Study of language used by LGBTQ people
LGBTQ linguistics is the study of language as used by members of LGBTQ communities. Related or synonymous terms include lavender linguistics, advanced by William Leap in the 1990s, which "encompass[es] a wide range of everyday language practices" in LGBTQ communities, and queer linguistics, which refers to the linguistic analysis concerning the effect of heteronormativity on expressing sexual identity through language. The former term derives from the longtime association of the color lavender with LGBTQ communities. "Language", in this context, may refer to any aspect of spoken or written linguistic practices, including speech patterns and pronunciation, use of certain vocabulary, and, in a few cases, an elaborate alternative lexicon such as Polari.
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History.
Early studies in the field of LGBTQ linguistics were dominated by the concept of distinct "lavender lexicons" such as that recorded by Gershon Legman in 1941. In 1995, William Leap, whose work incorporates LGBTQ culture studies, cultural theory, and linguistics, called for scholarship to move toward a fuller and more nuanced study of LGBTQ language use, especially through the foundation of the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference. Anna Livia and Kira Hall have noted that while research in the 1960s and 1970s on the difference between men's and women's speech made the implicit assumption that gender was the relevant way to divide the social space, there is still considerable room for linguistic research based on sexual orientation, rather than gender.
Accents of English.
Gay men.
Linguistics research, particularly within North American English, has revealed a number of phonetically salient features used by many gay men, some of which adhere to stereotypes. Studies have repeatedly confirmed that male American English speakers are recognized as gay by their speech at rates above chance. Relevant features include what is popularly known as a gay lisp: in fact, the articulation of and with a higher frequency and longer duration than average speakers. Also, gay men may tend to lower the TRAP and DRESS front vowels, especially in "fun" or casual social situations. Many gay speech characteristics match those that other speakers use when trying to speak especially clearly or carefully, including (over-)enunciating and widening the vowel spaces in the mouth. The notion that some gay male speech entirely imitates women's speech is inaccurate, though certain vocal qualities are certainly shared between the two speech styles. Research has also shown unique speech of gay men in other languages, such as Puerto Rican Spanish and Flemish Dutch.
Lesbians.
Speech scientist Benjamin Munson confirmed such features among lesbians as the use of lower pitch and more direct communication styles found in previous studies, plus more backed variants of back vowels, but he noted too that differences between lesbians and straight women are "even more subtle" than differences between gay and straight men. In one English-language experiment, listeners were unable to identify female speakers as either lesbian or straight based solely on voice. At the same time, lesbian speech studies have long been neglected, making introductory research difficult. Another study showed that speakers' self-assessed "familiarity with queer culture" had a statistically significant correlation with phonetic variation like lower median pitch and faster rate of speech, though mostly for straight women, somewhat for bisexual women, and not at all for lesbians. The study's author theorized that the straight women, aware of the study's purpose, may have been attempting to express their affinity with lesbians by adopting their stereotype of a lower pitch. Another experiment found that listeners indeed were able to accurately judge female speakers on a scale from "least" to "most likely to be a lesbian" (the slight lesbian and bisexual differences approaching statistical significance), perceiving the straight women as significantly more feminine, bisexual speakers as only slightly more, and lesbians as correlated with lower median pitch, wider pitch range, lower second formant, and more use of creaky voice. However, no direct correlations between these phonetic variables and sexual orientation were found, perhaps with listeners identifying other features that were not tested.
Linguist Robin Queen argues that analyses have been too simplistic and that a uniquely lesbian language is constructed through the combination of sometimes-conflicting stylistic tropes: stereotypical women's language (e.g. hypercorrect grammar), stereotypical nonstandard forms associated with the (male) working class (e.g. contractions), stereotypical gay male lexical items, and stereotypical lesbian language (e.g. flat intonation, cursing). Sometimes lesbians deliberately avoid stereotypical female speech, according to Queen, in order to distance themselves from "normative" heterosexual female speech patterns. Because femininity is a marked style, adopting it is more noticeable than avoiding it, which may add to the lack of socially salient styles for lesbians in contrast with socially identifiable stereotypically gay male speech. However, lesbians may have more slang than gay males, with one article listing nearly eighty common lesbian slang words for sexual acts and organs.
Transgender linguistics.
Linguistic research on the language of transgender communities has explored the gendered phonetic aspects of the voice, specific gendered lexical items (pronouns, identity labels, terms of address), as well as specific discursive practices within trans communities (pronoun introductions, coming out stories, linguistic activism). A "trans linguistic framework" has been developed and advocated for by linguist Lal Zimman. This framework not only seeks to research the linguistic features and practices of transgender people, but to foreground the knowledge and experiences of trans communities and researchers.
Phonetics.
Phonetics research has shown that the physical voices of trans men (and transmasculine) and trans women (and transfeminine) individuals is often but not always affected by social and medical transition, including through voice training, laryngoplasties, feminizing hormones, masculinizing hormones, or other drugs, all of which can alter sociolinguistic characteristics. A 2006 study noted that, after undergoing five oral resonance sessions targeted at lip spreading and forward tongue carriage, ten transfeminine individuals demonstrated a general increase in the formant frequency values F1, F2, and F3 as well as the fundamental frequency value F0, meaning an overall higher vocal pitch, thus more closely approximating the desired vocal frequency of cisgender women. Lal Zimman's 2012 doctorate dissertation followed fifteen transmasculine individuals from the San Francisco Bay Area in a long-term study focused on formant and fundamental frequency, for one to two years after the start of masculinizing hormone replacement therapy (HRT), concluding that all ten underwent a drop in fundamental frequency in the early stages of HRT but that social factors also affected many of the changes in voice and mannerisms.
