Semiotic Erasure and the Discursive Construction of LGBTQIA+ Identities in the Portuguese ABCLGBTQIA+ Campaign
Author ORCID Identifier
ID #: 0000-0001-8003-7855
Document Type
Paper Presentation
Presenter Language
English
Research Area
language and gender, sociolinguistics
Location
MBSC Gallery Room 308
Start Date
19-10-2024 12:30 PM
End Date
19-10-2024 1:00 PM
Abstract
This study investigates the language used in the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign sponsored by ILGA Portugal, which through a series of posters presented 42 queer vocabulary terms (e.g. queer, transfobia) and their definitions across Lisbon in summer 2022, overlapping with Pride.1 The object of this study is to examine (a) How language around LGBT+ identities has been implemented in Lisbon Pride-adjacent campaigns, (b) what kinds of discourses are at work through public-oriented materials themselves, and (c) how these discourses connect to larger ideological discourses.
Theoretically, I combine a Foucauldian (1990 [1978]) conception of discourse with linguistic indexicality (Eckert 2008; Gal 2021) to (1) use linguistic features and their indices to (2) examine discourse as a function of both knowledge and power, while accounting for (3) the heterogeneity, instability, and context-dependency of the meanings indexed by any given linguistic feature. I first analyze the types of borrowings (full loanwords, assimilated loanwords, and loan translations) in the Portuguese campaign materials, following Depecker 2001 (cited in Walsh 2016). I then compare my analyses with the etymological origins of these terms in Portuguese dictionaries (Academia das Ciências de Lisboa n.d.; da Cunha 1982; Fontinha 1965; Grande Dicionário 2004; Machado 1965; Machado 2003; Michaelis 1998). Turning to the content of the definitions provided in the campaign, I then examine translation choices between the English and Portuguese materials.
I find that the overwhelming majority of terms included in the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign are Anglicisms (39 of 42), with unassimilated loanwords being the majority (n=20). Among translation choices in the Portuguese materials, there are seven instances where information is included in the Portuguese materials and not the English materials, mostly introduced via the phrase “no Portugal” (in Portugal). I argue that each of these linguistic patterns reveal semiotic processes of erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995) ongoing in the discourses promoted by the Gay International (Massad 2002), which themselves construct particularized LGBTQIA+ subjects that are rendered legible within a transnational, global queer ‘community’ which both erases localized differences and is implicated in homonationalism—extending beyond Massad to argue that semiotic erasure operates not only in Muslim contexts, but also in the Western European contexts where (homo)normalizing discourses are said to originate (e.g., Puar 2013).
1 Website materials for the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign were in English and Portuguese. However, during my fieldwork I only encountered the Portuguese-language campaign materials in the linguistic landscape of Lisbon.
Semiotic Erasure and the Discursive Construction of LGBTQIA+ Identities in the Portuguese ABCLGBTQIA+ Campaign
MBSC Gallery Room 308
This study investigates the language used in the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign sponsored by ILGA Portugal, which through a series of posters presented 42 queer vocabulary terms (e.g. queer, transfobia) and their definitions across Lisbon in summer 2022, overlapping with Pride.1 The object of this study is to examine (a) How language around LGBT+ identities has been implemented in Lisbon Pride-adjacent campaigns, (b) what kinds of discourses are at work through public-oriented materials themselves, and (c) how these discourses connect to larger ideological discourses.
Theoretically, I combine a Foucauldian (1990 [1978]) conception of discourse with linguistic indexicality (Eckert 2008; Gal 2021) to (1) use linguistic features and their indices to (2) examine discourse as a function of both knowledge and power, while accounting for (3) the heterogeneity, instability, and context-dependency of the meanings indexed by any given linguistic feature. I first analyze the types of borrowings (full loanwords, assimilated loanwords, and loan translations) in the Portuguese campaign materials, following Depecker 2001 (cited in Walsh 2016). I then compare my analyses with the etymological origins of these terms in Portuguese dictionaries (Academia das Ciências de Lisboa n.d.; da Cunha 1982; Fontinha 1965; Grande Dicionário 2004; Machado 1965; Machado 2003; Michaelis 1998). Turning to the content of the definitions provided in the campaign, I then examine translation choices between the English and Portuguese materials.
I find that the overwhelming majority of terms included in the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign are Anglicisms (39 of 42), with unassimilated loanwords being the majority (n=20). Among translation choices in the Portuguese materials, there are seven instances where information is included in the Portuguese materials and not the English materials, mostly introduced via the phrase “no Portugal” (in Portugal). I argue that each of these linguistic patterns reveal semiotic processes of erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995) ongoing in the discourses promoted by the Gay International (Massad 2002), which themselves construct particularized LGBTQIA+ subjects that are rendered legible within a transnational, global queer ‘community’ which both erases localized differences and is implicated in homonationalism—extending beyond Massad to argue that semiotic erasure operates not only in Muslim contexts, but also in the Western European contexts where (homo)normalizing discourses are said to originate (e.g., Puar 2013).
1 Website materials for the ABCLGBTQIA+ campaign were in English and Portuguese. However, during my fieldwork I only encountered the Portuguese-language campaign materials in the linguistic landscape of Lisbon.