Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality - Tommaso M. Milani
11. Normal Straight Gays: Lexical Collocations and Ideologies of Masculinity in Personal Ads of Serbian Gay Teenagers
Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality - Tommaso M. Milani
Ksenija Bogetić [+]
University of Belgrade
Description
Questions of male speech behaviour have long been a key topic in language-oriented investigations of gender. Central to this discussion is the notion of masculinity, with scholars stressing the variability of masculine identities and the multiple roles that language can play in their construction. Looking at diverse heterosexual contexts, a number of studies have provided rich accounts of the ways that men draw on cultural discourses of gender in order to construct socially valued masculine identities (Cameron 1997; Coates 2003; Kiesling 2002, 2005; Pascoe 2007, 2010). The concept of “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 1995) has been especially useful for theorizing the most dominant or most desired form of masculinity in society. However, little work has been done to explore how hegemonic masculinity is linguistically performed within non-heterosexual male groups, or how this form of masculinity relates to nonhegemonic masculinities. The present article seeks to address these issues, by examining linguistic collocation patterns in a corpus of gay Serbian teenagers' personal ads.