Who Can Say Faggot?
A Two Part Study on Online Slur Reclamation
Author: Zach Gordon
Program: MA Language and Society Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Robert Cloutier Submission Date: June 28, 2019
Table of Contents
Chapter I – Introduction ... 1
Chapter II – Theoretical Grounding ... 2
What is a slur? ... 2
How do slurs function? ... 3
Cisheteronormativity ... 6
What is slur reclamation? ... 7
Challenging the Hegemony and the Reclamation of Queer ... 9
Community and Online Discourse ... 11
Measuring Online Reclamation ... 12
Twitter as a Data Source ... 13
Research Questions ... 15
Chapter III – Methodology ... 15
3.1 Twitter Corpus ... 15 Source of data ... 15 Categorization of data ... 16 3.2 Questionnaire ... 18 Respondent Information ... 19 Chapter IV – Results ... 19 4.1 Twitter Corpus ... 21 4.1.1 Identity - ... 21 4.1.2 Metalinguistic Comment - ... 22 4.1.3 Insult - ... 23 User-directed insult ... 23 Other-directed insult ... 24 General insults ... 25 4.1.4 Descriptor - ... 25 4.2 Survey ... 26 4.2.1 Overview ... 26 4.2.2 In-Group Responses ... 27 Transgender Participants ... 30
Cisgender Gay Men ... 30
Queer (sexuality) ... 31
Bisexual and Pansexual ... 31
Chapter V – Discussion ... 32
5.1 In what ways is the term faggot being reclaimed in written text on the online platform Twitter? ... 32
5.1.1 Identity: ... 35
5.1.2 Metalinguistic Commentary: ... 37
5.1.3 Insult: ... 39
User Directed Insult ... 39
Other Directed Insult ... 40
General Insults ... 41
5.1.4 Descriptor: ... 42
5.2 How does the current reclamation of faggot differ from the reclamation of queer as established by past research? ... 43
5.2.1 Humor: ... 45
5.2.2 Identity: ... 45
5.2.3 Metalinguistic Comment: ... 48
5.2.4 Insult: ... 49
5.2.5 Descriptor: ... 51
5.3 What are Twitter users’ folk metalinguistic understandings of the reclamation of both of these terms, and how does it align with the usage of faggot found in the data? ... 53
Survey ... 53 5.4 Main Takeaways ... 58 Chapter VI – Conclusion ... 59 Limitations ... 60 Final Remarks ... 60 Acknowledgements ... 62 APPENDICES ... 62 BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 63
Chapter I – Introduction
Online spaces foster communities and communication that has only been possible since the spread of the internet in the 1990s. As social media platforms grow in their presence and importance in our lives, it becomes more and more necessary to analyze how these spaces influence the ways in which we use language to communicate with each other and to study the public’s perception of such online language use. As a social media platform that brings users together from all over the world in what is considered a democratic and equal way, Twitter is an especially interesting space to study when looking at our shifting social paradigms (Rodino 1997; Ahmed 2017). One feature of this form of communication is that it allows a certain level of anonymity to users who opt to be anonymous. Pair this with the knowledge that people tend to be more bold and have fewer linguistic inhibitions online, and we see that the usage of certain slurs which would be considered taboo in other circumstances are rather frequent in online spaces such as Twitter despite policies meant to protect users from hate speech (Suler 2004; Barlett 2015). Despite the volume of hate speech online, it is an observable phenomenon on Twitter that many individuals of stigmatized groups are using slurs in reclamatory ways, and online platforms provide these users with the tools and community space needed to experiment with their language while simultaneously promoting reclamation efforts through the creation of stronger in-group communities (Alexander 2002; Fox and Warber 2014). Discussion of in-group language use is common throughout such online communities, and linguistic reclamation has been shown to be an important aspect of this (Clarendon 2018, 2019). In this paper I will demonstrate how the word faggot1 is used in reclaimed or appropriated fashions in the English language on Twitter, and will compare these reclaimed uses with the word queer, which has already undergone reclamation. These two terms, while possessing similar historically derogatory meanings, have been or are being reclaimed in noticeably different ways. Each has its own history of in-group and out-group usage; queer has already seen a significant amount of reclamation, while faggot is just now in the early stages of large scale reclamation online. Reclamation of the word faggot has been insufficiently studied, but is a readily observable phenomenon on Twitter. This study consists of two parts: the first systematically examines how this term is reclaimed on Twitter by those within the LGBTQ+ umbrella, while the 1 Alternative and shortened forms of this word, such as fag, will also be explored in this study.second gauges Twitter users’ folk metalinguistic understanding and perception of linguistic reclamation, faggot, and queer. Through this study I will show that faggot is indeed undergoing reclamation in diverse forms on Twitter, that Twitter users are aware of this to some degree, and that the reclamation we see faggot undergoing has both similarities and major differences from queer.
Chapter II – Theoretical Grounding
Before proposing my research question and describing the methodology I used to conduct this study, it is important to understand what slurs are and how they function on a linguistic level. I will also explain how these two terms – queer and faggot – work within the sociolinguistic hegemony of the West, and how reclamation efforts act as a challenge to this system.2 What is a slur? There have been many definitions given for slur, all with similar basic tenants but different approaches. Some (Herbert 2015; Lycan 2015) focus more on the structural factors at work behind slurs’ ability to derogate, looking at slurs as individual lexical items that target specific social groups. Others (Croom 2013, 2015; Bianchi 2014; Whiting 2013; St. Claire 2018) focus instead on the social aspect of slurring, viewing them as taboo social items that offend on an emotional level and communicate social stratification, subordination, and dehumanization. Both of these approaches to slurs are useful in understanding their injurious power to harm individuals, which in turn paves the way for reclamation efforts to emerge. For the purposes of this paper, we will define slur as a disparaging term or remark typically used to depreciate targeted members of a specific social group (Croom 2010; Popa-Wyatt 2016). Following this, they are often emblematic of structural social oppression – otherwise known as hegemonic oppression – and draw on this power by reinforcing deeply entrenched social stigmas (Herbert 2015). Hegemonic oppression does not act to target all groups equally, and certain slurs (such as the n-word or faggot) have gained more hegemonic power over time than others, due to the history behind the word’s usage (Popa-Wyatt 2016). They act as tools of oppression and subordination, meant to keep particular social groups without power, while signaling allegiance to what are often hateful perspectives by drawing on networks of hegemonic oppression (Jeshion 2016). Slurs are characteristic of multiple referents in that they are able to refer both to individuals and groups of people at the same time, drawing on social stigma and hegemony to derogate on 2 This section has been taken and modified from my original research proposal.multiple levels of social interaction (Popa-Wyatt 2016; St. Claire 2018). They not only reflect the speaker’s attitudes towards the target of their slurring, but also regurgitate the history of oppression that lead to the slur’s pejorative meaning. In this sense, they communicate not only that the speaker holds contempt for a specific group or individual due to their social status, but also that they deserve it (Popa-Wyatt 2016; St. Claire 2018). Slurs often function through conventional implicature, meaning