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of gay-student discourses
Cynthia D. Nelson
The University of Sydney
Education is arguably one of the most significant, urgent, and rapidly chang-
ing arenas for research on language and sexual identity, but there has been little
synthesis to date of the knowledge and theories of knowledge that are emerging
through this work. Here I survey a relatively small but important segment of this
disparate literature: studies that investigate classroom talk about and by students
who either self-identify as gay, lesbian or queer, or who are positioned as such
by others. By bringing together such studies from applied linguistics as well as
education and literacy/composition, I seek to consolidate and to cultivate critical
explorations of sexual identity, language and learning as interlinked domains. To
this end, I identify some defining features of the queer epistemologies that are
emerging in the empirical, lingua-centric literature on gay-student discourses,
and I suggest future directions for this sort of work.
1. Introduction
Over the past few decades, as sexuality has increasingly come to be seen not as
a private matter to be relegated to the bedroom but as a public matter involving
aesthetics, discourses, politics, cultural capital, civil rights, [and] cultural power
(Britzman 1997:192), a fairly substantial body of research has been developed on
sociosexual matters within education contexts, across a wide range of disciplines
as well as sectors (from early childhood to university and beyond). Increasingly,
this research has been informed by queer theory at least nominally if not sub-
stantially; in Western-dominant circles if not more broadly (see Hall 2009); and
across education in the humanities and social sciences if not in the hard sciences
(see Toynton 2010). Within this (largely) queer education research, a growing
number of studies could be called lingua-centric that is, the classroom subject
matter involves literacy or second/foreign languages, the teacher/student cohorts
are multilingual, and/or the analysis focuses on specific language acts or broad
societal discourses.
Putting queer thinking into practice within language-oriented learning con-
texts seems to result in particular ways of configuring knowledge that is the
central idea driving this survey, which connects studies that have not previously
been grouped together as a body of work. There are a few reasons for making this
survey transdisciplinary.
While queer linguistics1 has paid some attention to education as a site of in-
quiry, there is clearly scope for much more. Those studies that have examined
language and sexual identity in education settings include Camerons (1997) land-
mark study of gendering talk between a group of straight male university students
(see also Kieslings 1998 study of heterosexual hegemony in university fraterni-
ties); Leaps (1997) study of Gay English in campus graffiti; Rasmussens (2004)
study of sexual-identity signifiers in high schools; and Sauntsons (2007) analysis
of online lesbian narratives, which identified education as a significant life-site
for young lesbians2 (see also Chapter3 of Morrish & Sauntson 2007). (See also
Harrisons [2011] narrative study of how gay, lesbian and bisexual Japanese people
experience English language and culture.) While it is not unusual for queer lin-
guistic studies to feature gay-identified people who happen to be students, there
is rarely any detailed analysis of their interactions in class, at school or on campus
(see, e.g., Abe 2010:148; Provencher 2007:100101).
Within applied linguistics (especially second and foreign language educa-
tion) we have seen studies of queer pedagogies, curricula and classroom talk (de
Vincenti, Giovanangeli & Ward 2007; Jones 2010; Nelson 1999, 2009; Mchain
2006), heteronormativity in student discourses and education settings (Dalley
& Campbell 2006; Chapter4 of Nelson 2009; Nguyen & Kellogg 2005), and lan-
guage learners (and teachers) sexual identity negotiations (Ellwood 2006; Kappra
& Vandrick 2006; King 2008; Liddicoat 2009; Moita-Lopes 2006a, 2006b; Nelson
2004, 2009, 2010a, 2010b).3 However, there has been too little dialogue between
queer linguistics and applied linguistics, with the former tending to focus more on
language use (even when set in education contexts) and the latter more on teach-
ing and learning (even when language is the curricular focus).
Where relevant, this survey also incorporates selected studies from education
(including Rthing 2008; Talburt 1999; Youdell 2004) and composition/rhetoric
(Alexander & Wallace 2009; Blackburn 2002/2003, 2004; Malinowitz 1995).
