[Somean] Friday: Ariana Steele

[Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn]

Hi all,

This Friday Ariana will dry run their upcoming talk at Penn State. Title and abstract are below. As usual, we’ll meet at 10:30-noon in Oxley 122 and at https://osu.zoom.us/j/97299418813?pwd=blg1Y1lBL3BqWEN0N0FtbTg1U2lPdz09

See you there!

-K



Title: “If I was white it would be a lot easier to just not give a fuck:” Black nonbinary style and the semiotics of gender subversion

Abstract: The field of language, gender, sexuality studies explores how language contributes to the performance and co-construction of gender and sexuality. My work draws on investigations of how people use language and other semiotic resources in gender construction, especially amongst trans and gender non-conforming individuals. However, due to a lack of close consideration of the nuanced interplay between gender and race, much of this work misses how semiotic resources that can be used for gender may be constrained by race and other categories of social differentiation. In this talk, I draw from my mixed methods linguistic research with multiracial nonbinary communities to share the ways in which gendered racism constrains the available semiotic resources that Black nonbinary people are able to access to perform their nonbinary gender identities. I engage with Black trans feminisms and theories of social meaning to discuss the limits and possibilities of gender subversion for Black nonbinary individuals, who must at once manage anti-Blackness and cissexism while enacting their nonbinarity. Specifically, I present three studies which show that Black nonbinary individuals index their gender differently than both cisgender and white nonbinary communities – both through speech and through clothing – in order to mitigate perceptions of anti-Blackness, and even in doing so, listeners perceive them through anti-Black ideologies that limit their gendered racial expressions of their nonbinarity. Ultimately, I argue that sociolinguistic discussions of gender and indexicality must take into account the availability of semiotic resources across axes of differentiation in addition to gender, especially considering the limiting nature of axes of oppression as they may relate to safety.


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