Are 'queers' really 'queer'? Language, identity and same-sex desire in a South African online community

This study investigates meetmarket, a South African online community for men who are looking for other men. Utilising a quantitative approach to queer linguistics, the article presents a textual analysis of a large corpus of personal profiles in order to map meetmarket's 'libidinal economy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inDiscourse & society Vol. 24; no. 5; pp. 615 - 633
Main Author Milani, Tommaso M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.09.2013
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Discourse analysis
Gay rights
Gays & lesbians
Gays and lesbians
Gender identity
Grammatical gender
Identity
Internet
Language
Linguistics
Males
Masculinity
Men
Quantitative analysis
Queer studies
Queer theory
Race
Sexuality
Social networks
South Africa
Virtual Reality
White people
Words
South Africa
race
queer theory
online communities
South Africa
masculinity
corpus-assisted discourse studies
queer linguistics
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This study investigates meetmarket, a South African online community for men who are looking for other men. Utilising a quantitative approach to queer linguistics, the article presents a textual analysis of a large corpus of personal profiles in order to map meetmarket's 'libidinal economy'. More specifically, the article seeks to tease out the ways in which the members of this community valorise, and thereby make more desirable, certain identities at the expense of others. This then makes it possible to understand the extent to which these men (re)produce or, conversely, contest and overturn dominant forms of social categorisation in their expressions of same-sex desire.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0957-9265
1460-3624
DOI:10.1177/0957926513486168