It can be challenging for queer research to make a significant, sustained im-
pact on broader fields of study see, for example, Alexander and Wallace (2009)
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 81
on the minimal impact that queer composition research has had on composition
research generally, and Renn (2010) on the lack of theoretical depth in much
LGBTQ research in higher education. Working across disciplinary lines may help
to strengthen this work and expand its impact.4
While in previous work I have examined language teaching and learning
through a queer theory lens (queer inquiry, Nelson 2006; Nelson 1999, 2009),
here I seek to identify some key features of the queer epistemologies (Binnie 1997;
Watney 2004) that are taking shape across lingua-centric education research. To
put this another way, now that educations language fields are undertaking and
engaging with sexual identity research, and, at least to some extent, with queer
thinking, it is timely to map out the queer knowledge and knowledge frameworks
that are emerging through this work. I narrow my focus to a fairly small subset of
these studies those on gay-student discourses.
By this I mean studies that focus on classroom talk by or about students who
either self-identify as gay or are positioned as gay by others (though there is con-
siderably more research on speaking of gay students than on speaking as a gay
student). I am guided here by questions from Talburt (1999:537): How is a lesbian
student constituted as an object of concern? How does she respond to the dis-
courses in which she finds herself, and how [do] those discourses create her voice
and experience?
My joint focus on queer epistemologies and gay-student discourses may seem
an odd choice, since queer thinking shifts the focus from affirming minority
sexual identities to interrogating the normalising/de-normalising processes sur-
rounding all sexual identifications (see Nelson 1999). My chosen focus on gay
students may signal, for some readers, what Bhaskaran (2004:21) sardonically
calls a futile and retro identity politics. Even so, I find that the gay-student focus
usefully highlights the ways in which broad-scale sexual-identity discourses are
changing, and at times clashing (see, e.g., Ghaziani 2011). Importantly, this focus
also keeps the discussion centred on student voices, which, despite the widespread
rhetoric on student-centred teaching, are not as central to education research as
one might expect.
As to the vexed issue of terminology, I have, with considerable equivocation,
elected to use the term gay, with scare quotes, as a placeholder meant to signal a
range of non-heterosexual identifications. The main reason for this choice is em-
pirical: in the majority of the studies about students who identify (or who are
identified) as other than heterosexual, gay is a more prevalent descriptor than,
say, queer, lesbian, or transgender. I use gay for another reason too to hint at
the subtle tensions that are often (but not always) evident between academic ways
of conceptualising identity, and students ways of describing themselves and oth-
ers; thus I am referring to the knowledge frameworks as queer but the students
82 Cynthia D. Nelson
as gay (for fuller discussions see Nelson 1999, 2009, and many other references
in this survey).
I use the terms discourse and language broadly as well, in part because the
studies I survey reflect different uses of these terms, and in part because finer-
tuned definitions do not seem crucial to my case here (for detailed discussions
see Pennycook 1994 on discourse and Makoni & Pennycook 2007 on language).
Some of the research studies I cite (from across applied linguistics) are framed
in pragmatic traditions and involve close readings of (in this case, spoken) texts
using techniques such as interactional positioning analysis, while others (pri-
marily those from education fields inflected by queer/cultural studies) employ
Foucauldian notions of discourse as a system structuring knowledge, power, so-
ciety, thought; there is also the odd study from adult literacy/composition, which
emphasises social empowerment via literary expression. With the term episte-
mology I am loosely guided by Harding (1987:3), who defines it as a theory of
knowledge, in contrast to a research methodology.
From the teachers perspective, the author notes, the problem here is one of lan-
guage, while from the students perspective it is one of identity. When the teacher
asked Sam what his girlfriend was like, he was faced with a choice: avoid answer-
ing the question, choose to pass (lie) by constructing a fictional heterosexual iden-
tity, or resist the preallocated heterosexual identity that the question implied
(Liddicoat 2009:199; see also de Vincenti, Giovanangeli & Ward 2007). When Sam
chose the latter and spoke of his boyfriend, the teacher responded as if he had
made a grammatical error, which meant that Sam again had to choose whether
to acquiesce to the teachers insistent heteronormative framing, or continue to re-
sist it. When Sam persisted, adding the clarifying detail of the beard, the teacher
simply paused, and then moved on to the next student continuing the same
heteronormative framing by asking a woman about her boyfriend.