that they derive their derogatory meaning not through their definitions but through how they are used by social actors (Lycan 2015). This gives slurs flexible meaning and allows for the slurred individuals to reclaim the terms for their own purposes. They are distinguished from other expressives – mainly swear words – through how they denote a specific group and through their derogatory content.3 Important for this study is how homophobic slurs are used. Past research has demonstrated that homophobia is often expressed through slurs, and this form of hate speech should be understood as speech attacks on individuals (Michaelson 2008; Cowan et al 2005). This brings slurs out of the linguistic realm and into reality, where they are used as direct attacks on individuals. With the knowledge that hate speech comments are incredibly common online, their use in these damaging ways is cause for concern (Erjavec and Kovaçiç 2012). How do slurs function? Reclamation efforts can only succeed in the face of already functioning slurs, and there have been a number of theories on the functionality of slurs in speech. These can be broadly categorized as either a structural approach or a social approach to slurs. Structural theories of slurs tend to view them as distinct lexical items. Croom (2010) outlines two structural theories of slurs: pragmatic and semantic. The pragmatic theory of slurs states that the derogatory content of a slur is conventionally implicated; the derogatory content is part of the meaning only as it is understood by society at large, but is not intrinsically tied to the lexical item. Under this theory, the felicitous use of slurs is flexible regarding who and what they are describing, meaning that a slur does not always have to be slurring when used in the appropriate way or by the right people, such as when in-group members use them in reclamatory ways. Hate speech is empowered by the context it is found in more so than the slur’s definition per se (St. Claire 2018). Factors such 3 While fuck can be used to describe anything and does not target any particular social group, faggot can in theory only describe a member of the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
as who is speaking, where the conversation is taking place, and other contextual elements such as speaker closeness and identity all affect the pejorative force of the slur in question. This differs from the semantic theory of slurs, which states that the derogatory content of a slur is part of its literal meaning and cannot be separated from the lexical item (Croom 2010; 2015). This means that a slur is, any time it is uttered, derogatory in nature due to its literal definition with encoded stereotypes (Popa-Wyatt 2016). Croom proposes that these two theories do not have to exist in opposition to each other, but instead inform how we might understand the functionality of slurs. They propose that slurs are neither purely descriptive nor purely expressive, but rather exist along a spectrum dependent on the speaker, the audience, the slur itself, and a number of other sociolinguistic and extralinguistic factors. Croom’s proposal can help to inform how slur reclamation is possible – reclamation works to realign how all of these factors act to determine understanding. By reclaiming these words, in-group communities are able to redefine this derogatory force or eliminate it completely, all the while redefining or appropriating the descriptive elements in some form. Structuralists can also view slurs within the category of Pejorative Expressions, existing alongside swear words and insults (Whiting 2013). For example, an insult would be something along the lines of “doofus,” while a swear would be “shithead,” and a slur would be “faggot”. In-group usage of slurs in an attempt to reclaim them can often lead to a slur becoming a swear or an insult, as one aim of reclamation can be to strip the slur of its hegemonic force. Slurs can be “expressive of” a specific relevant attitude without the speaker having to actually “express” the sentiment – slurs can derogate even if that is not the intended illocutive force. This is, of course, dependent on who the speaker is; members of the in-group using their designated slur do not have the same hegemonic power to derogate as members of the out-group do when speaking the same utterance. Under this theory, slurs can only be non-derogatorily used by members of the out-group when used in metalinguistic fashions, called “Non-Derogatory Non-Appropriative” uses (Whiting 2013).4 Social theories of slurs understand them as social actions instead of solely as individual lexical items. Through their recurring usage to describe certain types of people, behaviors, and/or stereotypes, slurs become more and more indexed to particular social meanings as a way to signal specific ideologies (Irvine 2001; Kiesling 2004). Speakers produce and reuse social meaning through language, connecting slurs with their pejorative meanings over time to reinforce a group’s disempowered state (Eckert 2008; Galinsky et al 2013). In 4 Ex. “Queer studies;” “They told me they identify as Queer;” etc.; this also depends heavily on the slur being said, as not all slurs carry the same weight in every society.
the context of homophobic slurs, they can be understood as radical terms that act as discursive resources for homophobia and compulsory masculinity under a hegemonic society (Mac an Ghaill 2000). The same process helps to drive slur reclamation as well, as in-group use of slurs in reclamatory manners can help to reindex them over time. Social theories of slurs also dictate that they can be read as “mock impoliteness” in reclamatory settings, which is an in-group usage meant to create superficial closeness to foster social connection (Croom 2010). This has already happened with reclaimed terms such as the n-word, which is frequently used by Black Americans to indicate closeness regardless of actual social distance (Asim 2008; Fogle 2013). Correct social usage of slurs in both their derogatory and reclamatory functions requires learning their specific use-conditions based on social understanding (Gumpertz 1981; Croom 2013). This allows for the reclamation of slurs through the creation and codification of new in-group usage conditions, something that has been a documented facet of online communities with the slur queer (Alexander 2002). The communicative competence of the participants is imperative to this process, as slurs and reclaimed slurs can only function as such through their understood social meaning between two cooperative parties (Gumpertz 1981). As a facet of the social uses of language, slurring and its reclamation can also be understood as allowing a speaker to recalibrate how their behavior is organized and understood to other group members (Croom 2013). This helps speakers negotiate face and social capital in their interactions, garnering them positive face with their other in-group members and distancing themselves from the out-group through negative face. When reclaiming slurs, oppressed communities can appropriate the usage of slurs to flip these power structures, garnering positive face within the in-group while excluding the out-group from using their new lexis. The word faggot can be viewed through this lens, and research has been conducted on how this hegemonic thinking has constructed an unattainable notion of masculinity through “locker room talk” in business settings (Rene Gregory 2011). Fag here becomes an insult to one’s masculinity or to signal negative perceptions of femininity and acts as a public call out, communicating to the others involved that the slurring individual wishes to distance themselves from the target of their slur. Audience design is employed here too, with the usage of faggot signaling an appeal to the cisheteronormative audience where non- hegemonic masculinity is always negative, and with reclaimed uses being tailored for in-group members’ understanding (Bell 2001).
