In this presentation I argue for a queer applied linguistic approach to the study representations of sexual citizenship in contemporary media. Sexual citizenship refers to the rights and responsibilities of citizens which intersect with sexual orientation, gender identity, expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Theories of sexual citizenship encompass not only on the legal and social discourses of sexual rights, but also representations in popular culture and the media.
Taking the explosion of newspaper and magazines articles, light entertainment and current affairs shows commonly referred to as an "LGBT boom" in pre-2020 Games Japan as an example, I explore how media technologies, such as infographics and impact captioning, and collaborative writing practices, such as transcription, editing and layout, are manipulated to mould the ideological parameters of diversity and inclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals. I mobilse the concept of "language-labour" to refer to collaborative processes of writing that produce complex these complex multimodal texts.
"Language-labour" refers to multi-faceted and multi-functional linguistic practices that are employed at the governmental (or policy), commercial and civic (or personal) levels in the production of texts. Collaborative acts of writing such as the editing of magazine articles, the layering of captions onto audiovisual media, or the sharing of news items across social-media platforms are examples of work done by and through language. Looking towardslanguage-labour enables analysis of how public discourse situates social, cultural and political groups in relation to domestic and international affairs. Such writing occurs according to participatory norms that are embedded in local interactions and are in turn influenced by wider socio-political contexts.
The editorial manipulation of visual semiotics and language ideologies (Irvine and Gal 2000, Schieffelin et al. 1998, Silverstein 1979) shapes how national, cultural, social and personal identities are constituted, negotiated and contested in the media. Through collaborative processes enacted over multiple-sites, identities are constituted, negotiated and contested in ways that have real-world effects on the local, regional and global understandings of LGBTQIA+ rights.
Cossman, B. 2007. Sexual citizens: the legal and cultural regulation of sex and belonging. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. "Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation." In Regimes of Language, edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, 35-83. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn Anne Wollard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, eds. 1998. Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Silverstein, Michael. 1979. "Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology." In The Elements, edited by Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks and Carol L. Hofbauer, 193-247. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Linguistic Society.