Lexicon and pronouns.
Some research has focused on language change over time in the terminology used to talk about transgender people and communities. In the early twentieth century, the work of German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld introduced two terms that were popularly used for transgender people throughout the 1900s: "transsexual" and "transvestite." In the 1990s, the term transgender became more widely used to refer to people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Histories of the word transgender often attribute the coining of the term to Virginia Prince, an activist from Southern California, but note the term's rise in popularity with its use in Leslie Feinberg's book, "Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time has Come". In the decades following the move to "transgender" as the most widely used community label, terminology used to refer to gender diverse communities has continued to expand, especially given the rapid pace of language shift in online trans communities.
Research on the lexicon of transgender people shows that they often use creative tactics to avoid specific physical or gender-specific characteristics of genital terms, including using certain words for specific genitalia. They also use certain pronouns as singular they or neopronouns and use different morphology in cases where the morphology is traditionally linked to grammatical gender, e.g. in Spanish and Portuguese.
Discursive practices.
Discursive practices that are relevant to transgender communities are also major topics of research within trans linguistics. Research on inclusive language reforms and linguistic activism has addressed ways that transgender communities have advocated for language change that recognizes the range of gender diversity. Some changes that trans advocates promote include using inclusive gender labels (e.g., 'hello everyone' as opposed to 'hello ladies and gentlemen' or 'students' as opposed to 'boys and girls') and respecting the linguistic choices of transgender people. Related to research on advocating for inclusive forms is research that explores the process of discursive self determination for transgender people, what Zimman calls "linguistic self-identification".
Other discursive practices that have been studied in trans communities are coming out stories, pronoun introductions, relationship to medical discourses, discourses of the voice and masculinity, and media representations of trans identities.
Non-binary people.
Non-binary people may perform gender in a unique way through language. While a majority of research on nonbinary people has focused on lexical issues, there is growing research on phonetic features of nonbinary voices as well as discursive and language ideological issues related to nonbinary language.
Pronouns.
They may reject being referred to by gendered pronouns like English "he" or "she", and use "they", "it", or neopronouns which are not gendered or which indicate a nonbinary gender. English examples of neopronouns go back to the 1800s with "thon" and "e"; newer pronouns include "ey", "em", "xe", and "ve". Nonbinary people may also use different words for traditionally gender-expressing relationships (e.g. "partner" instead of "boyfriend").
The English singular "they" has several functions. Besides referencing to an unspecific person as in "the ideal student never forgets their homework", it is also used for specific people as in "Jayden forgot their homework". Singular "they" can vary in meaning, indicating either someone whose pronouns the speaker or writer does not know, or someone who is known to use "they" as their pronoun.
Non-binary–inclusive language includes terms besides pronouns, and depending on the language, other aspects of the language such as suffixes are also used differently. In Romance languages like French and Spanish, for example, affixes of nouns, adjectives and participles with gender agreement are changed, as well as pronouns and articles. Depending on the language and sociolinguistic factors, there are different approaches to undo the grammatical binary when speaking about people. For Spanish, the morphemes and are used, and can be seen in terms like and pronouns like , while in French, non-binary pronouns include (singular; plural: ). Some Portuguese speakers use the pronoun . Research shows a wide variety of different forms used to avoid the binary. Kris Knisely states that using a comprehensible non-binary inclusive form has advantages in foreign language education.
For more gender neutral forms in different languages, see Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns.
Phonetics.
Building off work in trans linguistics that has explored the social construction of gender through different phonetic features, some sociophonetic work has looked at the voices of nonbinary people specifically. Gratton (2016) looked at (ING) production and how nonbinary participants used variations of the feature to index nonbinary identities. Additionally, Rechsteiner and Sneller found that nonbinary speakers produce (ING) at rates unlike either male or female speakers; however, nonbinary speakers used (ING) at rates similar to other nonbinary speakers, suggesting the presence of a distinct nonbinary linguistic community.
Slang.
Specialized dictionaries that record gay and lesbian slang tend to revolve heavily around sexual matters, which may reflect the publications' methodological assumptions about the hyper-sexuality of conversations among LGBTQ people.
One study showed gay pornographic imagery to men and asked them to discuss the imagery, finding that conversations between gay men used more slang and fewer commonly-known terms about sexual behavior than conversations where both participants were heterosexual males or where the pair consisted of one heterosexual and one homosexual male. Methodological issues of this study may include that the findings reflect homophobia among the heterosexual participants.
Studies have also been done into whether words used within the gay community are understood by heterosexuals. A study of Deaf American Sign Language users showed that all the gay male participants understood the sign for a bathhouse and that 83% of lesbians knew the sign. This compared to zero heterosexual men and only one out of eleven heterosexual women knowing the sign.
"Dyke".
One prominent example of LGBTQ slang is the rising reappropriation among lesbians of the word "dyke". Though still in many contexts considered pejorative, "dyke" has become a symbol for increasing acceptance of the lesbian movement and identity. Lesbians themselves use it to further solidarity and unity among their community. Examples include dyke marches (female-exclusive pride parades), "dykes with tykes" (describing lesbian motherhood), "Dykes to Watch Out For" (a comic strip that ran for 25 years),