Cisheteronormativity Slur reclamation is only possible in the face of oppressive systems that target specific social groups. Hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity provide the unjust framework that allows for homophobic slurs such as faggot to function, but how are these pillars of oppression created and maintained through language? The patriarchal state functions as a sexual regulator, upholding cisheterosexuality as the norm (Mac an Ghaill 2000; Martino 2012; Riggs 2017). The compulsory nature of hegemonic society acts as strong social constraints to individual identity choice, leading to broad categorization of people by stereotyped traits (Edwards 2009).5 Slur reclamation acts to counter these broad notions of identity and hegemony by utilizing the linguistic tools of the cisheteropatriarchy for new in-group functions. Heterosexism should then be seen as maintaining gender and sexual oppression by forcing itself as the neutral standard (Silverschanz et al 2007; Riggs 2017). This allows for slurs in two ways: cultural heterosexism and psychological heterosexism. Cultural heterosexism, which is institutional and hegemonic, is the large systems that shape society and is maintained – often unconsciously – through language.6 The second way that heterosexism allows for slurs is through psychological heterosexism – the individual harassment that we encounter both personally as well as ambiently through our experiences (Silverschanz et al 2007). In other words, cultural heterosexism provides the structure for more individualized psychological heterosexism to be received as negative, and is how we as a society come to understand slurs as bad, with negative meaning about specific groups assigned to them. Fighting these forms of heterosexism is integral to the notion of slur reclamation, as slurs can only be reclaimed in the context of such oppressive social structures and meaning. Gender must also be understood to be constructed, maintained, and disrupted through linguistic practices, as well as performative in nature (Bramman, Eisenstein, and Schonoebelen 2014; Butler 1988). Performative here means that, through both our language and other facets of personal style and presentation, we create and define our gender by drawing on cultural understandings and tropes of hegemonic, stereotypical gender markers.7 Gender construction is also compulsory for all members of a society, starting at a young age (Loutzenheiser 1996; Rodino 1997; Martino 2012; Eckert and 5 Categories such as heterosexual, homosexual, man, woman, etc. which are based not on pure realities but are constructed and maintained through culturally dominant systems of oppression. 6 This is a key tenant of Critical Discourse Analysis, which aims to understand the power structures of language and how it is used as a tool of oppression, creating and maintaining these oppressive systems through speech. For more on this, see Van Dijk 1993 and 1995. 7 Stereotypes such as sports and the color blue are for men, makeup and the color pink are for women, etc.
McConnell-Ginet 2013). This applies to social media as well, where online participation requires constant construction of one’s gender and sexuality representation (McGregor et al 2016). Slurring can be a heterosexist tool to assert one’s compliance with these oppressive gender systems, which leads to reclamation efforts to strip slurs of this hegemonic force. What is slur reclamation? Hate speech is only able to be disarmed through the process of reclamation, and this can take many forms (St. Claire 2018). Slur reclamation is primarily a linguistic ideology fueled by social mission, and slurs can be reclaimed by both conscious and unconscious actors. That is, speakers are able to participate in reclamation efforts unwittingly, and often use slurs in reclaimed fashions without full awareness of the various movements – organized or not – to reclaim certain slurs. These linguistic ideologies are shaped by our personal political philosophies, which allow us to move through life with specific understandings of the world around us (Soulaimani 2016). Reclamation is, at its core, a form of protest (Herbert 2015). Often, reclamation is a way to covertly critique the hegemonic powers that lead to a slur’s oppressive power and acts as a tangible goal that people can rally around with a focus on changing the social norms and stigmas of speech. Since slurs gain their pejorative meaning over time in a socially constructed way, reclamation must be a process and cannot happen overnight. When a speaker or group of speakers from a stigmatized group uses a slur that would target them in an uncommon way while making this new use clear to their audience, they are able to redefine the slur over time by changing the conventional constraints surrounding its usage (St. Claire 2018). Through this, reclamation efforts strip slurs of their exercitive power. This begs the question, what allows for a slur to be reclaimed in the first place? Reclamation is only possible due to the “injurious power of hate speech” (Brontsema 2004, p. 1) and involves appropriating the pejorative by its targets (St. Claire 2018). Without a negative, pejorative meaning, a slur would not be able to be reclaimed. Linguistic reclamation should also be understood as a right of self definition, where members of an oppressed group can use these linguistic tools to redefine themselves in the face of a system of power keeping them down. While many feel that self-labeling with derogatory terms feeds into stigma, others propose that such self-labeling weakens a slur’s stigmatizing force (Galinsky et al 2013). This is in part due to the agency involved in self-labeling, and agency is power. Self-labeling with a pejorative term can lead outsiders to feel like the stigmatized group has more power, and can also increase speakers’ own perceptions of their power both as individuals and as a group (Galinsky et al 2013). By
reclaiming slurs, socially stigmatized groups can claim power for themselves while simultaneously lessening the stigma attached to them. Brontsema (2004) describes three distinct goals of reclamation: Value Reversal, Neutralization, and Stigma Exploitation. These goals are not mutually exclusive but rather form broad bases for how reclamation efforts often orient themselves. Groups likely do not have one of these goals in mind when beginning to reclaim a particular slur; these goals instead describe the main ways that reclamation efforts ultimately lead to new uses for said slur. Not purely academic, they are analytic categories that describe not the aspirations of the reclamation efforts but instead possible outcomes for different uses of reclaimed slurs. Reclamation efforts that lead to Value Reversal aim to render a slur’s usage as more positive (Brontsema 2004; Lycan 2015). Like other reclamation efforts, this is often linked to counterculture movements and can serve to help distinguish an in-group through the illocutionary force of the newly reclaimed slur. This form of reclamation can also function as mock impoliteness, acting as a linguistic tool to create positive face and close the social distance of members of the in-group (Croom 2010). This can lead to slurs becoming expressions of solidarity for in-group uses (Cepollaro 2017). Neutralization aims to strip slurs of their pejorative hegemonic power by mainstreaming them. In this sense, reclamation is the phenomenon where, under specific conditions, speakers can use a slur in a way that is non-derogatory or offensive (Brontsema 2004; Cepollaro 2017). This process often starts with in-group usage, but eventually becomes fair game for all as the term loses its negative meaning. This has already been witnessed with the term gay and is in the process for the word queer. This process, while not as radical as Value Reversal, still acts to challenge the derogatory meaning of the slur. Through this process, slurs gain a literal non-derogatory meaning in addition to their derogatory one, and eventually the derogatory meaning is forgotten or understood only through the illocutionary force of a speaker’s intentional negative usage.8 Possibly the most radical of these three goals, slur reclamation can be a form of Stigma Exploitation, where the linguistic act of reclamation can serve to highlight the associated stigmas in the face of a hegemonic system as a means to question its very nature (Brontsema 2004). For queer, this means shining a spotlight on the stigma associated with the term, questioning the conception of sexual abnormality and deviance as defined by a slurring society. This in part allows for reclamation efforts to lead to more flexible meanings of the slurs, since all of these various reclamation efforts can coexist. 8 In this sense, any word can be derogatory if used in a derogatory way.