The heterosexual answer from Lynn was rewarded, while the homosexual an-
swer from Sam was initially corrected as an instance of linguistic failure, and then
granted no comment at all. Thus, the unthinking replication of heteronormative
discourses (Liddicoat 2009:201) means that the interactional burden of establish-
ing a nonheterosexual identity gets placed on the student (Liddicoat 2009:200).
Also, the message conveyed to all students is that a gay identity is considered mar-
ginalised or somehow deviant. When education is conceptualised as a desexu-
alised space, the author notes, sexual identity and sexual norms are considered
irrelevant to the core business at hand. One could argue that asking male students
about their presumed girlfriends, and female student about boyfriends, makes this
more of a heterosexualised space than a desexualised space, but then heterosexu-
ality (unlike homosexuality) is not routinely associated with sexual identity.
I would like to use the tensions evident in this classroom exchange to exempli-
fy two broad shifts in research on sexual identities in education over the past few
decades. The view that education is a non-sexual space in which sexual identity
matters are, at best, irrelevant, has been challenged by the view that education is
actually a highly heterosexualised space in which nonheterosexual identities have
historically been under-acknowledged and often unwelcome, to the detriment of
learners of any sexual identity. In other words, there has been a shift from the de-
gaying of education to its re-gaying, which involves acknowledging sexual diver-
sity and challenging overt and covert patterns of exclusion.
84 Cynthia D. Nelson
van Loon 2004:404). For the boys Gay sexuality was so deeply taboo it had to be
rejected loudly and often (Chambers et al. 2004:411), and boys routinely called
girls lezzies as part of the policing of girls into normative heterosexuality
(Chambers et al. 2004:407).
This sort of policing often takes place through purportedly playful banter.
Kappra and Vandrick (2006) interviewed queer ESL students (adults) in San
Francisco about their classroom experiences; below I quote Marcelo, a 33-year-old
gay man from Argentina, discussing his classmates:
[T]hey were very homophobic. I arrived and they were joking about gay people.
They said that this city is full of gays, especially the boys, as usual. They were do-
ing the feminine manners and I have a boyfriend, during the class, and I was very
angry The teacher did not say anything. She smiled. Its my first week in
the States I was very nervous So I said no, I will not say anything. (Kappra
& Vandrick 2006:144)
The joking banter proved difficult for Marcelo to counter, especially since the
teacher seemed to condone it. This adds another dimension to our discussion here
gay-student silences (or silencings), which can be understood as elements or
strategies of discourse (Foucault 1990:27).7
Peer discourses of heteronormativity were also found to be pervasive in a
Canadian study of a Francophone high school, despite the concerted efforts of a
group of girls who deliberately performed (fictional) lesbian personas (Dalley &
Campbell 2006). See also Camerons (1997:53, 54, 56) aforementioned study of
straight male university students socialising: they performed heterosexual mascu-
linity in part by gossiping about male acquaintances they categorised as gay (you
know that really gay guy in our class who sits in front of us? He wore shorts
again , hes the antithesis of man, and hes so gay hes got this like really high
voice and wire rim glasses).
For more studies on regulatory and silencing discourses see Courtney (2007)
on responses to a gay student coming out in her English language class in the US;
Chapter2 of Nelson (2009), on language teachers reported experiences of having
openly lesbian, transgender and gay students in their (international) classes; and
Russell (2010) on Canadian gay and lesbian teachers responses to gay, lesbian and
bisexual students. On how learning materials position students as straight, see a
study of a biology textbook (Bazzul & Sykes 2011); see also a discussion by Izumo,
Tsuzura, Hara and Ochiya (2007:219) critiquing the elicitation of Japanese school-
childrens attitudes about gays and lesbians via a questionnaire that included items
like they make me sick.
