Transcender and language: A review of the literature and suggestions for the future

GLQ

Volumn 5, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 605-622

  Kulick, Don ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0043111927     PISSN: 10642684     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10642684-5-4-605     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. Deborah Cameron, Verbal Hygiene (London: Routledge, 1995);
2. Rosina Lippi-Green, "Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts," Language in Society 23 (1994): 163-98;
3. and Michael Silverstein, "Monoglot 'Standard' in America: Standardization and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony," in The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Donald Brenneis and Ronald K. S. Macaulay (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 284-306.
4. This essay considers only published material. I include references to essays in difficult-to-obtain conference proceedings only when those essays make points or discuss data that I have not seen in published accounts.
5. Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (London: Women's, 1980).
6. Of course, Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967);
7. Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972);
8. and Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) got there even before Raymond.
9. Raymond, Transsexual Empire, xviii-xix.
10. Sandy Stone, "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posstranssexual Manifesto," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (London: Routledge, 1991), 280-304.
11. See also Riki Anne Wilchins, Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1997), 59-62;
12. and Sheila Jeffreys, The Lesbian Heresy (Melbourne: Spinifex, 1993).
13. Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place (New York: Harper and Row, 1975);
14. Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: Ballantine, 1990). A note for nonlinguists: Lakoff's book, which is widely recognized as having inaugurated the field of language and gender, is a catalog of observations about "women's language." The observations are based not on empirical observations but on Lakoff's own introspection about how she and her acquaintances talked. Lakoff focuses on differences she sees in men's and women's language to argue that social affirmation of appropriate femininity is paid for by girls and women with the coin of unassertive speech. Females are required to learn "women's language" if they are to receive approval and confirmation of themselves as feminine. However, the language prevents females from becoming effective communicators, because they are expected to speak as powerless underlings. In this way, "women's language" disguises, naturalizes, and consolidates men's greater power in society. Like Lakoff, Tannen is an accomplished and respected linguist. You Just Don't Understand, however, is a book designed for a popular market, one that falls into the genre of self-help literature. The book argues that men and women speak fundamentally different languages because they are segregated during the formative years of childhood. Rather than highlight power imbalances between women and men, as Lakoff does, Tannen urges her readers to understand the differences between men's and women's language and be more tolerant of them. While many of their insights have been important, both Lakoff's and Tannen's books have been repeatedly criticized for reducing complex interactional processes to lists of gender-based traits, for generalizing from an extremely limited set of data, for working with shallow understandings of gender, and for unwittingly prescribing (rather than simply describing) gendered speech patterns.
15. See Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory, 2d ed. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992);
16. Cameron, Verbal Hygiene;
17. Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, "Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice," Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1994): 461-90;
18. and Senta Troemel-Ploetz, "Selling the Apolitical," Discourse and Society 2 (1991): 489-502.
19. Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place, 53.
20. Veronica Vera, Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 133;
21. Jennifer Anne Stevens, From Masculine to Feminine and All Points in Between: A Practical Guide (Cambridge, Mass.: Different Path, 1990), 76;
22. Ewa Söderpalm, Transsexualism i ett logopediskt perspektiv [Transsexualism in a logopedic perspective] (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1996), 56.
23. See also Deborah Günzburger, "Gender Adaptation in the Speech of Transsexuals: From Sex Transition to Gender Transmission?" in Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Women and Language Conference, ed. Natasha Warner et al. (Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group, 1996), 277.
24. H. Merle Knight, "Gender Interference in Transsexuals' Speech," in Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference, ed. Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwomon, 2 vols. (Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group, 1992), 2:314;
25. Lou Sullivan, Information for the Female to Male Cross Dresser and Transsexual, 3d ed. (Seattle: Ingersoll Gender Center, 1990), 49.
26. Compare this to the advice given to women participating in "Drag-King For-A-Day" workshops, where the workshop instructor tells women (in "an authoritative low commanding voice") that they ought to "talk slow: take all the time in the world, talk low, and say few words" (Shannon Bell, "Finding the Male Within and Taking Him Cruising: 'Drag-King For-A-Day' at the Sprinkle Salon," in The Last Sex: Feminism and Outlaw Bodies, ed. Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker [New York: St. Martin's, 1993], 92).
27. Cameron, Verbal Hygiene, 194;
28. Troemel-Ploetz, "Selling the Apolitical."
29. Günzburger, "Gender Adaptation in the Speech of Transsexuals," 269;
30. Deborah H. Feinbloom, Transvestites and Transsexuals (New York: Delacorte/Lawrence, 1976), 233;
31. Mildred L. Brown and Chloe Ann Rounsley, True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism - For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), 135;
32. Söderpalm, Transsexualism i ett logopediskt perspektiv;
33. Anne Bolin, In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1988), 134.
34. See, e.g., Canary Conn, Canary: The Story of a Transsexual (Los Angeles: Nash, 1974), 167;
35. and Wilchins, Read My Lips, 54, 151.
36. Claudine Griggs, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 10;
37. Renée Richards, with John Ames, Second Serve: The Renée Richards Story (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 219.
38. Sullivan, Information, 48;
39. Holly Devor, FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997);
40. Raymond Thompson, What Took You So Long? ËGirl's Journey to Manhood (London: Penguin, 1995), 118-19;
41. Mario Martino, with Harriett, Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography (New York: Crown, 1977), 170.
42. See, e.g., Deborah Günzburger, "An Acoustic Analysis and Some Perceptual Data concerning Voice Change in Male-Female Trans-sexuals," European Journal of Disorders of Communication 28 (1993): 13-21;
43. Günzburger, "Gender Adaptation in the Speech of Transsexuals";
44. and Jennifer M. Oates and Georgina Dacakis, "Voice, Speech, and Language Considerations in the Management of Male to Female Transsexualism," in Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, ed. William A. W. Walters and Michael W. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
45. Sullivan, Information, 48.
46. Henk Asscheman and Louis J. G. Gooren, "Hormone Treatment in Transsexuals," in Gender Dysphoria: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Clinical Management, ed. Walter O. Bockting and Eli Coleman (New York: Haworth, 1992), 50-51;
47. Stevens, From Masculine to Feminine, 74.
48. I am grateful to Ann Kroon for pointing this out to me.
49. Bolin, In Search of Eve, 134-35.
50. Raymond, Transsexual Empire, xviii-xix.
51. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
52. Quoted in Shannon Bell, "Kate Bornstein: A Transgender, Transsexual Postmodern Tiresias," in Kroker and Kroker, Last Sex, 112.
53. See also Anne Bolin, "Transcending and Transgendering: Male-to-Female Transsexuals, Dichotomy, and Diversity," in Current Concepts in Transgender Identity, ed. Dallas Denny (New York: Garland, 1998), 77;
54. and Griggs, S/he, 9.
55. See Christine Beatty, "The 'T' Word," TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism 10 (1995): 50-51;
56. James Green and Nancy Sharp, "Transgender Dialogue," FTM Newsletter, no. 36 (1997): 1-4;
57. and Alison Laing, "A Label by Any Other Name Might Stick," Transgender Tapestry, no. 74 (1995): 48.
58. Riki Anne Wilchins, "What's in a Name: The Politics of Gender Speak," Transgender Tapestry, no. 74 (1995): 46-47;
59. Wilchins, Read My Lips;
60. David Valentine and Riki Anne Wilchins, "One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude," Social Text, nos. 52-53 (1997): 215-22.
