Alfred Street (University of Auckland Store)
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Queer Excursions : Retheorizing Binaries In Language Gender And Sexuality
Paperback Edition: 1
Across scholarship on gender and sexuality, binaries like female versus male and gay versus straight have been problematised as a symbol of the stigmatisation and erasure of non-normative subjects and practices. The chapters in Queer Excursions offer a series of distinct perspectives on these binaries, as well as on a number of other, less immediately apparent dichotomies that nevertheless permeate the gendered and sexual lives of speakers. Several chapters focus on the limiting or misleading qualities of binaristic analyses, while others suggest that binaries are a crucial component of social meaning within particular communities of study. Rather than simply accepting binary structures as inevitable, or discarding them from our analyses entirely based on their oppressive or reductionary qualities, this volume advocates for a re-theorisation of the binary that affords more complex and contextually-grounded engagement with speakers' own orientations to dichotomous systems. It is from this perspective that contributors identify a number of diverging conceptualisations of binaries, including those that are non-mutually exclusive, those that liberate in the same moment that they constrain, those that are imposed implicitly by researchers, and those that re-contextualise familiar divisions with innovative meanings. Each chapter offers a unique perspective on locally salient linguistic practices that help constitute gender and sexuality in marginalised communities. As a collection, Queer Excursions argues that researchers must be careful to avoid the assumption that our own preconceptions about binary social structures will be shared by the communities we study.
Pages : 231
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Publication date : 2014-08-21
Subjects: Non-fiction, Social Sciences, Linguistics, Sociology, Sociolinguistics, Anthropology, Gender Studies, Gender Groups