“Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice.
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 th...
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| Format: | Article |
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John Benjamins Publishing
2014
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29759/ |
| _version_ | 1848793847894638592 |
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| author | Jones, Lucy |
| author_facet | Jones, Lucy |
| author_sort | Jones, Lucy |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:06:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-29759 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:06:48Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-297592020-05-04T20:16:58Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29759/ “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. Jones, Lucy 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. John Benjamins Publishing 2014 Article PeerReviewed 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 identity lesbian discourse sociocultural linguistics community of practice gay community gender binary persona https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jls.3.2.01jon/details doi:10.1075/jls.3.2.01jon doi:10.1075/jls.3.2.01jon |
| spellingShingle | identity lesbian discourse sociocultural linguistics community of practice gay community gender binary persona Jones, Lucy “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title | “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title_full | “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title_fullStr | “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title_full_unstemmed | “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title_short | “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| title_sort | “dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. |
| topic | identity lesbian discourse sociocultural linguistics community of practice gay community gender binary persona |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29759/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29759/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/29759/ |