Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality
Paul Baker

Subject: Linguistics
Readership: students, academics
Pub date:  June 2008    234 x156mm, 256pp
ISBN: PB 978 1 84553 075 4   £15.99   
HB 978 1 84553 074 7  £55

Description:
Sexed Texts explores the complex role that language plays in the construction of sexuality and gender, two concepts that are often discussed separately, although in practice are closely intertwined. The book draws on a range of theoretical perspectives and published research including performativity theory, feminism, queer studies, psychoanalytical theory, Marxism, social constructionism and essentialism. Illustrative examples are taken from written, spoken, internet, non-verbal, visual, media-scripted and naturally occurring texts.

Some of the questions addressed in the book include: how do people construct their own and other’s gendered or sexual identities through the use of language? What is the relationship between language and desire? In what ways do language practices help to reflect and shape different gendered/sexed discourses as ‘normal’, problematic or contested? Taking a broadly deconstructionist perspective, the book progresses from examining what are seen as preferable or acceptable ways to express gender and sexuality, moving towards more ‘tolerated’ identities, practices and desires, and finally arriving at marginalized and tabooed forms. The book locates sexuality and gender as socially constructed, and therefore examines language use in terms of socio-historical factors, linking changing conceptualisations of identity, discourse and desire to theories surrounding regulation, globalisation, new technologies, marketisation and consumerism.

Paul Baker is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. His previous books include Public Discourses of Gay Men, Hello Sailor and Using Corpora for Discourse Analysis. He has also published on the subject of Polari, a lost language variety used by gay men.

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Accounting for Difference
3. Doing Gender: Community and Performativity
4. Constructing Normality: Gendered Discourses and Heternormativity
5. Maintaining Boundaries: Hegemony and Erasure
6. Selling Sex: Commodification and Marketisation
7. Queering Identity: The New Tolerance (and Its Limits)
8. Exploring Taboo: On and Beyond the Margins
9. Conclusion

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Removal 29 August 2008