Language and the Politics of Sexuality:Lesbians and Gays in Israel

How should we treat sexuality in sociolinguistic research? The question is a deceptively simple one that gets at the heart of a tension in sociolinguistics about how to reconcile standard quantitative models with the knowledge that identity factors like sexuality are not static phenomena. Using the example of lesbians and gay men in Israel, this book develops a new method for studying language and sexuality, one that complicates traditional categories of analysis and asks us to rethink how language functions in its social context.

Based on an ethnographically situated examination of language use among activist groups, this book examines how gay and lesbian Israelis work to reconcile their performances of sexuality with Israeli national ideologies of gender and belonging. Combining historical, linguistic and sociological perspectives, the book details the interconnections between sexuality and national politics and describes the effect they both have on language use.

Erez Levon is Lecturer in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, UK. His research examines the interaction of language, gender, sexuality and nationalism in the US and Israel, and has been published in journals such as Language in Society and Journal of Sociolinguistics.