Welcome!

This site displays information about the upcoming Lavender Languages & Linguistics Conference (Lav Lgs XV, February 15–17, 2008) and archives conference agendas and abstracts from conferences in previous years. So the material you will find here will be helpful to lgbtq language interests in multiple ways.

Since the first Lav Lgs conference in 1993, common themes in conference discussion have been two-fold: how lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered persons and queers use language in everyday life, and how language gets used against us by others. Critics of the conference dismiss these themes as "identity based linguistics." This charge greatly dismisses the value of the work we have done and continue to do here. Certainly, there is an identity-based theme in the conference inquiry, as there should be. Text-making, naming and other linguistic practices are not socially neutral. Anyone who examines language, gender and sexuality "at the site" is studying how speakers use language to construct and contest claims to subject position within that context, and how language use itself is shaped and informed by that process. Papers addressing these themes have always been welcome at Lav Lgs conferences, and always will be.

Presentations during the earliest years of the Lavender Languages Conference were concerned with documenting lgbtq-related linguistic usage more so than theorizing the broader significance of this evidence. In recent years, the focus of conversation has expanded, to ensure that linguistic practices under discussion are situated within social, political, and historic contexts. The ongoing discussions of "talking queer in French," "language and sexual geography," "language and homophobic discourse," and "racializing sexuality and gender” during previous Lav Lgs conference and the discussion on “les-being and doing” which began at Lav Lgs XI are good examples of these struggles and their outcomes.

Unlike the case at the larger professional meetings, Lav Lgs program is organized to facilitate face-to-face conversation and to allow discussion to continue throughout the three-day conference period. Indeed, participants work hard each year to maintain a non-attitude environment at all conference events, thereby enabling conversations between established scholars and those just beginning to explore lavender language interests, and between academics, public intellectuals and community activists. Conflicting points of view about language, gender and sexuality often arise during these discussions, but conference participants are not demeaned or devalued in order to secure such exchange.

We invite you to join us at Lav Lgs XV, February 15–17, 2008. See the next sections of the website for additional information about conference events.

With best wishes,
Bill Leap
Lav Lgs Conference Coordinator