Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T11:19:26.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“If a Muslim says ‘homo’, nothing gets done”: Racist discourse and in-group identity construction in an LGBT youth group

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Lucy Jones
Lucy Jones*
Affiliation:
School of English, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents ethnographic data emerging from research with a group of LGBT young people, detailing the construction of a shared identity. Using discourse analysis, it shows how the group members position people of South Asian descent as a homogenous out-group, one framed as ‘other’ to their own in-group identity of ‘non-Asian’ due to the assumption that Asian people are homophobic. It is argued that this very local form of identity construction is facilitated by broader discourses of Islamophobia, as well as homonormative ideologies positioning gay people as white. The article therefore provides evidence to support Bucholtz & Hall's (2005) claim that identity positioning relates not only to the interactional moment and the norms of a given ethnographic context, but that it also encompasses macro-level discourses and ideologies. It also, however, reveals the pervasiveness of Islamophobic discourses in Britain today, and the marginalisation of LGBT people of colour. (LGBT identity, racist discourse, homonormativity, Islamophobia)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 113 - 133
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agathangelou, Anna M.; Bassichis, Morgan. D.; & Spira, Tamara L. (2008). Intimate investments: Homonormativity, global lockdown, and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review 100:120–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara (2000). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bachmann, Ingo (2011). Civil partnership – “gay marriage in all but name”: A corpus-driven analysis of discourses of same-sex relationships in the UK Parliament. Corpora 6(1):77–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Rusty (1998). Markedness and styleswitching in performances by African American drag queens. In Myers-Scotton, Carol (ed.), Codes and consequences: Choosing linguistic varieties, 139–61. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beal, Joan C. (1993). The grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English. In Milroy, James & Milroy, Lesley (eds.), Real English: The grammar of English dialects in the British Isles, 187–213. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Brown, Gavin (2012). Homonormativity: A metropolitan concept that denigrates ‘ordinary’ gay lives. Journal of Homosexuality 59:1065–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, Wendy (2006). Regulating aversion: Tolerance in the age of identity and empire. Oxford: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary (1999). “Why be normal?” Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in Society 28:203–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, & Hall, Kira (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7(4–5):585–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duggan, Lisa (2003). The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21(1):461–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Tayeb, Fatima (2012). ‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city. European Journal of Women's Studies 19(1):79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fassin, Éric, & Surkis, Judith (2010). Introduction: Transgressing boundaries. Public Culture 22(3):487–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haritaworn, Jin (2012). Women's rights, gay rights and anti-Muslim racism in Europe: Introduction. European Journal of Women's Studies 19(1):73–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra (ed.) (2009). Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Lucy (2012). Dyke/girl: Language and identities in a lesbian group. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Lucy (2014). ‘Dolls or teddies?’: Constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice. Journal of Language and Sexuality 3(2):161–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Logie, Carmen H., & Rwigema, Marie-Jolie (2014). ‘The normative idea of queer is a white person’: Understanding perceptions of white privilege among lesbian, bisexual and queer women of color in Toronto, Canada. Journal of Lesbian Studies 18(2):174–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McEnery, Anthony; Baker, Paul; & Hardie, Andrew (2000). Assessing claims about language use with corpus data: Swearing and abuse. In Kirk, John M. (ed.), Corpora galore: Analyses and techniques in describing English, 45–56. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrish, Elizabeth, & Sauntson, Helen (2007). New perspectives on language and sexual identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nayak, Anoop (2003). Race, place and globalization: Youth culture in a changing world. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Peterson, David J. (2010). The ‘basis for a just, free, and stable society’: Institutional homophobia and governance at the Family Research Council. Gender and Language 4(2):257–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petyt, Keith M. (1985). Dialect and accent in industrial west. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Puar, Jasbir (2007). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Queen, Robin (1998). ‘Stay queer! Never fear!’: Building queer social networks. World Englishes 17(2):203–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Queen, Robin (2005). ‘How many lesbians does it take …’: Jokes, teasing, and the negotiation of stereotypes about lesbians. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 15(2):239–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth, & Edwards, Derek (2007). ‘Black this, black that’: Racial insults and reported speech in neighbour complaints and police interrogations. Discourse and Society 18(3):337–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentine, David (2007). Imagining transgender: An ethnography of a category. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
van der Bom, Isabelle; Coffey, Laura; Jones, Lucy; Mills, Sara; & Paterson, Laura L. (2015). Implicit homophobic argument structure: Equal marriage discourse in the moral maze. Journal of Language and Sexuality 4(1):102–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar