UNITED STATES AUTHOR · GAY MEN · HOMOSEXUALITY
William L. Leap
Also known as: William Leap
William Leap’s career in public anthropology has included work with American Indian tribes (community organizing, language renewal, teaching retraining), engagements with language, sexuality, and HIV politics in the urban US and urban South Africa, studies of gay language and “gay men’s English” as local and global formations, and multiple projects (at AU, in DC, in the American Anthropological Association and in other public settings) designed to build alliances between dissident gendered and sexual voices. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Language and Sexuality. Since 1993, he has coordinated the annual AU Conference on Lavender Languages and Linguistics. He has published seven books and edited collections and numerous essays in language and sexuality studies. He is currently finishing the edits on his new book, "Language Before Stonewall." Not in residence, 2016-2017.
The emergence of North Atlantic constructions of gay culture has resulted in the circulation of a "universal gay identity" across various national boundaries.
— from Speaking in queer tongues
Most acclaimed
Speaking in queer tongues
Language is a fundamental tool for shaping identity and community, including the expression (or repression) of sexual desire. Speaking in Queer Tongues investigates the tensions and adaptations that occur when processes of globalization bring one system of gay or lesbian language into contact with another. Western constructions of gay culture are now circulating widely beyond the boundaries of Western nations due to influences as diverse as Internet communication, global dissemination of entertainment and other media, increased travel and tourism, migration, displacement, and transnational citizenship. The authority claimed by these constructions, and by the linguistic codes embedded in them, is causing them to have a profound impact on public and private expressions of homosexuality in locations as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and Israel. Examining a wide range of global cultures, Speaking in Queer Tongues presents essays on topics that include old versus new sexual vocabularies, the rhetoric of gay-oriented magazines and news media, verbal and nonverbalized sexual imagery in poetry and popular culture, and the linguistic consequences of the globalized gay rights movement.
Word's Out
1996
Do gay men communicate with each other differently than they do with straight people? If they do, how is "gay men's English?" different from "straight English"? This work addresses these questions and looks at gay men's English as a cultural and a linguistic phenomenon. This text focuses not on items of vocabulary, word history and folklore but on linguistic practices - co-operation, negotiation and risk-taking - which underlie gay men's conversations, storytelling, verbal duelling, self-description and construction of outrageous references. The author "reads" conversations for covert and overt signs of gay men's English, using anecdotes drawn from gay dinner parties, late-night airplane flights, restaurants, department stores and gourmet shops, and other all-gay and gay/straight settings. He incorporates material from other interviews and discussions with gay men, life-story narratives, gay magazines, newspapers, books and material from his own life. The topics addressed include establishing the gay identities of "suspect gays", recollections of gay childhood, erotic negotiation in health club locker rooms, and gay men's language of AIDS. The text shows how gay English speakers use language to create gay-centred spaces within public places, to protect themselves when speaking with strangers, and to establish common interests when speaking with "suspect gays". It also explores why learning gay English is a critical component in gay men's socialization and the acquisition of gay culture.