Narrating Transgender Identities: A Linguistic Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.3.1/2.04Keywords:
language use, linguistic perspectives, self narration, transgender identitiesAbstract
This article aims at discussing the relevance of linguistic research with regards to transgender identities representation and self-narration. In fact, this issue of puntOorg International Journal (PIJ) tackles three different perspectives – economic, psychological and linguistic – from which the representation and self-narration of transgender and gender non-conforming people working in organizations and business can be analyzed. From the linguistic perspective, interest towards the topic of transgender and gender non-conforming identities has been drawn only recently, despite the relevance language use has on the general understanding of these identity expressions. The discussion will include a qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis of a collection of eight narration and testimonies of transgender individuals from Italy in relation to their workplace experience and their coming out stories.
References
Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, London/New York: Continuum.
Baker, P. (2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality, London/Oakville: Equinox Publishing.
Baker, P. (2014) “Bad Wigs and Screaming Mimis: Using Corpus-Assisted Techniques to Carry out Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Trans People in the British Press”, In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, C. Hart and C. Piotr (eds), pp. 211235, London: Bloomsbury.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., McEnery, T. (2013) Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Balirano, G. (Forthcoming) “Canadian Media and the Construction of Transgender Bodies: A Critical Multimodal Discourse Approach”, In MADE IN CANADA: The Languages of the Media, O. Palusci and E. Lamberti (eds), Toronto: Guernica Editions.
Barrett, R. (2002) “Is Queer Theory Important for Sociolinguistic Theory?”, In Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, K. Campbell-Kibler, R.J. Podesva, S.J. Roberts and A. Wong (eds), pp. 25–43, Stanford: CSLI Press.
Besnier, N. (2003) “Crossing Genders, Mixing Languages: The Linguistic Construction of Transgenderism in Tonga”, In The Handbook of Language and Gender, J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff, pp. 279–301, Meiden/Oxford/Victoria/Berlin: Blackwell Publishing.
Burnes, T.R., Chen, M.M. (2012) “The Multiple Identities of Transgender Individuals: Incorporating a Framework of Intersectionality to Gender Crossing”, In Navigating Multiple Identities: Race, Gender, Culture, Nationality, and Roles, R. Josselson and M. Haraway, pp. 113–128, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, New York, NY: Routledge.
Capuzza, J., Spencer, L. (2016) “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing on the Small Screen? Transgender Characters on U.S. Scripted Television Series”, Communication Quarterly, 65 (2): 214230.
Davies, D. (2009) “Transgender Issues in the Workplace: HRD’s Newest Challenge/Opportunity”, Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11 (1): 109120.
Delemarre-van de Waal, H., Cohen-Kettenis, P. (2006) “Clinical Management of Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents: A Protocol on Psychological and Paediatric Endocrinology Aspects”, European Journal of Endocrinology, 155: S131–S137.
Di Martino, E. (2017) “Painting Social Change on a Body Canvas: Trans Bodies and their Social Impact”, In Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture, P. Baker and G. Balirano (eds), pp. 149174, London: Palgrave.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Media Discourse, London: Hodder.
Fairclough, N. (2011) “Discursive Hybridity and Social Change in Critical Discourse Analysis”, In Genre(s) on the Move: Hybridization and Discourse Change in Specialized Communication, S. Sarangi, V. Polese and G. Caliendo (eds), pp. 11–26, Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997) Discourse as Social Interaction, London/New York: SAGE Publications.
Fairclough, N., Mulderrig, J., Wodak, R. (2011) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary, London/New York: SAGE Publications.
Ferraresi, A. (2018) “Who Writes the Story Matters: Transgender Identity through the Lens of Citizen Journalism”, In Miss Man? The Adventures of Gender, G. Balirano and O. Palusci (eds), pp. 190214, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Gupta, K. (2018) “Response and Responsibility: Mainstream Media and Lucy Meadows in a Post-Leveson Context”, Sexualities, 117. DOI:10.1177/1363460717740259.
Halberstam, J. (2001) “Telling Tales: Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and Transgender Biography”, In Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race and Religion, M.C. Sanchez and L. Schlossberg (eds), pp. 13–27, New York, NY: New York University Press.
Halberstam, J. (2003) “The Transgender Look”, In The Bent Lens: A World Guide to Gay and Lesbian Film, L. Daniel and C. Jackson (eds), pp. 18–21, Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Books.
Halberstam, J. (2005) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York, NY: New York University Press.
Hall, K. (1997) “‘Go Suck your Husband’s Sugarcane!’: Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult”, In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, A. Livia and K. Hall, pp. 430–460, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hall, K. (2002) “‘Unnatural’ Gender in Hindi”, In Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, M. Hellinger and H. Bussman (eds), pp. 133162, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hall, K. (2013) ““It’s a Hijra!”: Queer Linguistics Revisited”, Discourse & Society, 24 (5): 634642.
Hall, K., O’Donovan V. (1996) “Shifting Gender Positions among Hindi-Speaking Hijras”, In Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice, V. Bergvall, J. Bing and A. Freed, pp. 228–266, London: Longman.
Hartner, M. (2015) “Imagining Transgender: Reinscriptions of Normativity in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica and Jackie Kay’s Trumpet”, FIAR: Forum for Inter-American Research, 8¬ (1): 109–122.
Hess, L. M. (2017) “‘My Whole Life I’ve Been Dressing up like a Man’: Negotiations of Queer Aging and Queer Temporality in the TV Series Transparent”, European Journal of American Studies, 11 (3): 119. DOI:10.4000/ejas.11702.
Horak, L. (2014) “Trans on YouTube: Intimacy, Visibility, Temporality”, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1 (4): 572585.
Jones, L. (Forthcoming) “Discourses of Transnormativity in Vloggers’ Identity Construction”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Joseph, J. (2016) “Historical Perspectives on Language and Identity”, In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, S. Preece (ed.), pp. 19–33, Oxon: Routledge.
Kulick, D. (1998) Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Kulick, D. (1999) “Transgender and Language: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for the Future”, The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 5 (4): 605622.
Machin, D., Mayr, A. (2012) How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, London: SAGE.
Milani, T. (2010) “What’s in a Name? Language Ideology and Social Differentiation in a Swedish Print-Mediated Debate”, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14 (1): 116142.
Milani, T. (ed.) (2017) Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality, London: Equinox.
Namaste, V.K. (2000) Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Preece, S. (ed.) (2016) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, Oxon: Routledge.
Stryker, S. (1994) “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1 (3): 227–254.
Stryker, S. (2008) “Transgender History, Homonormativity, and Disciplinarity”, Radical History Review, 100: 145–157.
Stryker, S. and Whittle, S. (2006) The Transgender Studies Reader, London/New York: Routledge.
Stryker, S. and Aizura, A. (2013) The Transgender Studies Reader, London/New York: Routledge.
Stone, S. (1991) “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto”, In Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, J. Epstein and K. Straub, pp. 280–304, New York, NY: Routledge.
Sunderland, J. (2004) Gendered Discourses, Houndmills/Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Webster, L. (2016) ““A New Level”: A Corpus-Based Method for the Critical Discourse Analysis of Transgender Self-Identification via Social Media”, paper presented at the International Conference Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD 2016), Catania, Sicily, Italy, September 57.
Webster, L. (Forthcoming) ““I Am I”: Self-Constructed Transgender Identities in Internet-Mediated Forum Communication”, In Transgender and Language, E. Di Martino and L. von Flotow (eds), International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Whittle, S. (1996) “Review of F. Lewins (ed.), Transsexualism in Society: A Sociology of Male-to-Female Transsexuals”, Journal of Gender Studies, 5 (2): 236–237.
Whittle, S. (1998a) “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 27 (5): 526–530.
Whittle, S. (1998b) “The Trans-Cyberian Mail Way”, Social & Legal Studies, 7 (3): 389408.
Whittle, S. (2016) The Ultimate Practice Guide to Transgender and Transsexual Human Rights and Equality Law in the UK, Press for Change.
Witten, T., Whittle, S. (2004) “Transpanthers: The Greying of Transgender and the Law”, Deakin Law Review, 9 (2): 504–504.
Zimman, L. (2009) “‘The Other Kind of Coming out’: Transgender People and the Coming out Narrative Genre”, Gender & Language, 3 (1): 53–80.
Zimman, L. (2013) “Hegemonic Masculinity and the Variability of Gay-Sounding Speech: The Perceived Sexuality of Transgender Men”, Journal of Language & Sexuality, 2 (1): 5–43.
Zimman, L. (2014) “The Discursive Construction of Sex: Remaking and Reclaiming the Gendered Body in Talk about Genitals among Trans Men”, In Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality, L. Zimman, J. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds), pp. 13–34, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zottola, A. (2018a) “Transgender in the Spotlight. the Other-Representation of Transgender People in the British Press: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis”, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Naples Federico II.
Zottola, A. (2018b) “Living as a Woman: The British Press on Trans Identities”, In Miss Man? The Adventures of Gender, G. Balirano and O. Palusci (eds), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Zottola, A. (Forthcoming a) “Being Sophia Burset: Translating Transgender Identity on the Tv Series Orange is the New Black”, Cultus, Special Issue edited by S. Zanotti and I. Ranzato.
