Gender and Language

by Hong-Chi Shiau, Shih-Hsin University, Taiwan

Introduction[1]This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Toronto, Canada, August 2004.

1     Prior to the rise of the Internet as the chief vehicle for personal ad placements, a group of linguistic codes identifiable as referring to Taiwanese gay (or sexually non-conforming) men were used to correspond in mainstream Taiwanese magazines. These "situated" linguistic systems, which can also be described as a cultural taste, "an acquired disposition" to "make difference by a process of distinction" (Bourdieu 466), have enabled Taiwanese gay men both to pass in relation to mainstream readers and helped construct homosexual identities. Based on in-depth conversations with those who have actively been involved in the process of producing and responding to gay personals, this paper attempts to challenge the earlier content-centered and socio-psychological analyses concerning gay personals. In addition to analyzing elicited historical testimonials (the personal ads published in print), I conducted in-depth interviews with twenty-two Taiwanese gay men who actively posted and/or responded to gay personal ads. In my interviews it soon became evident that the notion of intertexuality and multiple levels of linguistic functions worked together to facilitate the linguistic performance in gay communication, but that the respective importance of these was changed by the transition from print to digital media.

Historical Review of Content-based Approaches

2     In the context of western academic research, personal ads have long been examined in the area of social psychology, and are recognized as a valuable source of information about self-presentation, social roles, gender stereotypes, and judgments of attractiveness (see Jones). Many studies have employed quantitative methodology to compare heterosexual and homosexual samples, concluding that gay men emphasize physical characteristics and mention sexuality more often than do women and heterosexual men (see Deaux & Hanna; Koestner & Wheeler; Gonzales & Meyers; Child, et al.). Furthermore, heterosexual men sought long-term relationships and mentioned sincerity more often than did gay men (see Gonzales & Meyers). Much of this content-based research compared social and psychological demands overtly stated in personal ads; in an attempt to unravel the gender differences, personal ads placed by both hetero- and homosexual males were repeatedly construed as a testimonial arena and (ab)used for comparisons concerning deviances, differences and sexualities.

3     This socio-psychological approach to gay personals has its limits. In order to devise a quantitative comparison, the coding schemes in most of the aforementioned research relied on straightforward declarations of what one has and what one wants (e.g. Deaux & Hanna 363), "ignoring the importance of textual constraints, discursive practice and socio-cultural relations of power restructured in the text" (Jones 37). Accordingly, this paper argues that the difference between male heterosexuals and homosexuals is more reflective of the socially constructed marginality in which male homosexuals have little opportunity for legitimate and public same-sex relationships, rather than proof of their supposedly genetically-determined promiscuous nature. It is sometimes more plausibly assumed that personal ads in Asia, e.g. in India and Taiwan, are more linguistically indirect and grammatically complicated; as suggested by intercultural studies, in high-context cultures communication relies more heavily on the context rather than the words articulated (see Hall).

Taiwanese Gay Personals: A Socio-linguistic Inquiry

4     The capability of detecting their alliances and partners efficiently and accurately is imperative for sexual minorities. These "performances" are emblematic of a situated cultural production and legitimation of social distinction, enabling gay men to "pick each other out in a crowd" (Shelp 2). Without any gay-themed magazines before 1993, the gay personals lurking beneath the mainstream Taiwanese magazines were nearly unknown to outsiders. While GWM has long been known to mean "Gay White Male" in an Anglo-American context, most gay linguistic registers in Chinese only emerged in the early 1990s. Although the informal and private discussions of gay sensibility or taste took place in a limited circle far earlier, it was not until 1993, when the first Taiwanese lesbian magazine, Ai-Bao[2]<em>Ai-Bao</em> means "Love Newspaper," while <em>G & L</em> is an abbreviation of gay and lesbian., had its debut, that some gay identifications became more readily recognizable in the public sphere due to repeated use. In the meantime, a myriad of articles have invented new lexicons in an attempt to replace the conventionally stigmatizing usages in Ai-Bao and G & L (another leading gay-themed magazine). However, due to a lack of grass-roots activism, these articles provided antidotal, western-imported usages to redefine and reframe male homosexual relationships in Taiwanese society. For instance, "top" and "bottom" were quickly imported and are widely used. "No C, no fat" has become one of the most commonly used sentences. Currently known as the abbreviation for sissy, "C" has nearly replaced any traditional Chinese expression of being feminine. Some localized usages evolved rapidly after the Internet became the chief vehicle of relationship matching. In the Taiwanese context, familial obligations are referred to the constellation of homosexual relationships to some degree: masculine and senior characters then identifying themselves as "Ge-Ge" (literally "senior brother"); feminine, senior and caretaking roles are "Je-Je" (literally "elder sister"). Along the same line, younger and sexually undifferentiated versatile gay men are "younger brothers," whereas the younger and feminine gay men are known as "Mei-Mei." The elderly and gay are often mocked as "auntie" or "grandma."

5     In 2006, I joined a workshop related to Taiwanese gay men health concerns and empowerment. After the workshop, a participant brought up the "funny personal ads" in the early 90s. I was surprised about the drastic social changes that the new technologies have brought about over the last decades. I have been connected with a number of informants, which later inspired me to conduct a study. Accordingly, I started searching the magazines systematically, reading between the lines and looking into issues carefully in an attempt to understand how several magazines were chosen as a site of desire where Taiwanese gay men appropriated texts and intertexts to assert their homosexual subjectivities. As mentioned earlier, this research was in reaction to several active informants, thus ethnographic interviews were conducted to retrieve their situated experience of producing and consuming these texts.