At the same time, new regulatory discourses are emerging in which it is not
gayness but closeted gayness that is considered socially unacceptable. Newmans
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 87
As Decena (2008:339) puts it: Today, one comes out not to be radical or change
the world but to be a normal gay subject (a view he critiques, using the notion of
a tacit subject). See also Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1995) on the rise of open-
ly gay and lesbian students in US high schools; as well as studies in Rasmussen,
Rofes & Talburt (2004).
There has also been increasing interest in examining the constructedness of
heterosexuality. For instance, Moita-Lopes (2006b) shows how a fifth-grade white
boy in Brazil discursively (and derogatorily) positioned a classmate as gay (much
like in the Little Fruit example we saw above), while Moita-Lopes (2006a:305)
uses the same transcript data to show how, in that interaction that same boy was
positioning himself as straight (by defining what gays are like).
By the end of this scene, the author says, Ian has no place at the table and no
place in discourse (Youdell 2004:486, citing Butler 1997). According to the au-
thor, Ohans physical exclusion of Ian from the group and Ians silent acquies-
cence are not a one-off incident but part of an ongoing series of citational chains
through which hetero-masculinities are valorised (Youdell 2004:485). Drawing
on Butlers work, the author argues that such instances are injurious performa-
tives, or acts that constitute denigrated, wounded identities through momentary
and apparently insignificant discursive practices within the classroom . In this
case, Ian is constituted as a wounded homosexual, which is an intelligible, if
subjugated, subject (Youdell 2004:484).
The second interaction occurred one week after the first, in the same class-
room.
Priscilla
Ohan is seated between Ian and Josh, who are close friends. Ian and Josh
discuss a rumour that Miss Collins is dating Mr Aspen, another teacher in
the school. Ohan listens without contributing and two other boys come over
to listen.
Ian: (animated and laughing) Call her Mrs Aspen, next time you speak
to her, call her Mrs Aspen!
Josh: (laughing) Ah, youre such a drama queen!
Ian laughs. Ohan appears to ignore this exchange. The other two boys look on
smiling.
Josh: Priscilla!
Ian: (replying to Josh, laughing) Baby kitten soft dick!
Ohan: (pushing his chair back abruptly and standing up) Argh! Theres
something wrong with this person!
Ohan walks away. Ian continues to laugh. Josh exhales and shakes his head.
The two observing boys grin as they continue to watch and listen. Ohan returns
to his seat at the table. (Youdell 2004:487)
The author observes that in these two interactions, the same boy, Ian, is inscribed
by his peers in very different ways: first, as a denigrated homosexual, then as
having a legitimate pop-gay identity. In the second scene, Ian is called a Drama
Queen and Priscilla not terms like fag or poof . The film Priscilla Queen of
the Desert references a globalised and commercialised (and therefore legitimate)
gay culture and identity. Thus, in the second scene, Ian is inscribed within two
discursive frames simultaneously: a hetero-normative discourse and a popular
gay discourse, which means that Joshs naming of Ian has the potential to both
injure and legitimate (italics added). It is this very simultaneity, the author argues,
that makes it possible for Ian and Josh to talk as they do in the classroom context
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 89
In line with this shift, we are also seeing more self-reflective accounts from teachers
about their efforts to disentangle their teaching from a gay-victimising discourse
(see King 2008; McInnes & Davies 2008; Rasmussen, Rofes & Talburt 2004; Vetter
2010; see also Ellwood 2006; Mchain 2006). For example, in developing a unit
on queer youth within a course on LGBT issues in K-12 schools, Rofes (2004:51
52) observed that his teaching materials were overwhelmingly narrative[s] of vic-
timology, covering topics such as suicide, HIV risk, and substance abuse among
queer youth. This Martyr-Target-Victim syndrome led one student to complain:
Where is the joy?!! Dont these people ever have fun? (Rofes 2004:47). When
he elicited new topics from his students, they suggested things like: falling in
love, the ones who are happy, healthy gay teens, people with supportive par-
ents, and normal queer youth (Rofes 2004:52). In short, studies are increasingly
showing how gay identity is being characterised not (only) as an injurious perfor-
mative but as a legitimate option.8
Ping: Um. You know, wear earrings just for woman. But for man,
lifestyle.
