Transgender Language, Transgender Moment: Toward a Trans Linguistics

Abstract

This chapter sketches out trans linguistics as an emerging framework for research on language in populations defined by their deviation from gender norms. Although queer linguistics has always been concerned with both sexual and gender (non)normativity, some early queer linguistic analyses of transgender or otherwise gender-variant populations were limited by the absence of openly trans scholars and distinctively trans analytic perspectives. Trans linguistics, by contrast, centers trans practices and subjectivities not as rare exceptions, but as central to any understanding of gender. Three domains of language are discussed here, including grammatical gender, gender difference in the voice, and gender in discourse. In each case, trans linguistic research offers new perspectives on gendered power, the nature of categories, the significance of embodiment, and the linguistic navigation of persistent dehumanization. Crucially, trans linguistics is committed not only to trans analytic lenses, but also to social and linguistic justice for gender non-normative communities.