Plenary sessions Friday 28th April, 10-11am Keynote: Queer/ing Applied Linguistics: Researching Language and Sexuality in Schools Helen Sauntson York St John University This presentation responds to calls for more attention to be paid to how linguistic analysis can offer important insights into sexualities and education, and for greater dialogue between applied linguistics and queer linguistics (Nelson, 2012). I propose that a ‘queer applied linguistics’ (QAL) approach may be used effectively to investigate how gender and sexual identities are constructed through language in schools, and what the application of methods of spoken and written discourse analysis reveal about the relationship between language and sexuality in school settings. I argue that QAL may be defined as critical applied linguistics (Hall, Smith & Wicaksono, 2011; Pennycook, 2008) which is informed by queer theory and queer linguistics and applied to real-life contexts. QAL is primarily concerned with inequalities around gender and sexuality and has a social justice orientation in its intended applications. The presentation exemplifies this approach by drawing on a recent research project which conducts a detailed and systematic examination of the diverse ways that language can play a role in constructions of sexual identities in school contexts. Throughout this examination, I address three theoretical issues in queer linguistics currently receiving much attention – temporality, space and normativity – and consider their applications to the analysis of language in school contexts. The presentation draws on data comprising spoken interactional data taken from Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons; interviews with LGBT+-identified young people; interviews with teachers and trainee teachers; and PSHE and Health Education curriculum documents. Data are analysed using a combination of corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, tactics of intersubjectivity and appraisal analysis within an overarching QAL approach. Saturday 29th April, 5.30-6.30 Special remarks: (Lavender) Language Matters: Reflections on the Past and Future of the Lavender Languages Conference William Leap American University and Florida Atlantic University The first Lavender Languages Conference was held in 1993, at American University in Washington DC. While there have been 23 Lavender Languages Conferences since that time, this is the first year that we have met in a location accessible to colleagues based outside of US borders; this is a practice that may need to continue. Also unlike the case in 1993, there is now is a field of language and sexuality studies and there are many sites where scholars can report on research within this field. So the Conference has not remained vital for 24 years simply due to its intellectual uniqueness. Since 1993, the Conference has offered a safe place for exploring ideas on the margins of inquiry, even when voices of power inside and outside of academe have labeled this inquiry ill-focused and ill-advised. And since 1993, the Conference has maintained a definition of “language” that is broad enough to allow structural descriptions to find common ground with literary criticism, visual display and performance pieces. The visibility of the Lavender project remains a problem, however. Conference activities have yet to make a sustained impact on discussions of (language and) sexuality outside of our own academic circles. To sustain viability at Lavender 25 and beyond, conference-related activities must do more than reauthorize the method and theory generated elsewhere. Instead, Conference activities (papers, panels, presentations, interventions) must embody the subject- matter we claim to explore, including: transgression, disidentification, refusal, marginality, the anti-normative, rhizomatic desire, or simply queer filiation. Sunday 30th April, 2-3pm Keynote: What Polari did next Paul Baker, Lancaster University Polari was an anti-language (Halliday 1978) used by gay, bi and trans people in the UK in the first 70 years of the 20th century. When homosexuality was illegal, Polari was part of a toolkit for survival, used for secrecy, identification and to project a defiantly camp identity. As a result of social change in the 1960s, it had largely been abandoned by the 1970s and was classed as an endangered language by the World Oral Literature Project in 2010. In the early 2000s I published the findings of my doctoral research on Polari (Baker 2002, 2003) and have regularly given talks on the topic since then. This talk compares the users, uses and meanings of Polari in the years since I finished my research with previous decades. It examines the role that Polari now plays for LGBT people in an age of social media and iphone apps, celebratory Gay and Lesbian History Months and council-funded grants. I argue that the numerous conceptualisations of Polari reflect the changing status of gay identity in the UK. Additionally, I reflect on the unexpected consequences of my research on the trajectory of this language, as well as considering the extent to which we can ever give a “voice” to those who were historically silenced. Special workshop How to Polari Bona, with Paul Baker NB: This workshop is restricted to a maximum of 16 participants: see registration information, below Polari was a form of language spoken by gay men and women in the first half of the 20th century. Used for secrecy, identification, humour and gossip, it enabled a camp performance of gay sexuality for its speakers. With a lexicon of around 400 words from a variety of sources (rhyming slang, Italian, backslang, Cant etc) it was constantly developing and relied a lot on the creativity of its speakers who improvised new words and phrases, using a telegraphic form of grammar. In this one hour workshop you will learn the basics of speaking Polari through a series of interactive games. By the end of the class you should know your lally from your luppers and be able to dish the dirt. Unleash your inner omee -palone or palone-omee and troll along! To register for this workshop, please go to the Information Desk to sign up for a place: workshop registration will open during the first tea and coffee break (Friday 11am). Panel sessions Panel 1: Food for thought - exploring the relationship between LGBTQ+ identities and linguistic representations of culinary practices Organiser: Ursula Kania University of Liverpool Food is an integral part of our everyday lives, just like language. Both are thus highly intertwined with notions of identity. This is particularly evident in linguistic representations of culinary practices, as summarized in Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s aphorism “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are” (Brillat-Savarin 2009 [1825]: 3; emphasis added). Following from the assumption that writing and talking about food is about so much more than just nutrition (see, e.g., Belasco 2008), this panel brings together current research on the (de)construction of LGBTQ+ identities through food discourses of various types, ranging from cookbooks to TV shows and multimodal texts such as advertisements. Doing (linguistic) food studies with an LGBTQ+ twist, all contributions are interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on concepts and analytic tools from Queer Theory, Cultural Studies, culinary linguistics (Gerhard, Frobenius & Ley 2013) and Sociolinguistics. Taken together, they offer new insights into the ways in which LGBTQ+ discourses on food practices serve as a means of (re)negotiating individual as well as group identities. Belasco, Warren. 2008. Food: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. 2009 [1825, trs. 1949]. The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Translated by M.F.K. Fisher. New York. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Gerhardt, Cornelia, Maximiliane Frobenius, and Susanne Ley. 2013. Culinary Linguistics: The Chef’s Special. Amsterdam: Benjamins. A piece of cake? Analysing the relationship between identity, food, and language in queer cookbooks Ursula Kania University of Liverpool Even though we have entered the digital age, printed cookbooks are still hugely popular. They can be read as cultural artefacts that give us insight into various aspects of the society in which they were produced. Focusing on queer cookbooks, this paper explores some of the ways in which both individual and group identities are negotiated in this particular type of culinary text. While previous research on this topic is mainly situated within Cultural Studies and looks exclusively at English-language publications (e.g., Vester 2010, 2015; Zimmermann 2008), the current study draws on previous findings and analytic tools from culinary linguistics, food studies as well as queer theory in order to analyze four German- language publications (Bax & Boehm 2009; Dietl & Jacobi 2000, Norman & Strinnhed 2008; Schulze & Bidner 1996). The following questions are of particular interest: (In how far) do the cookbooks draw on/subvert characteristics which are typical of so-called ‘community cookbooks’ (Cotter 1997)? More specifically, (how) is a common group identity established while at the same time celebrating diversity and individuality? In the case of Bax & Boehm (2009), who include short stories to accompany particular recipes, I will take a closer look at the ways in which linguistic representations of culinary practices are linked to sexuality, drawing on the intrinsic relationship between culinary and sexual ‘appetites’. In sum,