A Historical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Bilingual LGBTQ+ Communities

There has been extensive work on the role of bilingualism and multilingualism in speaker identity construction. There has been sociolinguistic ethnographic work that looks at the intersection of bilingual and queer identities (cf. most recently, Holly R. Cashman’s Queer, Latinx, and Bilingual, 2018). My research interests lie in the historical sociolinguistic setting of this interaction. Specifically, I am interested in the language practices of LGBTQ+ communities in metropolitan areas of historical linguistic conflict with the state. Presently, Montréal, Canada (French/English) and Barcelona, Spain (Catalan/Spanish) are my areas of focus. My intentions, broadly speaking, are to examine the impact of social and political implications of language choice on how LGBTQ+ individuals engage with their identities in the social narrative. By the time of the conference, I intend to be fleshing out my methodology after preliminary contact with the archives where I will be collecting data.

https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/lavlang/2021/saturday/4