Gayspeak refers to norms of speaking used in the subculture of homosexuals, especially for gay men (Hayes, 1976). It is argued to be a process of identity performance, community resocialization, and cultural-political empowerment in face-to-face interactions (Hayes, 1976). Yet, few have studied this sociolinguistic phenomenon in computational-mediated communication. In China, the gay community develops cyber gayspeak with unique lexicons, styles, and grammar. Nevertheless, many gay men are reluctant to use the same way of speaking in an offline setting, which implies digital technologies have become an ingrained part of the cyber gayspeak. Thus, this study looks into how technologies reconfigure the nature and meanings of gayspeak in cyberspace.
My theoretical framework is drawn upon the ethnography of communication (EoC) and infrastructure studies (IS). Emphasizing the interplay between language and culture, EoC probes into the situated means of speaking and their meanings in specific speech communities (Hymes, 1972). IS re-emphasizes materiality that undergirds communications and structures our ontologies (Peters, 2015). From the perspective of the social-shaping of technologies, infrastructure is not a static object, but a dynamic process of discursive constructions by diverse issues including human agency, politics, economy, nature, etc. (Star & Ruhleder, 1996). By incorporating IS into EoC, I propose a new approach, the materiality of speaking, to examine the relationship between technologies, languages, and culture. The materiality of speaking foregrounds the combined effect of culture and technology on shaping speech practices in different speech communities.
With a qualitative but triangulate research design, I have conducted a 6-month digital ethnography guided by Hine’s (2015) multi-sited approach in the gay community, utilized Fairclough’s (1995) model of critical discourse analysis to dissect the identity construction and power struggles in typical discourses of cyber gayspeak, and interviewed so far 15 self-identified gay men to understand their interpretations of technologies and gayspeak.
Preliminarily, two material natures of cyber gayspeak are demonstrated: Firstly, since cyber gayspeak is mostly literal rather than oral, it leads to perceived disembodiment and power dislocation (Kang, 2007; Cooren, 2004). Those two characteristics encourage gay’s use of cyber gayspeak by providing them more sense of security and collective empowerment. Besides, since literal texts are enduring, accumulated gayspeak constitutes a discursive spectacle of gay, through which the spatially and temporally dispersed gay men can assemble their voices and re-legitimize their culture in a safe way (Debord, 1967; Kellner, 2003). Secondly, digital interface designs, through which gayspeak is produced, disseminated, and reacted, are altering the socio-cultural meaning of gayspeak. For example, the Like button in social media transforms the cyber gayspeak into a practice of recognition seeking. Such a process also reshapes the rules of speaking since the speech practices getting more likes will be normalized.
The study contributes to a more sophisticated framework of EoC by introducing the materiality of speaking to study the dynamic between technologies, language, and gender identity. Furthermore, it sheds light on how technologies afford new norms of speaking for gay men to perform their identity, negotiate the normativity, and resist heteronormativity in a homophobic society.