“Get off my lawn! What are all these labels?”: Intra-community Evaluations of Transgender Linguistic Innovation
Dr. Archie Crowley
Duane Physics G1B27
Wednesday, April 10, 11:30am - 1:30pm
Because language is a crucial resource for trans people to name their own identities and experiences, members of trans communities commonly orient toward an ideology of “linguistic self-determination” (Zimman, 2017), wherein each person decides what terminology they want to be used for themself. Further, transgender communities have often been associated with ongoing linguistic innovation. However, trans communities also frequently engage in debates about what language is “correct” or “appropriate” (c.f. Brown, 2022; Crowley, 2022, 2023; Konnelly, 2022). Drawing on group and one-on-one sociolinguistic interviews conducted with English-speaking transgender and nonbinary people living in the Southeastern United States, I analyze participants’ narrations of their own negative reactions to linguistic innovations within transgender and nonbinary communities. I explore how ideologies of “correct language” are reproduced during in-group conversations, shaped by “normative accountability” structures (Johnson 2015), and upheld through forms of “intra-community gatekeeping” (Konnelly 2023). A tension emerges between participating in normative accountability structures and prioritizing linguistic self-determination, as participants are aware of community orientations towards self-determination and a rejection of practices of linguistic “gatekeeping.” These metalinguistic discussions provide insight into the ways in which language ideologies shape debates about linguistic innovation and language change within transgender communities.