Reclamation can also be used as a separation practice when interacting with members of the out-group, as non-standard language often functions as a marker of vernacular loyalty (Cheshire 1982). This can lead to the formation of a “queer dialect,” where speakers can use specific language varieties unique to their in-group to distance themselves from hegemonic society (Bailey 2013). This can also be understood through audience design, where members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella might tailor their speech depending on the audience, using slurs in reclaimed ways when speaking with other group members but not with outsiders who might not understand (Bell 2001). In addition to the formation of queer community linguistic practices, we can also understand reclamation as a feature of personal linguistic style. Androutsopoulos (2006) details the Identities in Talk approach, which states that identity is part of an ascription or display of group membership within discourse. There is a focus on the interplay of code choices, which for slur reclamation means that speakers will adapt their language choices depending on their audience as a means to connect or dissociate from specific groups or individuals. Style often concerns distinctiveness, and works to characterize an individual within a particular social framework by managing how we present ourselves to the world (Irvine 2001; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2013). Slur reclamation, then, is a style choice made by members of the in-group to both distinguish themselves from the majority group while also making a statement about their own personal linguistic style. Since social practices are linguistically maintained, slur reclamation as a facet of style is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Challenging the Hegemony and the Reclamation of Queer A comparable term to faggot, queer is a slur that has already undergone a great deal of reclamation. Once a slur meant to denigrate members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella, there was a rebirth of its usage in a more positive light in the 1990s, stemming from the creation of the organization Queer Nation (Brontsema 2004). Queer was chosen intentionally for the organization name in part due to its confrontational (at the time) nature, and was meant to distinguish them from more “assimilationist” and normative gay and lesbian groups, who were more concerned with fitting into the existing hegemonic system (Brontsema 2004; Martino 2012). The choice of this word also aimed to counter the limitations of gay and lesbian as universal terms for LGBTQ+ individuals, and offered a sense of gender and sexual fluidity (St. Claire 2018). It was meant to signal the group’s functioning outside of the hegemonic, normative system as a radical confrontation to the status quo of the time (“Queers Read This” 1990; Martino 2012). This movement was intentional, with a conscious organized mission to change the meaning of this term and appropriate it for in-group uses including as an identity (Brontsema 2004).
Faggot, on the other hand, does not appear to have any centralized or cohesive movement driving its reclamation. There are a number of factors that might explain this, most notably the timing and political climate of each term’s respective reclamation. Queer, reclaimed in the 1990s, provided a linguistic resource for LGBTQ+ individuals to rally around as a group in the face of a society that was actively oppressing them along almost every level of society and government. The gay rights movement lacked political power, discriminatory laws were still in effect across the world, and many queer communities had just seen their numbers dramatically cut due to the AIDS epidemic. Compared to today, where most members of the LGBTQ+ community do not face the same level of personal or legal discrimination, there is less of an impetus to create a revolutionary movement around the term faggot. Since the 1990s, queer as a reclaimed term has come to have a variety of coexisting uses: it can mark a self-identified radical, function as a catch-all for members of LGBTQ+ umbrella, and be used as a popular media term in lay-usage (Queer Eye…). These uses correspond to the development of the reclaimed uses: the first being aligned with the origins of reclamation, the second after early reclamation efforts succeeded in neutralizing the term, and the third once queer became common enough for the comfort of heteronormative society. This development was not a neatly chronological pattern though, as reclamation efforts helped and continue to codefine each other throughout time and continue to be discussed to this day (Brontsema 2004; Asim 2008; St. Claire 2018; Clarendon 2019). Online, the “cyberqueer” identity grew out of the advent and spread of the Internet, where queer people from all over the world could congregate in safe spaces tailored to their specific queer interests (Alexander 2002). As usage of the term spread and gained new meanings, it became possible for members of the outgroup to felicitously use queer in certain contexts, such as popular media (Cepollaro 2017).9 Since then, as the internet has become increasingly more pervasive in society, these trends have continued and it is possible to see queer used in any number of ways online by a large variety of communities all with distinct identities. Due to the way that this reclamation developed, queer has become a term that is able to be used by almost anyone in a variety of contexts. Through its use as an umbrella term to distance more radical members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella from more normative and specific gay and lesbian identities, queer eventually gained the more open and inclusive meaning it has today. Compared to faggot – the use of which appears to be more restricted to LGBTQ+ 9 Such as with Queer Studies, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and other non-derogatory, non-appropriative ways.
individuals – queer has taken on meanings that allow for its use by members of any gender or sexuality group. This study aims to compare already reclaimed uses of the word queer to the term faggot, which has not undergone the same level of systematic reclamation. Faggot developed as a term for gay men in the early 20th century, indexing sissiness and affiliation with drag and male sex work, and eventually came to replace queer as the main derogatory way to identify homosexual affiliated individuals (Johansson 1981; Brontsema 2004). Its derogatory usage continues to this day, but as I hope to show is being reclaimed in various fashions by online communities. Community and Online Discourse So as we have seen, slur reclamation can be an effective way to challenge the hegemonic power structures of oppression. But where is this happening? The internet, since its rapid spread in the 1990s, has allowed for greater availability and sharing of information. In the case of sexuality, this directly leads to more people coming out of the closet, as they now have the resources to understand their sexuality and talk with others who have gone through similar experiences (Alexander 2002). The internet has led to a massive rise in geo-connectivity among members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook allow users to identify and connect with others in traceable ways, forming a web of connection of people with similarly suppressed experiences (Fox and Warber 2014). These sites allow for a greater number of possibilities for self-expression, and personal homepages are especially expressive (Alexander 2002). These often attest to underrepresented, heavily stigmatized identities, and allow for LGBTQ+ members to highlight their diversity of experience. This happens through language use and slur reclamation in addition to other facets of online style. For this reason, members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella have found safer and more accepting communities online, leading many to come online specifically to explore their identities and to learn from community elders (Fox and Ralston 2016). Personal representation online can take many forms, and people tend to represent their identity through “representational domains,” marked by specific lexis use and other sociolinguistic variables (Van Doorn et al 2007). When forming communities online, co-cultural groups must create specific communicative practices in order to function and succeed within the dominant culture. Separation
