in American English or in the particular dictionary that she happened to read. Rather it exists in people's minds.
Hancock, LynNell and Katel, Peter. "The Bilingual Bog." Newsweek. October 23, 1995. Page 89 (1).
The origins of gendered word and phrases are a debated topic. To clarify, a word that has a gendered meaning is an utterance that refers to a particular gender or is categorized to a particular gender. While some people believe that the interpretation of the listener is responsible for deriving the gendered meanings of words, others believe that the meanings of gendered adjectives and phrases originate from speaker intent. I believe, however, the context in which a word is used, how it is presented, and the context with which it is interpreted, affect its meaning. This “context” also includes the cultural background of both the speaker and the interpreter. From my perspective, gendered words gain their meanings from various sources, which include both the intentions of the speaker and the interpretations of the hearer.
Rothman, Jason, and Amy B. Rell. "A Linguistic Analysis of Spanglish: Relating Language to Identity."
Another difficulty cultures deal with is language and the way people speak. In some cases, people struggle to belong by making changes in the way they speak the English language just to be assimilated. They attempt to use words and letters, as well as body language that fit in the norm; all in an attempt to denounce their original intonation and style of pronunciation. One ...
Cheech Marin’s film, Born in East L.A., spotlights many key issues brought upon mainly by immigration. This comedic production hits the hearts to many because while it may be humorous, it is also a reality to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and so it hits close to home to many. Immigration is the main topic of this motion picture, but I want to focus on one subdivision of it only; language. The linguistic barriers in between a border is evident in the movie and especially a reality in our world.
The extended duration of /s/ and /l/ has been explored in studies researching the speech styles of gay men and gay-sounding men. Researchers found that gay sounding men often often lengthen their pronunciation of the letters ‘s,’ creating a hissing sound, and ‘l,’
The bestselling self-help books, such as "Men are from mars, women are from Venus" explain to their readers that there are fundamental differences between men and women, which determine the contrast in how both sexes speak. The author, John Gray uses the metaphor of the two planets and suggests that when men and women were united on Earth, they all suffered from 'selective amnesia'. As a consequence, "both the Martians and Venusians forgot that they were from different planets and were supposed to be different" , which resulted in gender conflict deriving from misunderstanding of intentions. Other authors of popular self-help books prefer less metaphorical theories and explain gender differences in language through evolution and biological characteristics of the sexes. However, modern sociolinguistics attempt to undermine these radical statements by approaching the question analytically drawing on evidence from the fields of anthropology, discourse analysis, dialectology, ethnography and social psychology to investigate whether women's and men's communication differs to the extent described in psychology books and what are the factors that could contribute to the development of what is known to be sex-preferential language patterns . From the linguistic point of view, It could be argued that the question itself imposes pre-conceptions of the gendered talk as it assumes that speakers are divided in two groups called "women" and "men"' and that because those groups unarguably differ, the language they use is shaped by their sex characteristics. In exploring the question whether women and men speak differently, it is necessary to focus on considering the notion of the andocentric approach to gender, the concept of 'acquiring' ...
Sexism in language takes many forms, though theses may be reduced to 3 types: language ignores, it defines and it deprecates women. Women and girls are hurt both physically and materially by it. Everyda...
There have been several discussions that address the differences between male and female language use. These discussions all began with Lakoff’s controversial essays from 1975 that first introduced the concept of “women’s language.” (O’Barr et al 1980) Since Lakoff’s essays, other linguists have sought to address the issue of how gender affects language. O’Barr and Atkins use Lakoff’s information ab...
—. Language: Readings in Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
There are individuals that live in fear of showing their true identity to the world because they simply fear that society won’t accept them for having a different sexual orientation. Society advocates that individuals should be able to be proud of who they are, but yet they judge homosexuals for being different. People are taught not to judge others based on their race or religion, so why do they still discriminate against homosexuals? The homosexual subculture is not accepted by society, looked down upon, and misjudged; however, they are human beings and deserve to be treated equally.
Our capacity as human beings to acquire and express complex methods of communication has been one of the biggest driving forces of humanity’s success. These complex linguistic systems are what we know as language. Language gives us a method of expressing concepts, emotions, and ideas in a varied way which sets us apart from all other animals. Language and gender is an area of sociolinguistics and related fields which attempt to define the differences in language related to gender, and what the inferences of these differences may be.