61. Tracie O'Keefe and Katrina Fox, Trans-X-U-All: The Naked Difference (London: Extraordinary People, 1997).
62. Stephen O. Murray, "Ritual and Personal Insults in Stigmatized Subcultures: Gay, Black, Jew," Maledicta 7 (1983): 189-211;
63. Blair A. Rudes and Bernard Healy, "Is She for Real? The Concepts of Femaleness and Maleness in the Gay World," in Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir, and Whorf Revisited, ed. Madeleine Mathiot (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 49-61;
64. Rusty Barrett, "Supermodels of the World, Unite! Political Economy and the Language of Performance among African-American Drag Queens," in Beyond the Lavender Lexicon: Authenticity, Imagination, and Appropriation in Lesbian and Gay Languages, ed. William L. Leap (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1995), 207-26;
65. Mary Daly, Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (London: Women's, 1979).
66. Michel Foucault, ed., Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite, trans. Richard McDougall (New York: Pantheon, 1980). One might well ask in what sense Barbin can be considered "transgendered" and, indeed, what that term means in the first place. Would Foucault not be the first to insist on a historical and political contextualization of the term, and would he not vigorously object to Barbin's being swept up in its discursive wake? Let me note, therefore, that throughout this essay I use transgender as an umbrella term that includes "all people who cross-dress" (Bolin, "Transcending and Transgendering," 78). Transgendered language is my shorthand for "different kinds of language used in different contexts by different kinds of gender-variant people." I am fully cognizant of all the difficulties of applying transgender (or any other term) to the range of gender-variant subjectivities and behaviors discussed in the research that I summarize in this essay. However, my purpose is not to interrogate the cultural and historical specificities of the term, nor is it to problematize the way in which an essay like this one in fact does particular discursive work and creates the very objects about which it speaks (i.e., "transgendered subjects"). At least one doctoral thesis is currently being written on the history, semiotics, and pragmatics of transgender, and I refer interested readers to that (David Valentine, "The Production of 'Transgender' as a Discourse" [Ph.D. diss. in progress, New York University];
67. see also Valentine, "'We're Not about Gender': How an Emerging Transgender Movement Challenges Gay and Lesbian Theory to Put the 'Gender' Back into 'Sexuality,'" in Anthropology Comes Out: Lesbians, Gays, Cultures, ed. William L. Leap and Ellen Lewin [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming]).
68. Vincent Crapanzano, "'Self-Centering Narratives," in Natural Histories of Discourse, ed. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 107, 126.
69. Oddly, Crapanzano's analysis of Barbin's memoirs does not consider the uses to which grammatical gender is put throughout the text (cf. Anna Livia, "Disloyal to Masculinity: Linguistic Gender and Liminal Identity in French," in Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Anna Livia and Kira Hall [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], 349-68).
70. For a brief note on this see Foucault, Herculine Barbin, xiii n. 1.
71. Don Kulick, Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 214-21.
72. Cf. Kira Hall and Veronica O'Donovan, "Shifting Gender Positions among Hindi-Speaking Hijras," in Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice, ed. Victoria L. Bergvall, Janet M. Bing, and Alice F. Freed (London: Longman, 1996), 251-55;
73. and Kira Hall, "'Go Suck Your Husband's Sugarcane!' Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult," in Livia and Hall, Queerly Phrased, 450-51.
74. Don Kulick, "Causing a Commotion: Scandal as Resistance among Brazilian Travesti Prostitutes," Anthropology Today 12, no. 6 (1996): 3-7. I did not tape-record any travesti scandals in Salvador. However, my observations indicate that clients who are ensnared in scandals tend to respond to them by remaining silent and attempting to distance themselves, as quickly as possible, from the scene of the scandal. It is interesting to compare the lack of language by these transgendered men with Crapanzano's arguments about the loss of genre that accompanied Barbin's reclassification as a man.
75. Anna Livia, "'I Ought to Throw a Buick at You': Fictional Representations of Butch/ Femme Speech," in Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, ed. Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz (New York: Routledge, 1995), 258.
76. Livia, "Disloyal to Masculinity," 352, 365.
77. Hall and O'Donovan, "Shifting Gender Positions."
78. Liora Moriel, "Diva in the Promised Land: A Blueprint for Newspeak?" World Englishes 17 (1998): 227, 236, 229. Cf. a similarly unargued assertion by Hall and O'Donovan that hijra speech "subverts" the Hindi gender system ("Shifting Gender Positions," 258).