Gina: Aaah! (laughter) (Gina smiles) Is THAT what you think?
(much laughter)
(Many students talking at once)
Gina: (writes lifestyle on the board) So- So what is that telling us,
this kind of comment? From Ping?
Lucy: Not only girls, not only women wear earrings. Even male
does the same thing.
Gina: OK but see for Ping, an earring on a man means something
else.
Lucy: Uh-huh.
Gina: Right? (laughter)
Student: Right. []
Rita: (as if to challenge) So that means if you dont wear earrings
were a tomboy? Is that it? (laughter)
(Peter soon changes the subject.)
(Nelson 2009:153)
class I really looked at the book differently. And I really thought about what I was
saying very differently.
It is worth noting here that including gay curricula does not necessarily pro-
vide gay students with a place in discourse. In an observational study of tenth-
grade sex education lessons in Norway, Rthing (2008:254) found that references
to gay people and gay topics were part of the curriculum. However, the main cur-
ricular message was: it is important that we tolerate the homosexuals (Rthing
2008:260). Heterosexuality was consistently configured as the naturalised and
taken for granted point of reference (Rthing 2008:261). Thus, an emphasis on
promoting homotolerance can end up reproducing heteronormativity and
fail to acknowledge the existence of gay students (Rthing 2008:253; see also
Nelson 2009, 2010b).
With regard to his gay identity, Pablo was masterful at simultaneously saying and
not saying (Nelson 2010b:454). In this interaction, he managed to convey to his
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 93
classmate that he was gay, but without any sort of verbal declaration. Subtly signal-
ling a gay identity in class helped Pablo to find out, as he put it, who to be open
with (Nelson 2010b:453). Pablos code-switching from Spanish to English (when
Ral reacted with dismay to Pablos implicit coming out) may have been due in
part to Pablos belief that the teacher was a lesbian, so would serve as a protective
presence or resource if Ral became threatening. The switch to English, I noted,
may also have served as a subtle reminder to Ral that though they were both
from Mexico, they were now on new turf, and the rules of the game had changed
(Nelson 2010b:454). In fact, Pablo was highly invested in learning English pre-
cisely because he considered it a gay lingua franca that facilitates entry into a
global gay community (Nelson 2010b:448).
The above account and others from Pablo show how he risked rapport through
discreet self-disclosure, coding his communications with wit and humour.11 Yet
despite Pablos highly nuanced identity savvy, he struggled to establish communi-
cative legitimacy in the classroom, being restricted by heteronormative discourses
and larger social structures that made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to
voice his thoughts or experiences when these were highly relevant to the discus-
sion topic at hand for example, during another class discussion in which he was
asked whether he wanted to get married.
Kings (2008) study of gay Korean men found that they were more comfort-
able learning English with gay interlocutors than with straight ones, so they pre-
ferred informal learning to formal education. Experiences of alienation are also
reported in Dalley and Campbells (2006) study, which includes gay high school
students (one Canadian-born, one a Somali refugee); in Jewells (1998) study of
a Thai transgender students perspective on gender and family representations in
her Australian ESL textbook; and in Gutierrezs (2004) study of the difficult school
experiences of black and Latino male-to-female transgender students (including
some second-language students) in the U.S. The cumulative message of studies
like these is that, over and over again, learning opportunities are being restricted
for students who self-identify as other than heterosexual despite their resource-
fulness and agency as individuals, and despite the social-equity rhetoric of their
educational institutions.
