Lesbian Discourses Routledge Studies in Linguistics

Lesbian Discourses Routledge Studies in Linguistics 1. Polari—The Lost Language of Gay Men Paul Baker 2. The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes Graeme Ritchie 3. The Irish Language in Ireland From Goídel to Globalisation Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost 4. Conceptualizing Metaphors On Charles Peirce’s Marginalia Ivan Mladenov 5. The Linguistics of Laughter A Corpus-assisted Study of Laughter-talk Alan Partington 6. The Communication of Leadership Leadership and Metaphor beyond the West Jonathan Charteris-Black 7. Semantics and Pragmatics of False Friends Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez 8. Style and Ideology in Translation Latin American Writing in English Jeremy Munday 9. Lesbian Discourses Images of a Community Veronika Koller Lesbian Discourses Images of a Community Veronika Koller New York London First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2008 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Koller, Veronika, 1973– Lesbian discourses : images of a community / by Veronika Koller. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in linguistics ; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-96095-3 1. Gay and lesbian studies. 2. Lesbianism. 3. Lesbian feminist theory. I. Title. HQ75.15.K64 2008 306.76'63091752109045—dc22 2007040961 ISBN 0-203-92869-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-96095-9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-92869-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-96095-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-92869-1 (ebk) ISBN 0-203-93301-00-203-92869-5 Master e-book ISBN This book is dedicated to my mother, Brigitta Koldehoff. Without her unfaltering support and encouragement right from the word ‘out’, it would not even have occurred to me to write this book. Contents List of Tables and Figures ix Acknowledgments xi 1 Introduction: Lesbian Discourses, Lesbian Texts 1 2 Approaches to Researching Lesbian Discourses 8 3 Creating a Community: The 1970s 37 4 Challenging the Community: The 1980s 75 5 Contradicting Voices within the Community: The 1990s 110 6 Consuming the Community: The 2000s 148 7 Conclusion: Changing Images, Changing Communities 186 Glossary 193 Notes 199 Bibliography 205 Index 221 List of Tables and Figures TABLES Table 2.1 Examples of Relational Processes 31 Table 2.2 Interviewees 35 FIGURES Figure 1.1 Original manifesto by the Radicalesbians, 1970 2 Figure 1.2 Cover of Girlfriends magazine, May 2004 3 Figure 6.1 Flyer for Club Munch, Manchester/UK, 2007 158 Figure 6.2 The L-Word, fi rst series, 2004 163 Acknowledgments This book grew out of my MA dissertation, submitted at the English Department at Vienna University in 1998. I returned to my postgraduate work when I joined the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University (UK) in 2004. I am thankful to my colleagues there for many helpful suggestions, and especially to Paul Baker and Ruth Wodak for reading, and encouraging me to publish, my earlier work. I am also grateful to all the women who granted me interviews, answered my questions and networked on my behalf. Further thanks is due to the authors and publishers of the texts analyzed in this book, par- ticularly Ingrid E. Barnes, Lorna Gulston MBE, Lilian Mohin and Carol Ann Uszkurat. I would like to thank all the friends I have been discussing this book with over the years. They are too numerous to mention, but I am par- ticularly indebted to Bianca Rusu, Elisabeth Fischer and, above all, Ines Rieder. This book was conceived in her living room and our many nightly conversations about it have, I think, improved it considerably. Ines is truly the midwife and godmother of this book. Thanks also to Miriam Murtin and David Pearson for test-reading the glossary. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude for the staff at Routledge in New York, research editor Max Novick and editorial assistant Eliza- beth J. Levine. There was no problem to which they did not fi nd a solu- tion within a day. A few sources used in this book were intended for a female/lesbian readership only by their authors. The material in question has been para- phrased instead of quoted and has been marked with an asterisk (*) in the citation and in the Bibliography. Examples A and B (in Chapter 3) are reproduced with permission by the publisher. Examples C, E and H (in Chapters 4 and 5) are reproduced with permission by the authors. Example G (Chapter 6) is reproduced with permission by the editor. Figure 1.2 is reproduced with permission by H.A.F. Publishing. Figure 6.1 has been reproduced with permission by Club Munch (www.clubmunch.co.uk). Example F (Chapter 5) is from a source that is no longer traceable. The author did in no way intend to xii Acknowledgments unjustly utilize materials at the expense of these individuals and organiza- tions. Anyone who takes issue here should please contact the publisher for proper acknowledgment in subsequent releases of this book. 1 Introduction Lesbian Discourses, Lesbian Texts My life fi ts in with the decades quite well, because I was born at the beginning of a decade. (interview with Vivienne Pearson)1 My fi rst lesbian text was a slim paperback called Women Without Men written by a certain Jessica Simmons. Published in 1970, it must have been one of the last of the lesbian pulp novels so popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and accordingly, its cast is for the better part ailed by alcohol- ism, promiscuity, suicide and murder. Right at the end, however, a newly introduced character delivers a scathing diatribe riddled with revolution- ary rhetoric about how the one truly powerful love, i.e., that between women, will topple capitalism and patriarchy alike. Whenever I have shown this book to friends in the past few years, reactions ranged from amusement to incredulity to the odd shriek of delight at this example of lesbian retro chic. Clearly, the book and its contents have gone from being outrageous to being all the rage. This study traces that shift, looking at what images of a lesbian community self-identifi ed lesbian authors in the US and Britain have commu- nicated in non-fi ctional texts since 1970, how this change can be traced in texts such as pamphlets, magazine articles and blogs, and, fi nally, why this change has taken place. To put it in a nutshell, how and why did lesbian discourses, and the images of community that they transport, change from what we can see refl ected in Figure 1.1 to what is conveyed by Figure 1.2? A close linguistic analysis of texts not only shows how change was effected, but also how particular historical narratives were constructed that do not necessarily refl ect the complex reality of the times they refer to. As the title of this book indicates, community is here understood as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983), i.e., as a model of a collective identity that shapes but ultimately supersedes local communities. The social constructionist view, according to which the ‘subject is produced . across a multiplicity of discourses’ (Fuss 1989, p. 97), holds true for 2 Lesbian Discourses Figure 1.1 Original manifesto by the Radicalesbians, 1970 (see Example A in Chapter 3 of this volume). Available <http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/womid/womid-p1–72.jpeg> (accessed 18 July 2007). Reproduced from Duke University Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library (Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement). the lesbian community as a collective actor as well. Images of such communities are largely, if not exclusively, an effect of discourse, i.e., accumu- lations of texts that particular people produce, distribute and receive in a particular way and as a form of social action. As such, any identity of discourse participants, including their collective identity as members of a community, is always preliminary, negotiable and open to change. For the Introduction 3 Figure 1.2 Cover of Girlfriends magazine, May 2004. Reproduced with kind permission by H.A.F. Publishing. researcher who wants to fi nd out about what images are constructed in discourse, and how this is achieved, it is logical then to turn to texts as the main source of data. However, just as ‘the search for an authentic women’s speech overlooks the instability of gender divisions and the many differences between women’ 4 Lesbian Discourses (McIlvenny 2002b, p. 5), research into lesbian discourse will not reveal any typically lesbian way of using language. Rather, such research will uncover the discursive and cognitive repertoires drawn upon by self-identifi ed lesbian writers at various points in history to construct and negotiate an image of lesbian community. Further, the study primarily addresses the image of lesbian community in discourses that involve self-identifi ed lesbians, rather than the image of lesbians in mainstream discourse.

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