79. For an analysis of Dana International that discusses how her lyrics also mock and transgress Israeli nationalism see Yael Ben-zvi, "Zionist Lesbianism and Transsexual Transgression: Two Representations of Queer Israel," Middle East Report, spring 1998, 26-28.
80. Mark Johnson, Beauty and Power: Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 89.
81. See also Martin F. Manalansan IV, "'Performing' the Filipino Gay Experiences in America: Linguistic Strategies in Transnational Context," in Leap, Beyond the Lavender Lexicon, 249-66.
82. Johnson, Beauty and Power, 13-14.
83. See Rusty Barrett, "The 'Homo-Genius' Speech Community,"
84. in Livia and Hall, Queerly Phrased, 181-201;
85. Barrett, "Supermodels of the World, Unite!";
86. Jason Cromwell, "Talking About without Talking About: The Use of Protective Language among Transvestites and Transsexuals," in Leap, Beyond the Lavender Lexicon, 267-96;
87. Rudolph P. Gaudio, "Not Talking Straight in Hausa," in Livia and Hall, Queerly Phrased, 416-29;
88. and C. Todd White, "On the Pragmatics of an Androgynous Style of Speaking (from a Transsexual's Perspective)," World Englishes 17 (1998): 215-23.
89. See Livia, "Disloyal to Masculinity";
90. Livia, "'I Ought to Throw a Buick at You'";
91. Naoko Ogawa and Janet S. Smith, "The Gendering of the Gay Male Sex Class in Japan: A Case Study Based on Rasen No Sobyo,"
92. in Livia and Hall, Queerly Phrased, 402-15;
93. Moriel, "Diva in the Promised Land";
94. Cromwell, "Talking About without Talking About";
95. Barrett, "'Homo-Genius' Speech Community";
96. Barrett, "Supermodels of the World, Unite!";
97. Newton, Mother Camp;
98. Gaudio, "Not Talking Straight in Hausa";
99. Hall, "'Go Suck Your Husbands Sugarcane!'";
100. Hall and O'Donovan, "Shifting Gender Positions" ;
101. Johnson, Beauty and Power;
102. and Manalansan, "'Performing' the Filipino Gay Experiences in America."
103. Although Marly Gomez, the transsexual saleswoman discussed in White's essay "On the Pragmatics of an Androgynous Style of Speaking (from a Transsexual's Perspective)" does not perform on a nightclub stage, the language summarized in the essay occurred as Gomez attempted to entice passersby into her photobooth so that she could take their pictures and get them to buy them. The interactions occurred in a busy shopping mall, and Gomez spoke over a microphone, often in front of "an audience of 30 or more" (218). For examples of work that does examine language in informal contexts see Rudolph P. Gaudio, "Funny Muslims: Humor, Faith, and Gender Liminality in Hausa," in Warner et al., Gender and Belief Systems, 261-67;
104. Kulick, "Causing a Commotion";
105. and Kulick, Travesti. 41.
106. Kathleen C. Stewart, "Backtalking the Wilderness: 'Appalachian' Engenderings," in Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, ed. Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Boston: Beacon, 1990), 44.
107. William Leap's work contains provisos and caveats explaining that he is aware that he is only describing a particular type of linguistic behavior used in some circumstances by a particular group of gay men (namely, white, middle-class professionals living, for the most part, in Washington, D.C.). Given this awareness, and given a decade of queer theorizing that has strongly questioned the political, epistemological, and even ontological coherence of a term like gay, it is hard to understand why Leap insists, anyway, on calling what he studies "Gay English" (capitalized). The powerful recent criticisms of generic, flattening labels like "men's language" and "women's language" (e.g., Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, "Think Practically and Look Locally") ought to be enough to make any linguist grab for the garlic and pull out a crucifix whenever such terms are even suggested.