Despite extensive searching, I have found remarkably few lingua-centric stud-
ies of students identifying as lesbian (or bisexual).12 Blackburns (2002/2003)
study of young people disrupting heteronormativity via literacy recounts the lit-
eracy performances of Justine, a 16-year-old self-identified African-American
lesbian writer, at an urban centre in the United States that was run by, and for,
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youths (most of whom were
African-American and male). Justine read aloud a poem she wrote about an in-
cident in public in which a stranger (with a venomous voice) called her a dyke
94 Cynthia D. Nelson
of communication and of learning; and to prompt those who care about sexuality
issues in education to consider how these are languaged.
The first imperative drawn from the literature is to think queerly about education.
As we have seen, this means taking into account how gay name-calling and other
common day-to-day discursive interactions are used to police speech and behav-
iour toward the production of heterosexuality and gender normativity. It means
understanding how the pre-allocation and rewarding of straight student identi-
ties can place an unnecessary communicative burden on gay students. Thinking
queerly also means explicitly examining the ambiguities, innuendo and indirect-
ness that are often associated with gay and other non-hetero identities and that
can generate mixed understandings and misunderstandings, perhaps especially
(though certainly not exclusively) among multilingual interlocutors.
As we have also seen, thinking queerly means investigating the nuanced com-
plex performatives that occur in ordinary classroom moments; and it means pro-
ductively complicating the question of what exactly constitutes homophobia or
heteronormativity in classroom interactions (on this point, see Rasmussen 2004,
who argues that gay name-calling is not always derogatory). It means taking
into account how transglobal gay discourses yield new subject positions that can
counter wounded identities; how gay-victim discourses are being countered by
normal-queer-youth discourses; and how these different discourses circulate in
tandem in classroom interactions. It means understanding how students deploy
coded signs in negotiating their interactions and identities; and how acts of writ-
ing and being witnessed can transform gay students experiences of harassment
and hate speech.
Thinking queerly means considering the creative array of sexual/gender iden-
tifications beyond gay/straight, and beyond gay-male which still remain
vastly underrepresented in the lingua-centric education literature. On that last
point, one of the strengths of queer linguistics is its exploration of talk and texts
pertaining to a great variety of sexual/gendered identifications. Research partici-
pants in Livia and Halls (1997) edited volume Queerly phrased, for example, in-
clude a bisexual deaf man; Texan bar queens; female-to-gay male transsexuals; a
married Muslim Nigerian man who sells sex to men; and many others. Yet across
the (language) education literature even in studies of adults, not kids this
empirical richness becomes severely reduced.
As I have put it elsewhere:
96 Cynthia D. Nelson
[W]here are the lesbian, transgender, queer, gay and bisexual learners (and, for
that matter, teachers)? Why are they so often missing from the pages of our re-
search publications? [But] it is not just queer people who are missing it
is also people with queer neighbors, mothers-in-law, bosses, and host-brothers.
Perhaps the most significant question is: What effects are these acts of erasure and
exclusion having on the teaching and learning of language? (Nelson 2009:218)
Those of us who read, review, teach and/or produce lingua-centric research must in-
sist upon a richer field of representation when it comes to students sexual identities.
The second imperative is to refine and apply critical literacy and other linguistic
tools for analysing the ways in which sociosexual discourses are operating in and
on ones life and surroundings. This involves taking into account not just the ver-
bal/textual but also the visual, the spatial, and the physical (as we saw in Youdell
2004). It means exploiting the creative power of literary and other arts-based forms
in naming and shaping ones own discursive contributions. It means studying not
just the said but the unsaid, the unsayable.
Rthings (2008:262) study of sexual education in Norwegian secondary
schools found that homosexuality was not talked about as something the students
should know anything about, but as something they could be for or against.
Something similar is evident in many of the studies I have surveyed, where the fo-
cus is on attitudes rather than expertise, on gauging levels of homo-tolerance, not
levels of learning.13 Also, too few studies of gay students (often fraught) identity
negotiations consider the consequences of these negotiations for learning.