practices are a main way this is achieved, including strategies such as embracing stereotypes, attacking the dominant group’s self-concept, and sabotaging the dominant group outright (Fox and Warber 2014). Slur reclamation can function as all three of these strategies. To an extent, the internet is a specific genre that requires a certain level of cultural and linguistic competence to navigate. Some internet language practices, such as slur use and reclamation, are extremely culturally dependent and necessitate a high level of linguistic and cultural knowledge and competence to understand (Gumperz 1981; Robinson 2006; Bretschneider and Peters 2016). That means that when using slurs in a reclaimed fashion online, in-group members are only communicating with others that have the cultural competence to understand the slur usage as reclaimed. While out-group individuals are able to see and interact with tweets, they would not be able to fully understand the intended meaning behind them. This study, then, will focus on specific groups whose use of faggot in reclamatory fashions by an in-group comprised of members of the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and are less accessible to members of the out-group of cisgender heterosexuals. Due to the historically gender-specific nature of faggot, this in-group will include predominantly those who were raised as boys (assigned male at birth), do not identify as heterosexual, and/or do not identify with their assigned gender. Measuring Online Reclamation Slur reclamation is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs by and large by non-linguists, and it is likely that those who act to reclaim slurs are unaware of the linguistic processes that they are involved in. Preston (2004) describes the concept of metalinguistics, which is how we view and understand our own language use and the language use of those we communicate with. Folk metalinguistics is another aspect of this, which describes the phenomenon of metalinguistics from a non-academic perspective. When examining online slur reclamation, it is important to keep in mind that Twitter users’ folk metalinguistic understanding of slurs will factor heavily into how they choose to use slurs, regardless of whether or not they are aware of the reclamation efforts they are participating in. This facet of language use – speaker folk metalinguistic awareness – is a highly relevant facet of the social aspect of language when considering slur reclamation. Surveys have been used in previous studies to measure a group’s own folk metalinguistic understanding of specific vocabulary items, as demonstrated by Kiesling (2004) in their article on the lexical item dude, by Silverschanz et. al. (2007) in their article on queer jokes,
and by Herek (1993) in their study documenting LGBTQ+ prejudice on college campuses. Questions included in these surveys asked participants about who they thought used certain words, how often they themselves used certain words or were the recipient of specific speech, and how likely they were to use the word in specific contexts with the help of a Likert scale to quantify different situations. Surveys have demonstrated their usefulness not only for gathering information on specific questions, but also for uncovering participant attitudes or other facets of their identity that might be hidden in their personal lives (Herek 1993). These studies by Herek (1993), Kiesling (2004), and Silverschanz et. al. (2007) found that surveys served a crucial way to collect data on their respective topics. For surveys dealing with issues of language such as with the present study, this can get a bit tricky since speakers tend to be poor judges of their own linguistic behaviors. However the survey used here will provide a way to gauge participant perception of such behaviors and of the terms in question. Although surveys have certain limitations in their reliability – namely, that respondents are often forced to think about the topic at hand more than they naturally would in conversation and therefore respond in a manner more aligned with what they think they should be saying as opposed to what they actually think/experience – surveys still provide good data on how people envision the topic even if not exactly aligned with their language use. When studying specific lexical items, preforming a keyword search can be a useful way to filter relevant tokens out of large pools of data. KhosraviNik (2010), in their study on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Immigrants, utilized query terms in a large online corpus to analyze the frequency of occurrence of key words related to these groups. They then employed down-sampling techniques to restrict their data to only the most relevant tokens. This method of data collection is appealing as it provides a framework to restrict the data while remaining objective in how to systematically go about data collection. The use of query terms allowed the author to hone in on specific lexical items, making it easier to analyze aspects of context while also allowing for easier filtration of off-topic tokens. When compiling my corpus for faggot, this kind of keyword search with a subsequent filtration of results for only relevant tokens provides more than enough data to work with. Twitter as a Data Source Twitter has been shown to be a good source of data for a variety of research purposes (Gaffney and Puschmann 2014). However, there will always be a level of subjectivity when analyzing information from Twitter; tweets are highly context dependent and are subject to a myriad of flexible interpretations by members of different social groups (Schmidt 2014; Gaffney and Puschmann 2014). This complication arises from the fact that many
communities of practice share Twitter as a platform and use it for a variety of different communicative purposes (Bruns and Moe 2014; Schmidt 2014). Although this study is focused on a specific community on Twitter – the LGBTQ+ umbrella – this group is not a monolith, has no centralized organizing body, and has a great deal of diversity across many meridians within the community. This means that, while a certain level of shared communicative competence can be assumed for the tweets comprising the corpus, the corpus data should not be seen as coming from a single unified community of practice. Instead, this data can be understood as coming from a variety of different groups under the LGBTQ+ umbrella each with their own customs and linguistic norms but also with some shared umbrella-wide practices. Another complicating factor when looking at data from Twitter is the interplay of social and textual relationships that are not always readily apparent when collecting tweets out of their original context (Marwick 2014; Schmidt 2014). Humor is heavily affected by this relationship, and can be hard to determine definitively in a study of this nature. Past studies looking into humor on Twitter have used human subjective opinion to determine whether a tweet is humorous or not, as there is no established framework for describing humor on Twitter (Holton and Lewis 2011; Zhang and Liu 2014). For the purposes of this study, it is important to keep in mind that because there is no objective and clear way to define what is funny, any discussion of humor on Twitter is inherently subjective. Humor is also important due to how it acts to connect likeminded individuals and promote relaxation, which in turn can promote the formation of new communities of practice (Holton and Lewis 2011). Twitter as a data source has been the subject of some debate too, as it is difficult to obtain informed consent through this platform for a variety of compounding reasons (Ahmed, Bath, and Demartini 2017). However, many academics do not feel that informed consent is completely necessary when using Twitter data, as reuse of data is permitted by Twitter’s Terms of Service. As mentioned above, Twitter data does have limitations that I had to address, most notably the lack of context, intersection of various communities of practice, and subjective interpretation of meaning. While these are all important to keep in mind when looking at this data, they are unlikely to have a serious effect on the end results. This means that there was not much action to be taken regarding these issues when going about data collection beyond ensuring that the data is limited to only relevant tokens.
Research Questions There are three primary research questions driving this study: 1. In what ways is the term faggot being reclaimed in written text on the online platform Twitter? 2. How does the current reclamation of faggot differ from the reclamation of queer as established by past research? 3. What are Twitter users’ folk metalinguistic understandings of the reclamation of both of these terms, and how does it align with the usage of faggot found in the data? I will focus on the term faggot as a more recently reclaimed slur, using queer as a comparable slur that has undergone a significant amount of reclamation in the past.
