TRANS sexual lation
Date
2011
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Advisor
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
Type
Thesis (B.A.)
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
en_US
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
In the beginning there was the word. Am I right? Or am I right? As I am not the
original author of that statement (though I key it now) the real question is, is that fellow
John right? I would warrant that Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick, abominable though
their topic may be, would agree with him: 'the production of the opposed categories
"homosexual" and "heterosexual", for instance, reconfigures the reality which the labels
purport to describe, bringing into view something ... that had not been a part of previous
understanding of sexual behavior' (Cameron and Kulick, Language and Sexuality, 2003:
25). When we create new language we see, categorize, and recreate reality differently.
First there was the word, then categories, consciousness, reality.
The ability of language to confront and change societal understandings is
particularly obvious in the populations that are challenging the societal norms. The
'queer' community is one that has actively taken on the practice of renaming as a
political act of rejecting the norms of society and the standard discourse on sexuality and
gender inherent therein (Cameron and Kulick 2003). Some of the newest members of the
'queer' community are the 'genderqueer,' and it is in this population that some of the
practices of social recreation through language are most tangible. In the pages that follow
I intend to show how trans and genderqueer folk use language in three basic ways 1) to
effectively perform their gender identity with social agreement, 2) to recreate the reality
of society through rejecting standard ways of describing reality in favor of new terms and
phrases that acknowledge the trans existence, and lastly 3) to both overtly and covertly
separate onesself from society and disengage with the standard discourse of sexuality and
gender altogether. The language used by the five trans informants in this study is a social
2
tool that can can be used consciously, it provides power over onesself, political power,
and power over others. Each of the informants uses one of these language strategies to
affirm their own existence in the world as the identity that they claim as their own. In
order to do this, some use language to adjust the discourse of sexuality and gender so that
they fit into it, others invent new language and turn old language on its head to shift the
discourse so that it accurately allows for the trans identity to be as desirable as the
alternative, and still others reject the whole discourse, creating their own distinct
language or aiming to overthrow the discourse altogether and live with ultimate gender
freedom in each moment.
Why read this document? Language is always happening and always in flux. It is
changing as the social consciousness shifts, and it is endlessly a part of categorizing,
defining, oppressing, and marginalizing peoples and behaviors. This document is worth
reading because it provides examples of how language is used to produce and reproduce
the standards of society, to question them, to overthrow them, or to get around them.
Maybe that sounds like hope, maybe it sounds like fun, or maybe it sounds like a twenty
three year old practicing a slightly new version of the very old tradition of proving
ones self in the academic arena. Whichever of these interpretations of the reality of this
document provides the most interest or entertainment, please and assume and carry on.