Zottola, A. (Forthcoming b) “Lexical Choices and Trans Identity in the British Press 20132015: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis”, The Journal of Language and Sexuality, Special Issue edited by H. Motschenbacher.
Baker, P. (2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality, London/Oakville: Equinox Publishing.
Baker, P. (2014) “Bad Wigs and Screaming Mimis: Using Corpus-Assisted Techniques to Carry out Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Trans People in the British Press”, In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, C. Hart and C. Piotr (eds), pp. 211235, London: Bloomsbury.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., McEnery, T. (2013) Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Balirano, G. (Forthcoming) “Canadian Media and the Construction of Transgender Bodies: A Critical Multimodal Discourse Approach”, In MADE IN CANADA: The Languages of the Media, O. Palusci and E. Lamberti (eds), Toronto: Guernica Editions.
Barrett, R. (2002) “Is Queer Theory Important for Sociolinguistic Theory?”, In Language and Sexuality: Contesting Meaning in Theory and Practice, K. Campbell-Kibler, R.J. Podesva, S.J. Roberts and A. Wong (eds), pp. 25–43, Stanford: CSLI Press.
Besnier, N. (2003) “Crossing Genders, Mixing Languages: The Linguistic Construction of Transgenderism in Tonga”, In The Handbook of Language and Gender, J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff, pp. 279–301, Meiden/Oxford/Victoria/Berlin: Blackwell Publishing.
Burnes, T.R., Chen, M.M. (2012) “The Multiple Identities of Transgender Individuals: Incorporating a Framework of Intersectionality to Gender Crossing”, In Navigating Multiple Identities: Race, Gender, Culture, Nationality, and Roles, R. Josselson and M. Haraway, pp. 113–128, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, New York, NY: Routledge.
Capuzza, J., Spencer, L. (2016) “Regressing, Progressing, or Transgressing on the Small Screen? Transgender Characters on U.S. Scripted Television Series”, Communication Quarterly, 65 (2): 214230.
Davies, D. (2009) “Transgender Issues in the Workplace: HRD’s Newest Challenge/Opportunity”, Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11 (1): 109120.
Delemarre-van de Waal, H., Cohen-Kettenis, P. (2006) “Clinical Management of Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents: A Protocol on Psychological and Paediatric Endocrinology Aspects”, European Journal of Endocrinology, 155: S131–S137.
Di Martino, E. (2017) “Painting Social Change on a Body Canvas: Trans Bodies and their Social Impact”, In Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture, P. Baker and G. Balirano (eds), pp. 149174, London: Palgrave.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Media Discourse, London: Hodder.
Fairclough, N. (2011) “Discursive Hybridity and Social Change in Critical Discourse Analysis”, In Genre(s) on the Move: Hybridization and Discourse Change in Specialized Communication, S. Sarangi, V. Polese and G. Caliendo (eds), pp. 11–26, Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.
Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997) Discourse as Social Interaction, London/New York: SAGE Publications.
Fairclough, N., Mulderrig, J., Wodak, R. (2011) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary, London/New York: SAGE Publications.
Ferraresi, A. (2018) “Who Writes the Story Matters: Transgender Identity through the Lens of Citizen Journalism”, In Miss Man? The Adventures of Gender, G. Balirano and O. Palusci (eds), pp. 190214, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Gupta, K. (2018) “Response and Responsibility: Mainstream Media and Lucy Meadows in a Post-Leveson Context”, Sexualities, 117. DOI:10.1177/1363460717740259.
Halberstam, J. (2001) “Telling Tales: Brandon Teena, Billy Tipton, and Transgender Biography”, In Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race and Religion, M.C. Sanchez and L. Schlossberg (eds), pp. 13–27, New York, NY: New York University Press.
Halberstam, J. (2003) “The Transgender Look”, In The Bent Lens: A World Guide to Gay and Lesbian Film, L. Daniel and C. Jackson (eds), pp. 18–21, Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Books.
Halberstam, J. (2005) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York, NY: New York University Press.
Hall, K. (1997) “‘Go Suck your Husband’s Sugarcane!’: Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult”, In Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, A. Livia and K. Hall, pp. 430–460, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hall, K. (2002) “‘Unnatural’ Gender in Hindi”, In Gender Across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men, M. Hellinger and H. Bussman (eds), pp. 133162, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hall, K. (2013) ““It’s a Hijra!”: Queer Linguistics Revisited”, Discourse & Society, 24 (5): 634642.
Hall, K., O’Donovan V. (1996) “Shifting Gender Positions among Hindi-Speaking Hijras”, In Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice, V. Bergvall, J. Bing and A. Freed, pp. 228–266, London: Longman.
