Linguistic Performance of Queer Identity: A Sociolinguistic Study of Phonological and Lexical Cues in Young Adult Fiction

Abstract

Through these sociolinguistic studies, it has been shown that identity not only manifests in language but is continuously constructed by attending to socially significant aspects of the use of labels, styles, stances, and semiotics. In particular, Young Adult (YA) fiction is an important site for exploring this process, as it circulates representations of gender and sexuality and negotiates the social identities of viewers and readers alike. While there has been growth in LGBTQ+ presence in YA texts, both themes and the visibility and inclusion of queer individuals in these texts have been targeted by scholarship, and little research concentrates on how queer identities are constructed linguistically in YA texts. This study focuses on lexical and phonological cues used to build queer identity and discusses the sociolinguistic meanings of queerness that these cues represent, challenge, or strengthen. The study used a mixed-methods corpus sociolinguistic approach, involving manual corpus coding and qualitative discourse analysis. The sample consisted of 20 contemporary YA English-language novels that contained at least one LGBTQ+ character and explicit dialogue about LGBTQ identities. Lexical cues, with a coded percentage of 60.0%, were the most common identity cue, followed by an orthographic cue with a coded percentage of 22.3%, and a phonological cue with a coded percentage of 17.7%. Queer labels, self-identification language, stylised intonation, and written speech patterns coalesced to indicate affiliation, vulnerability, resistance, and normalisation. The study sheds light on queer linguistic and sociolinguistic studies, as well as literary studies, by illustrating how fictional talk can be utilised as a narrative tool to frame the performance of queer identity through linguistic variation.