We are happy to announce the plenary speakers for the Lavender 30 conference:

Prof Emeritus William Leap, American University Washington, https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/wlm.cfm

Lavender Persistence 

For 30 years, the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference has opened a space for discussing the language use of gendered and sexual subjects who “aren’t made (and can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick 1993: 8). Each year’s participants have included researchers, faculty and students, service providers, political activists, members of the community rank-and-file. Our work, to date, has supported the training of scholars, the production of entirely new scholarship in the   fields of language, gender and sexuality studies, queer linguistics, and trans linguistics. Our work has pushed language and gender studies to extend its focus beyond an inclusive gender-binary.  Our work has led to correctives in public policy related to educational equity, employment rights, and protections against gender and sexual harassment and discrimination throughout the public sphere. These outcomes have emerged despite derision from some voices, and also in the absence of a formal conference administrative structure, a reliable institutional base, or an annual budget. How we have achieved these outcomes, in the face of derision and without formal support structures is the focus for this paper. And so is the “philosophy of language” that    lavender language colleagues are creating as the explore struggled to understand non-monolithic gender and sexuality in non-monolithic textual and discursive practices, while keeping (non-monolithic) speaking subjects in the center of their discussion. 

William L. Leap is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University (Washington, DC), the senior founding editor of the Journal of Language & Sexuality (2011-2021) and is one of the co-editors of the (new) Bloomsbury Series in Queer Linguistics. Bill has written or (co) edited 14 books related to theory and research practices in queer/lavender linguistics. His writings range for “gay men’s English”, “queer translanguaging”, “audience reception of homoerotic film”, or “updated statements of homohistory”. In all those cases, Bill’s writings discuss lavender/queer struggles against the effects o83. Santaeged and (increasingly now) neo-fascist understandings of language, inequality and difference. Discussing these struggles means discussing dissatisfaction, disidentification and refusal, and thereby involve describing lavender/queers subjects -as- speaking subjects as well as “human beings in the world” (Williams 1977: 21). 

Dr Jenny L. Davis, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, https://anthro.illinois.edu/directory/profile/loksi

The Making of a Queer Muskogean Lexicon and the Imagining of an Indigiqueer Linguistics 

Indigenous studies scholars provide frameworks to examine and critique the ways Indigenous people in North America have been portrayed, displayed, and alternately ignored, including within academic research. In his book Indians in Unexpected Places, Lakota scholar Philip Deloria poses the question of how, and why, do Indigenous people get presented as anomalies in the very world(s) in which we exist–and have existed–in day-to-day life. In doing so he calls our attention to moments or contexts of surprise at the unexpected and how they are created as a critical point for analysis. He argues that scenarios that people find surprising allow us to see the disjunctures between the expected, usually fueled by erasure, stereotypes, and even fantasy, and reality.  

In the field of Indigenous language documentation and revitalization, discussions of Indigenous gender and sexuality, not to mention queerness, are largely absent. When it does appear, it is relegated to the bottoms of pages and backs of articles as ‘footnote deviants’ (Hall 1995). Native Americans are similarly absent from the field of language, gender, and sexuality. In other words, the expectation created within linguistics is that speakers of Native American languages are never queer, and those represented in queer linguistics are never Native. These expectations reflect and reproduce colonial narratives that Native Americans were and are inherently straight and cisgender (Rifkin 2010) and that the disappearance of Indigenous peoples –and our languages—is inevitable and imminent (Davis 2017).   

This talk traces my training and work in these seemingly disparate (sub)fields and the intellectual histories that lead to them being imagined and practiced separately in contrast with the actual the inextricable connections between language and Indigenous gender, sexuality, and relationality. Then, through discussing a current project of a “Queer Muskogean Lexicon” I map out the possibilities of Indigiqueer linguistics.  

Jenny L. Davis (Chickasaw Nation) is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she is the director of the American Indian Studies Program and co-director of the Center for Indigenous Science.  

Prof Veronika Koller, Lancaster University, https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/veronika-koller

Rainbows and unicorns: Elusive symbols in queer discourse  

This talk is premised on the idea that queer identities are by definition elusive, and that queer discourse uses metaphors and symbols to reflect this elusiveness. I will offer a definition of queer discourse as language use as social practice that works against the normalisation of values and identities. This will be followed by a review of work in linguistics and queer studies that addresses the links between fantasy creatures and contemporary, mostly Western expressions of queerness.   

The main part of the talk is dedicated to rainbows and unicorns as overdetermined and hence elusive (sub-)cultural symbols. I will outline the meaning of the rainbow in religious discourses, before discussing it as a metaphor of diversity (Kornblit 2022) and a symbol of utopian longing. Unicorns will be discussed as metaphors in discourses as disparate as those on business, mythology and religion, nationalism, politics and dating. The most relevant semantic feature of unicorns across these discourses is their rare and phantasmagorical nature, with speakers invoking them either to delegitimise others’ views and identities as untenable (Hayfield 2020) or to elevate subjects as desired but unattainable. This dual discursive status of unicorns, together with their gendered representation in popular culture, makes them a powerful symbol in queer discourse. The discussion of rainbows and unicorns as elusive symbols is rounded off with an analysis of the two words, individually and together, in general corpora of different varieties of English.   

The final part of the talk shifts the focus from elusive symbols to symbols of the elusive. Consulting the thesaurus function of SketchEngine and the semantic domain lexicon of Wmatrix establishes the meaning profile of especially ‘unicorn(s)’ as fluid and less-than-real. I will conclude by defining queerness as elusive, tracing the shift in queer identities from abject to ambiguous and arguing against homo/transnormativity.   

References  

Hayfield, N. (2020). Bisexual and Pansexual Identities: Exploring and challenging invisibility and invalidation. Routledge.   

Kornblit, I. S. (2022). Metaphors of cultural diversity at UNESCO: Legitimization strategies of a new keyword in institutional discourse. Metaphor and the Social World, 12(1), 46-68.  

Veronika Koller is Professor in Discourse Studies at Lancaster (UK), with research interests in political discourse, business communication, and language, gender and sexuality. Her recent publications include the co-authored books Voices of Supporters: Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections (Benjamins, 2023), Viral Language: Analysing the Covid-19 pandemic in public discourse (Routledge, 2023) and The Language of Gender-based Separatism (CUP, 2023).