Speaking in queer tongues: globalization and gay language

Abstract

“Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language” (Leap and Boellstroff, eds.) focuses on the language approaches that different non- heterosexual groups around the world use in order to identify themselves within their local and indigenous contexts. It also dem onstrates how these groups simultaneously attempt to identify as part of a larger, worldwide community of sexual minorities. In the introduction, the editors, William Leap and Tom Boellstorff, state that this is by no means an exhaustive look at all the different cultures around the world. However, th e book does an impressive and thorough job with the areas of the world that it does cover, including France, Germany, Montréal, Israel, South Africa, New Z ealand, Indonesia, Thailand, and various minority groups within the U.S. In this regard the editors state that their aim is “to use a more modestly selected series of essays to show how persons who have same-sex desires, subjectivities, and/ or communities mediate and renegotiate linguistic process and product under conditions of the ostensible ‘globalization of gay English’ (p. 4). This quotation refl ects yet another of the book’s themes: the authors are concerned with how gay English comes into play within these different groups and how speakers conceptualize its use as indexical of a transglobal society.