Chapter III – Methodology
To conduct this two-part study, I have focused on the social media platform Twitter due to its text-based format and general lack of language policing (Twitter Help Center 2019).10 3.1 Twitter Corpus Source of data For the first part of my study, I compiled a corpus of tweets from April 2018 to March 2019. To collect these tweets in the most objective manner possible, I created a fresh account without following anyone else to ensure that I would bypass any potentially blocked or muted accounts on my personal profile as well as to avoid any algorithmic bias attached to my own account. I utilized the Twitter advanced search function to display tweets containing the keywords “fag” and/or “faggot” in reverse chronological order. I then collected every fourth relevant token until I reached 30 tokens per month, totaling to 360 total tweets containing the keywords. To qualify as relevant, the tweet had to contain the keyword in the text itself and not solely in a hashtag, and the tweet had to either stand alone or begin a new thread. The decision to collect 30 tweets per month in reverse chronological order also means that most tokens come from the second half of each month. However, this does not have any bearing on the final results. 10 Twitter does not actively police language use, but instead relies on users to report accounts and tweets that might be in violation of the Twitter terms of service. However this is not systematic and instead varies greatly in who is reported and whether or not Twitter does anything about the reports.Additionally, I vetted the user profile for each token to ensure that they were a member of the in-group, defined here as those who self-identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ umbrella. To determine if the user fits this profile, they must include such info in their bio, in their name or handle, in their tweet content, or somewhere readily accessible on their feed. Unfortunately it was not always possible to determine which specific identity within the larger LGBTQ+ community a user belonged to, so individual identity was not taken into consideration for this study. There were some tweets that I excluded from my study despite them fitting the conventions outlined above. These were primarily related to porn or online kink communities, and more specifically online BDSM communities. Tweets of this nature often contained a number of hashtags that allowed me to easily filter them out, such as #findom or #cashslave. In these situations, faggot is used as a slur specifically meant to conjure the injurious power of the word to reflect the power structure within these dom-sub relationships. While the use of faggot as an accepted slur in these more specific communities of practice is interesting and warrants further study, it falls outside of the scope of this project. I also chose to exclude tweets that could be considered direct reporting when speaking about specific news stories, although these are worthy of further study. One news story of particular relevance is the controversy around Jussie Smollett, a queer Black actor in the United States who was verbally and physically assaulted in January 2019. His assailants allegedly hurled homophobic slurs at him, and many Twitter users within this study’s in-group quoted them and/or court proceedings and news articles in various ways. There were several instances of faggot being used in what appeared to be neutral or positive ways by members of the out-group, most notably cisgender heterosexual women speaking about their friends and family. These tweets indicate two possibilities – either reclamation has in some way succeeded in reaching out-group audiences and is beginning to be used in similar ways to contemporary uses of queer, or that due to the status and popularity of the LGBTQ+ community and specific members of the community online, these newly created reclaimed speech patterns are being replicated by fans. However due to the out-group nature of these tweets, they fall outside the scope of this study. Categorization of data I have grouped the tweets collected for this study into 4 broad categories, based in part on the categories previously elaborated for the reclamation of queer: Identity, Metalinguistic Comment, Insult, and Descriptor. Identity tokens act to identify the user or another
individual as a faggot, Metalinguistic Comment tokens are tweets that speak about faggot as a term or concept, Insult tokens provide examples of faggot used as an insult directed either at the user or another individual, and Descriptor tokens use faggot as an adjective or as a general concept. These categories were informed by those outlined by Brontsema (2004) for the reclamation of queer – self-identified radical, catch-all term for LGBTQ+ individuals, and popular media usage – but focus more on the function of the word itself rather than the meaning it communicates. What I mean here is that while Brontsema’s (2004) categories for the use of reclaimed queer speak more to how it might be defined when used in a reclamatory capacity, the categories I developed for faggot place more emphasis on how the word functions as it relates to the overall utterance (or in this case, the rest of the tweet) in use more so than in meaning. While many of the tokens do fit neatly into one particular category, others were more ambiguous and could be considered to fall within multiple categories depending on context and subjective interpretation. However, in instances of ambiguity, I grouped tokens with the category that best represents what I felt was the intended meaning of the tweet. The breakdown of these tokens is as follows: Table 1 Twitter corpus tokens by category Total Tokens 360 Identity 182 Metalinguistic Comment 81 Insult 74 Descriptor 23 Within these categories, I further analyzed the data for a number of additional features. These included whether or not the tweet was humorous, if it follows a meme template, and if other media such as a photo, gif, or video was attached. Verification status was a user specific feature I looked at due to what it says about the social power of the user.11 Verified accounts often have a large follower count and an influential position online, meaning that their tweets and language use is likely to inform larger trends in language use on Twitter. Each of the categories for the reclamation of faggot have subcategories (for example, Identity and Insult tokens can be user-directed, other-directed, or general) and/or 11 Verified users have both a prominent enough position online and/or in their field as well as a sufficient follower count, and have gone through the process of applying for verification through Twitter.
additional qualifiers with more specific information, such as whether the tweet followed a meme template, whether the tweet was humorous, etc. There are no hard and fast dividing lines between the 4 categories devised for this study, and where a specific tweet fits is subject to personal interpretation. Although each tweet belongs to only one category for the purpose of this report, these categories should not be viewed as strict divisions but rather as a descriptive continuum of ways to use faggot in reclamatory fashions. Before I discuss the different types of data, I would like to first acknowledge that much of my analysis comes from a place of inherent subjectivity, especially regarding whether or not a token is considered humorous. As I touched on before, humor is a facet of language that is open to very broad interpretation and is both highly subjective and context dependent. Not only is humor subjective and inconsistent, but we often use humor simultaneously with serious content for a variety of sociolinguistic reasons, including to save both our own and others’ face or to make the content more digestible for its intended audience in context. Since the tweets collected for this study were taken out of context, judging their humor is left to my subjective understanding of the community of which I am a part as well as how I perceive the intended message of the tweet. Sometimes it was clear that the tweet was meant to be humorous, due to the attachment of additional media, the use of a meme template, the use of emojis, or other such extralinguistic information. However, this was not always the case. This means, essentially, that I made judgement calls on whether I thought a tweet was humorous, kind of humorous, or not humorous based on my intuition. Kind of humorous for the purposes of this corpus means that I interpreted the tweet as humorous, but felt it was open to interpretation regarding the level of humor. Some of these combine serious elements with humorous elements, while others were only slightly humorous. Memes were a bit easier to identify due to the somewhat standardized forms they tend to take. However, the intentionality of the meme or message of their content is not always transparent due to the mixed-media nature of Twitter, so even these tokens were subject to my interpretation. For the purposes of this study, I considered any tweet that adhered to clear meme conventions in the text portion of the tweet, either in combination with additional media or standing alone as text, to be a meme post. 3.2 Questionnaire For the second part of this study, I distributed a survey online in an attempt to gauge folk metalinguistic attitudes and understandings of slur reclamation and perceptions of the words queer and faggot. Questions include personal biographic information such as gender and sexual orientation, age, location, and native languages; info about the respondents’ activity on Twitter; how they understand the words queer and faggot to function both on
