Order and turbulence in a Swedish bathroom

Bibliographic Data

ID12898168
AuthorsHenning Årman (0000-0002-1953-4948, Stockholm University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume15
Issue4
Pages476-502
Publication date2021-12-23
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender and Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1747-6321 • E-ISSN: 1747-633X
PublisherEquinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/genl.18826
OpenAlexW4205107137
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited34

‘Where are all the queers at the school?! I want to hug you’. Thus begins a conversation scrawled on the door to a Swedish high school’s student bathroom that will spark a debate among students on whether the word ‘queer’ should be considered a slur. In dialogue with work on linguistic citizenship and graffiti as a semiotic mode, this article analyses different stages of the unfolding debate. The analytical lens of turbulence captures the interplay of ordering and disordering in the students’ efforts to define ‘queer’. Youths’ linguistic agency works as a struggle for meaning across different indexical orders, illustrating the difficulty of sustaining mastery of identity labels as they travel through discourse

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Articulation (sociology · Conversation · Epistemology · Graffiti · Identity (music · Indexicality · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Queer · Social science · Sociology · SPARK (programming language · Visual arts · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

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