One important study that does investigate language and sexual identity in rela-
tion to learning, and which is particularly instructive here, is Malinowitzs (1995)
investigation of a gay-themed composition class at a US college and of the writ-
ing practices of some gay-identified students in the class. Lesbian and gay people,
Malinowitz (1995) argues, have a kind of rhetorical self-consciousness which, if
creatively utilized, could be a huge asset in their attempts to position themselves
within the locus of audience and meaning that is at the center of the writing art.
However, what often happens is their rhetorical prowess has actually been put to
the purpose of sabotaging their writing (Malinowitz 1995:257).
Some examples: One student wrote about being gay, but felt the need to justify
and explain it, which kept him tied to fairly basic forms of discourse and curtailed
deeper exploration; another would get on a soapbox in order to set the record
straight for ignorant homophobes, which involves writing about what she already
knew rather than taking risks (Malinowitz 1995:202); another had written a few
times about being black and gay, but never got much critical feedback from his
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 97
teachers, which cut off the possibility of serious revision; and yet another avoid-
ed any queer content in her writing, which the student described as comparable to
ignor[ing] the right half of my body (Malinowitz 1995:257).
Hence, students, teachers and researchers alike need to be equipped with
some analytic tools such as Bucholtz & Halls tactics of intersubjectiv-
ity (2004:498), Moita-Lopess (2006b:36) interactional positionings analysis,
Winanss (2006:114) discursive affiliations analysis, or any of a number of other
approaches in order to critically examine language, sexual and other identities,
and systems of difference.
4. Conclusion
Speaking of gay students, speaking with gay students, speaking as a gay student
these were the foci of the various studies drawn together here for the first time.
By juxtaposing work from applied linguistics, education and literacy/composition,
and from a variety of educational subjects, settings and levels, I hope to spark
multi-perspective thinking on these matters via what Klein (2004:522) calls
cross-sectoral transdisciplinarity. Synthesising ideas from some recent research,
I have proposed that queer epistemologies involve thinking queerly, linguistically,
multi-modally, educationally, transdisciplinarily and transnationally and I have
suggested some promising lines of inquiry for future work.
Two key points deriving from this literature survey are not yet widely recog-
nised in either mainstream linguistics or mainstream education. First, the (often
subtle) communicative processes whereby sexual identifications (and disidenti-
fications) are enacted, contested and negotiated within classroom interactions
ought not be dismissed as trivial matters pertaining to sexual minorities but
seen as everyday dynamics that fundamentally shape learning experiences and
outcomes.15 Second, in order to acknowledge and transform those dynamics that
(however inadvertently) are impeding learning, some critical analytic tools are
needed by students, teachers and researchers alike. To this end, more research
on the intricacies and implications of sexual identifications inside (and outside)
the classroom would enrich the various subfields of linguistics and its cognate
fields by helping to foster socio-sexual literacies, or ways of understanding and
reconfiguring the socio-sexual dimensions of ones everyday interactions.
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 99
These are not esoteric academic matters. As I write this, online media are re-
porting that in the Czech Republic, a director at the Education Ministry has con-
demned Prague Pride, the citys inaugural gay and lesbian festival, and the nations
president has voiced his objection to promoting homosexuality; the Ministry of
Education in Taiwan plans to include homosexual issues in school curricula but
objections are being raised by teachers, parent groups and politicians; and in the
United States, a Massachusetts study has found that about one in four of the les-
bian and gay teenagers in that state are homeless (most without any parent or
guardian in their lives), which makes just getting an education a struggle. Mean-
while, it has come to light that several prominent publishers of young adult fiction
have demanded that their authors turn all gay characters into straight ones all
of this at a time when the suicides of North American gay youth are receiving un-
precedented media attention, as are campaigns in many geo-regions for same-sex
marriage.16
Given the profound effects on human lives of these clashing discourses, this is
surely the time for creative thinking and greater collaboration between the fields
of linguistics, queer studies, and education.