Hartner, M. (2015) “Imagining Transgender: Reinscriptions of Normativity in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica and Jackie Kay’s Trumpet”, FIAR: Forum for Inter-American Research, 8¬ (1): 109–122.
Hess, L. M. (2017) “‘My Whole Life I’ve Been Dressing up like a Man’: Negotiations of Queer Aging and Queer Temporality in the TV Series Transparent”, European Journal of American Studies, 11 (3): 119. DOI:10.4000/ejas.11702.
Horak, L. (2014) “Trans on YouTube: Intimacy, Visibility, Temporality”, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1 (4): 572585.
Jones, L. (Forthcoming) “Discourses of Transnormativity in Vloggers’ Identity Construction”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Joseph, J. (2016) “Historical Perspectives on Language and Identity”, In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, S. Preece (ed.), pp. 19–33, Oxon: Routledge.
Kulick, D. (1998) Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Kulick, D. (1999) “Transgender and Language: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for the Future”, The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 5 (4): 605622.
Machin, D., Mayr, A. (2012) How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction, London: SAGE.
Milani, T. (2010) “What’s in a Name? Language Ideology and Social Differentiation in a Swedish Print-Mediated Debate”, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14 (1): 116142.
Milani, T. (ed.) (2017) Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality, London: Equinox.
Namaste, V.K. (2000) Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Preece, S. (ed.) (2016) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, Oxon: Routledge.
Stryker, S. (1994) “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1 (3): 227–254.
Stryker, S. (2008) “Transgender History, Homonormativity, and Disciplinarity”, Radical History Review, 100: 145–157.
Stryker, S. and Whittle, S. (2006) The Transgender Studies Reader, London/New York: Routledge.
Stryker, S. and Aizura, A. (2013) The Transgender Studies Reader, London/New York: Routledge.
Stone, S. (1991) “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto”, In Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, J. Epstein and K. Straub, pp. 280–304, New York, NY: Routledge.
Sunderland, J. (2004) Gendered Discourses, Houndmills/Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Webster, L. (2016) ““A New Level”: A Corpus-Based Method for the Critical Discourse Analysis of Transgender Self-Identification via Social Media”, paper presented at the International Conference Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD 2016), Catania, Sicily, Italy, September 57.
Webster, L. (Forthcoming) ““I Am I”: Self-Constructed Transgender Identities in Internet-Mediated Forum Communication”, In Transgender and Language, E. Di Martino and L. von Flotow (eds), International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Whittle, S. (1996) “Review of F. Lewins (ed.), Transsexualism in Society: A Sociology of Male-to-Female Transsexuals”, Journal of Gender Studies, 5 (2): 236–237.
Whittle, S. (1998a) “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 27 (5): 526–530.
Whittle, S. (1998b) “The Trans-Cyberian Mail Way”, Social & Legal Studies, 7 (3): 389408.
Whittle, S. (2016) The Ultimate Practice Guide to Transgender and Transsexual Human Rights and Equality Law in the UK, Press for Change.
Witten, T., Whittle, S. (2004) “Transpanthers: The Greying of Transgender and the Law”, Deakin Law Review, 9 (2): 504–504.
Zimman, L. (2009) “‘The Other Kind of Coming out’: Transgender People and the Coming out Narrative Genre”, Gender & Language, 3 (1): 53–80.
Zimman, L. (2013) “Hegemonic Masculinity and the Variability of Gay-Sounding Speech: The Perceived Sexuality of Transgender Men”, Journal of Language & Sexuality, 2 (1): 5–43.
Zimman, L. (2014) “The Discursive Construction of Sex: Remaking and Reclaiming the Gendered Body in Talk about Genitals among Trans Men”, In Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality, L. Zimman, J. Davis and J. Raclaw (eds), pp. 13–34, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zottola, A. (2018a) “Transgender in the Spotlight. the Other-Representation of Transgender People in the British Press: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis”, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Naples Federico II.
Zottola, A. (2018b) “Living as a Woman: The British Press on Trans Identities”, In Miss Man? The Adventures of Gender, G. Balirano and O. Palusci (eds), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Zottola, A. (Forthcoming a) “Being Sophia Burset: Translating Transgender Identity on the Tv Series Orange is the New Black”, Cultus, Special Issue edited by S. Zanotti and I. Ranzato.
Zottola, A. (Forthcoming b) “Lexical Choices and Trans Identity in the British Press 20132015: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis”, The Journal of Language and Sexuality, Special Issue edited by H. Motschenbacher.
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Published
2018-10-16
How to Cite
Zottola, A. (2018). Narrating Transgender Identities: A Linguistic Perspective. PuntOorg International Journal, 3(1/2), 51–62. https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.3.1/2.04