and off line; their views on who uses the terms queer and faggot; in what contexts these terms typically appear; and whether or not they are familiar with the concept of reclamation. It also attempts to gauge respondents’ knowledge and understanding of past and contemporary reclamation efforts for these two terms, and offered opportunities for participants to share their thoughts in an unstructured open way. In order to distribute this survey, I posted it on my personal Twitter and Facebook profiles and encouraged people to take it and share it around. I also posted a link to my tweet with the survey in a large Twitter group I am in and asked them to circulate it, as well as messaging a few moderately high-profile LGBTQ+ centered accounts to ask for their help boosting it on their profiles. Respondent Information 409 participants responded to the survey. The majority of participants (342, 83.8%) are daily Twitter users, with the main age range being 19-28 years old (257, 62.8%). The majority of participants are from the United States originally (277, 67.7%) and have English as their native language (352, 86%). Although country of origin and native language were shared by the majority of participants, there was a diverse array of gender and sexual identities represented in the data. The breakdown of these identities is as follows: 31% of participants are cisgender men, 33% are cisgender women, 4.4% are transgender men or women, and 11.6% are genderqueer or non-binary. 21.2% are heterosexual, 17.7% are homosexual, 26.6% are bi or pansexual, and 15.3% are queer regarding their sexuality.12
Chapter IV – Results
This study produced a wealth of results from both Twitter tokens and survey responses. The majority of the data matched expectations: primarily, that faggot is being reclaimed in a decentralized way by an in-group of LGBTQ+ identified individuals and that they are, on some level, aware that this linguistic process is in action. While it was not surprising that Identity tokens made up a large percentage of the data, it was a bit unexpected that they accounted for over 50% of total tokens as I had expected a more even distribution across the categories. Insult tokens – which I had expected to make 12 Queer can regard both gender and sexuality, and so I included both in my survey. Genderqueer here means that the respondent does not identify as either option within the binary gender system (man/woman), while Queer as a sexuality means that the respondent’s sexual attraction to others is not defined by this binary system.up a greater portion of tokens due to how they match non-reclaimed uses most closely – were the third least numerous in what was also a surprising turn of results. On some levels it makes sense that those within the in-group might shy away from using faggot in a capacity that resembles its use as a slur – they would not want to echo hurtful language. The lack of an organized, centralized movement or message behind reclamation of faggot means that there is no reason to assume that all in-group speakers who participate in reclamation share this kind of feeling about use of the term, and the data shows that in reality there are a diverse variety of views surrounding the use of faggot. While those participating in the reclamation of queer were also unlikely to share the same feeling about the term, the organized movement driving reclamation helped to ensure uniformity in expression despite this. However since faggot does not have anything like this to regulate usage or perception, this diversity of views is more easily seen and less controlled. Another unexpected result was the number of verified accounts using faggot in its reclamatory capacity. Although a very small portion of total tokens, the use of reclaimed faggot by verified accounts suggests not only that this movement is more mainstream and widespread than thought but also that the audience of hearers is quite large and diverse. While this does not have any direct bearing on the present study, it is interesting to consider how these verified accounts act to popularize and spread the use of reclaimed faggot as a reclaimed slur and the implications this might have on the reclamation movement at large. The survey results aligned with expectations for the most part – respondents are aware of linguistic reclamation, believe that reclamation has already occurred for the term queer, and are aware that reclamation is underway for the term faggot. While it was not surprising that consensus was reached for these questions, there was still a great deal of variety within the answers. Even participants who answered similarly might have very different reasons for why they responded that way. In-group as well as out-group respondents had similar answers when compared to each other for most questions regarding faggot and queer. This shows us that these two terms are each perceived in relatively similar ways across all speaker groups represented. The variety of answers within in-group responses also speaks to how we can understand LGBTQ+ umbrella language use. This group is not a monolith and even members with similar identities will have their views shaped by the specific and local context they exist in, meaning essentially that the diversity of the in-group will and has led to a diversity in views on language use. One aspect of the survey data that did come as a bit of a surprise was how few respondents report using the word faggot both on and offline. While for around half of the respondents this makes sense – they were not in the in-group – the underwhelming number of those
within the in-group who report never using this word was certainly unexpected and tells us that linguistic reclamation of faggot is still perceived as being in its infancy in many ways. Of those that do use the term, a slightly higher number of respondents report using the word offline than online, another interesting and unexpected finding which will be discussed in Chapter 5. Below I outline detailed data and results, first from the tweets collected from Twitter and second from the survey. 4.1 Twitter Corpus Based on the data collected from Twitter, we can see that faggot is being used by the in-group in a variety of ways with loose patterns governing its usage, making it clear that linguistic reclamation is indeed underway. Most of the data is in-line with what might be expected for reclamation of this term, and general patterns among all subsets of data are relatively consistent. Use of humor and meme templates was common across all categories, as were references to topics and subjects popular among the LGBTQ+ community on Twitter. 4.1.1 Identity - Tokens that can be classified as Identity posts were by far the most numerous, accounting for 50.5% (or 182) of the total tokens. 31 of these were meme posts, accounting for 17% of this category. Most (152; 84%) of the Identity tokens identified the user themselves, with only 24 (13%) identifying another individual and 6 (3%) describing a temporary state of identity rather than a permanent identity. 3 of these posts came from users with verified accounts. Of the Identity tokens, 77 (42%) can be considered humorous, 46 (25%) can be considered kind of humorous, and 59 (33%) can be considered not humorous. That two-thirds of the tokens in this category have at least some humorous element to them shows that humor is a major driving force in the reclaimed use of faggot as an identity. Memes are a popular method of conveying humor through the identity posts, and a number of different meme templates were used. The most popular of these, shown in figure 1 below13, depicts the user in-utero: 13 All Twitter examples were taken from the corpus.
Figure 1. Many of these posts are affirmations about a user’s identity, and the goal seems to be value reversal in that they are using the slur as a neutral or positive way to describe themselves. The notable use of humor in these posts has a number of possible explanations which will be discussed at length in Chapter V. Some of these tokens reference other aspects of pan-gay subculture, some possibly more specific to Twitter than others. These include subjects such as music, television, medicine (PrEP, as in example 1 below), and astrology. A number of posts include photos of the user, making the self-identification even more concrete while adding a visual element to their identity as it relates to their use of the word faggot. 1. “just met a fellow fag in line to pick up our PrEP refills!” (@ptpwilliamson; Tweeted: July 27, 2018) 4.1.2 Metalinguistic Comment - The second most numerous type of posts with 81 tokens (22.5% of the total) are those in the Metalinguistic Commentary category. This means that the speakers were making some sort of comment about faggot in its linguistic capacity as a subject or object of their tweet instead of using the word to identify, insult, or describe something or someone. 9 tokens (11%) came from verified accounts. 20 (25%) of these tokens were meme posts. One of the most frequently recurring of these memes templates was “x can say faggot,” where the “x” was often a female musician popular among the LGBTQ+ community on Twitter such as Charli XCX, Kacey Musgraves, or Brooke Candy.14 This type of meme, where a member of the in-group states that a member 14 All three of these singers were referenced in the corpus data.