Notes
1. On queer linguistics see Koch (2008); Livia & Hall (1997); and Motschenbacher (2010).
2. Sauntson (2005) found that for lesbians, primary and secondary schools are reportedly far
more hostile spaces than universities.
3. See also Takahashi (in press) on the eroticisation of language education via English for Re-
lationship Purposes, which positions womens romantic and sexual relationships with foreign
men as the key to learning English.
4. Bucholtz and Hall (2008:408) make a similar point about sociocultural linguistics: engag[ing]
in dialogue across the borders of its constituent subfields, they say, has resulted in critical en-
gagements and creative adaptations that are moving the field in productive new directions.
5. Throughout this article, for the sake of clarity and succinctness I have simplified the format-
ting and reduced the amount of information provided in the quoted transcripts: for example,
omitting notes on pause length, rising intonation, or the speakers age, and occasionally chang-
ing the casing or spelling.
7. On the long-term effects of anti-gay bullying on educational attainment levels, see Henrickson
(2007).
100 Cynthia D. Nelson
8. A related point is that, for some, the current era is considered to have become post-gay
which does not necessarily mean post-discriminatory, but rather that gay politics tends to
assert sameness with straights rather than difference (Ghaziani 2011).
9. A female student at a Canadian university put forward a similar view: I didnt ask many
questions [of the gay guest speakers] because I had an irrational feeling that if I did people in the
class might wonder if I was gay. That sounds crazy, but I feel that this might be the reason why
others didnt speak (Eyre 1993:280).
10. Some additional interview data not included in my book: Ironically, the person least con-
sternated by the earrings discussion was Ben, who described himself to me as the only guy
wearing earrings in the class. While Ben was aware of a possible gay connotation (I think if
you wear it on the right youre gay If you wear it on the left its youre considered ok, he
laughed) he was completely unconcerned about his classmates comments: Its not like Im
gonna rob a bank or something like that, cause I dont hurt anybody.
11. Decena (2008:34), in a study of Dominican immigrant gay and bisexual men in New York,
observes that What is tacit is neither secret nor silent. Bucholtz and Hall (2004:496) make a
similar point: The use of indirect strategies to determine anothers sexual identity constructs all
participants as knowing how to produce and interpret these tropes.
12. See Vetters (2010) study of the language-arts projects of an African-American lesbian
teenager, and several lesbian language-learner narratives (Nelson 2010a). See also Chapter5
of Blaise (2005), about a six-year-old Anglo-American kindergartener who frequently defied
gender norms in her classroom interactions.
13. Having said that, there are moves to incorporate gay/queer content-knowledge into foreign
language education (see Jones 2010) and language teacher education (see Ojeda 2006). Student
interest seems to be driving these developments, as evident in this response of a German lan-
guage learner (in Germany) who was asked to nominate his preferred class discussion topics:
I come from a country where it is socially unpleasant (and sometimes dangerous) for gays and
lesbians to be open about their homosexuality As a gay man, I am interested in knowing
about the history of the Homosexual Movement in Germany and what Germans say and
how they talk about homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, same-sex marriage (Decke-
Cornill & Kleiner 2007:188).
14. See, for example, Epprecht and Egyas (2011) study of teaching about sexualities in Nigeria;
Glasss (2008) thesis on third-gender EFL teachers in Thailand; and Yuchen, Yang and Changs
(2004) reflective account of gay and lesbian education in a Taiwanese high school.
15. As Berlant and Warner (1995:349) put it: Queer commentary shows that much of what
passes for general culture is riddled with heteronormativity. Conversely, many of the issues of
queerness have more general relevance than one is normally encouraged to think.
16. These news items were accessed via various Google news websites in mid 2011.
Emerging queer epistemologies in studies of gay-student discourses 101
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Authors address
Cynthia D. Nelson
The University of Sydney
Institute for Teaching and Learning
Rm 390 Carslaw Building (F07)
NSW 2006 Australia
cynthia.nelson@sydney.edu.au