of the out-group can say this word, demonstrates the power of reclamation to give linguistic agency and power to an oppressed in-group. It also speaks to the community’s admiration for these artists, essentially meaning that because these artists are important to the online LGBTQ+ community, they can be considered honorary members of the in-group. Many meme posts that followed this template however were more purely jokes, as they spoke about fictional characters or non-humans saying faggot as in examples 2-4 below: 2. “Nobody: j.k. rowling: sirius black can say faggot” (@69winedad; tweeted: January 28, 2019;) 3. “Cottonelle can say faggot” (@airuhgo; Tweeted: July 30, 2018) 4. “Peanut butter m&ms can say faggot” (@stainedstains; Tweeted: October 27, 2018) Other posts within this category spoke more candidly about usage of the term faggot and who can or cannot say it, often as a part of larger discussions on identity and language. These describe specific instances of the term being used in a way the user felt was inappropriate, speaking in a metalinguistic fashion about comments by others, or speaking more broadly about who can or cannot say faggot as it relates to identity. Here, we find some users speaking explicitly about linguistic reclamation, stating that only LGBTQ+ people can say the word in reclamatory ways and nobody else should use it. Some users compared in-group usage of this word to the usage of the n-word by Black people (as in example 5 below), while others speak to the power felt by arming themselves with faggot’s reclaimed use. 5. “I’ve been called a faggot 100x more than I’ve been called a nigger. Just saying.” (@ChiefHanif; Tweeted: January 29, 2019) 4.1.3 Insult - 74 (20.5%) of the total tokens were insults, over half of which (45) were self or user-directed. This means that the users were insulting themselves or using an insult template to speak about themselves. 12 of these tokens had a meme template, and 5 came from verified accounts. User-directed insult User-directed insults account for 60.8% (45 tokens) of all Insult tokens and are split between humorous (19), kind of humorous (10), and non-humorous (16). Kind of humorous here means that while the tweet did not adhere to a joke or meme template per se, there was still some element of it that seemed intended to portray humor. However the
humor of these tokens is less obvious and might be debatable, so I did not consider them completely humorous. 8 of these user-directed humorous posts took a meme template, the most popular being “x called me a faggot”. While the majority of tokens with this type of language were humorous and therefore were considered memes, some were meant to be more serious and just so happened to use language that mirrors a meme template. Tokens in this template that can be considered memes have a playful and lighthearted tone to them, and aim to draw attention to specific aspects of “x” that demonstrate societal homophobia. This appears to act as a way to comment on past instances of faggot being used to insult the user, and also as a way to poke fun at the cisheteronormative hegemony. A number of these tokens straddled the line between humor and something serious, where the use of faggot is almost a way to break the ice so to speak and lighten the tone. In these situations, faggot is somewhat of a punchline meant to detract from the seriousness of the rest of the post by turning the whole paradigm of being slurred into something funny and/or ridiculous, shown in examples 6 and 7. Its use as illustrated in these examples subverts our expectations about the proper reaction to being slurred, flipping the narrative about said experience from wholly negative into something lighthearted and laughable. 6. “This guy at work called me a faggot so do I have to kiss him now?” (@fpsnake; Tweeted: June 27, 2018) 7. “someone just called me a faggot in 2018 in los angeles what a time to be alive” (@DylanHoughton; Tweeted: November 21, 2018) Other-directed insult 17 of these posts were directed at other users or individuals, but the majority of these have a humorous and playful tone to them, indicating that faggot as an insult here is being used in good faith to show camaraderie among members of the in-group as in the example below: 8. “A birthday collaboration I did together with @ky_rosh who did the sketch and the shading! I loved how it turned out. Birthday gift for @Snofag <3 happy birthday you fag” (@ArtOfJoshy; Tweeted: June 26, 2018) Only one of these other-directed posts had a clearly negative and non-humorous tone to it, insulting President Trump for his anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Most of these other-directed tokens though were clearly jokes and memes. One template that appeared more than once was the use of faggot in an insulting way that does not seem to have any meaning in particular other than “sucks”.
Some instances of other-directed insults were also clearly meant as terms of adoration or endearment for friends and lovers (example 8), much like how we can call those close to us “dummy” in a loving way. Other tokens seemed to be more neutral in nature and echoed traditional slurring, using faggot as an insult to describe gay men. However these usually had a tone of irony or humor to them and do not carry the same hegemonic force as when used by someone from the out-group. General insults 12 insult tokens were more general and not directed at anyone in particular. While similar to the metalinguistic commentary tokens, these use faggot more clearly as an insult as opposed to speaking about the word as a slur. These are insults in the abstract, tweets that use scare quotes around the word faggot, and/or recollections about the word when used as an insult. Some of these speak to current events regarding the word faggot, such as controversy over singer Doja Cat using it. These insults, while directed outwardly, do not target a person or group specifically but are merely insults for the sake of it. 4.1.4 Descriptor - The least numerous of the types with only 23 (6.4%) tweets are the descriptor tokens. These are instances where faggot was used primarily as a descriptive term (primarily as an adjective), or as an abstract concept. 15 of these posts were at least somewhat humorous of which 2 were memes, and 2 descriptor tokens came from verified accounts. When used as an adjective or modifier, faggot most closely mirrors the way that gay was used as a general insult and modifier in the past. Here though, it carries a more culturally specific meaning, where in addition to being somewhat of a catch-all modifier word it also signals allegiance to some aspect of contemporary in-group culture. 2 of the tokens reference a “fag cake” in response to controversy over an American bakery’s refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. These were the only tokens that were entirely serious within this category, making an actual political statement through the use of the word. The rest of the descriptor tokens, while not all humorous, do have a lighthearted or irreverent nature to them. When used as an abstract concept (5 tokens), faggot seems to take more freedom in form. It can be used as a verb or a noun, and does not always have a clear meaning attached to it. One way it was used more than once in the data is through an alteration of RuPaul’s saying “born naked and the rest is drag” where drag is substituted with fag (Charles and Piane 2014). In this and other examples of concept tokens, the use of faggot still shows a
connection to the in-group subculture and acts to identify the user with said identity, but is more broad and open to the interpretation of the reader in regards to what is meant. 4.2 Survey The second part of this study involved a survey which received 409 responses from all across the globe. Results from this provide a wealth of information regarding participant understanding of linguistic reclamation, perception of both faggot and queer, and personal demographic information such as native language and gender/sexual orientation. These results have been split into two sections: the first providing an overview of general results from all participants and the second with only those results from the in-group. 4.2.1 Overview All but 1 survey participant was familiar with the term faggot or its variations. 93.1% feel that a primary meaning is “a derogatory term for a member of a specific group of people,” and 12.7% feel that a primary meaning is “a derogatory term that is not directed at a member of a specific group of people.” The majority of participants see faggot as primarily addressing gay men (74%) or any/all LGBTQ+ people (30%). 63.9% of those participants who use the term use it in completely negative ways, and 97.3% of participants believe that faggot is a slur or is sometimes a slur. Surprisingly only 10.1% of participants use faggot to describe themselves or others online at least sometimes, while 13.1% use it offline to describe themselves and others. 74.7% of participants say that they never use this term, and 16.9% of participants report that the use of faggot does not carry different meanings on vs offline. Of all respondents, only 76 individuals report using the term faggot online in some form when asked the question “How would you use this term online?” They responded that when they use it online it is predominantly as a joke or as a term of endearment, with others responding that they use it in more of a derogatory manner or as a “neutral descriptor.” Results for queer were much more split, with 72.3% of respondents saying that they use or might use the term. 71.2% of respondents stated that queer describes any LGBTQ+ identified person, while 20.7% stated that it only applies to specific LGBTQ+ individuals. Nearly all participants feel that queer is a neutral or positive term when they use it, although 55% responded that they feel queer is sometimes a slur (as opposed to 38.4% who say it is not a slur).
