In this article, we reflect upon Wolfgang Klein's provocative suggestion, in Writing or reading, but not both or: a proposal to reintroduce cuneiform writing using the hammer and chisel, that "every scientist" at universities or other research institutions "may and must publish exactly thirty pages a year." In our view, Klein's proposal to limit the number of pages each author should be allotted in a given year is comparable to a pill that treats the symptom but not the disease. Instead, we draw upon the ideas of American political theorist Nancy Fraser to argue for the need for a more radical transformation of the structures upon which the academic enterprise rests. Such a transformation would require (1) overhauling the underlying political-economic structure of academic labour relations, and (2) reconsidering what counts as a legitimate form of knowledge production. In saying so, we are also inspired by current theoretical debates about radical humanism and southern/decolonial perspectives to the sociology of language. Ultimately, we advocate for the need to disinvest from (1) individualism as a key principle of the academic project, at least in the humanities and the social sciences; and (2) the written word as the only medium for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Such a proposal is underpinned by an emphasis on orality, the usage of other forms of representation, and the need for recognizing alternative ways of producing and disseminating (Indigenous) ways of being, knowing, and feeling.

This essay traces the development of intersectionality theory within the field of language and gender in relation to research on the language of rape trials. In early work on the topic, I used Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ to understand the cultural intelligibility of certain kinds of rape victims in the legal system and the unintelligibility of others. But the inequities that complainants often experience in rape trials are not merely the result of sexism; rather, it is sexism and racism which together interact to disadvantage complainants and protect white male perpetrators, who occupy a privileged position within these contexts vis-à-vis men of colour. In line with recent work in the field, I end with an analysis of a rape case that demonstrates the necessity of attending to nonhegemonic masculinities and intersectionality.

Feminist critiques of the law have often cited the rape trial as exemplifying much of what is problematic about the legal system for women. Smart (1989: 161), for example, argues that the rape trial is illustrative of the law's juridogenic potential: that is, frequently the harms produced by the so-called remedy are as negative as the original abuse. Other legal theorists have created terms for the rape trial —"judicial rape" (Lees 1996: 36) and "rape of the second kind" (Matoesian 1995: 676)—in order to make visible the re-victimization that women can undergo once their complaints of rape enter the legal system. What is perhaps surprising about these kinds of claims is the fact that sexual assault and rape statutes in Canada and the United States have undergone widespread reform over the last four decades. For example, legislation in the 1970s through the 1990s in Canada and the United States abolished, among other things, marital exemption rules, which had made it impossible for husbands to be charged with raping their wives; corroboration rules, which required that complainants' testimony be supported by independent evidence; resistance rules, which required that complainants show evidence that they physically resisted their attackers; and recent complaint rules, which obligated complainants to make prompt complaints in order that their testimony be deemed credible. In addition, rape shield provisions were introduced, restricting the conditions under which complainants' sexual history could be admissible as evidence. So, given this kind of reform, why do rape trials continue to defy the law's statutory objectives? Following Conley and O'Barr (1998: 3), I suggest that the rape trial's failure to deliver justice to rape victims lies not in the details of rape and sexual assault statutes but rather "in the details of everyday legal practices." And, because language has been shown to play a crucial role in everyday legal practices, this chapter demonstrates how linguistic analysis can reveal some of the discriminatory qualities of rape trials as well as ways that such qualities have been contested.

It has been a year since we took over as co-editors of Language in Society from Jenny Cheshire, and we are honoured to be able to celebrate the journal’s 50th anniversary. Established in 1972 by Dell Hymes, Language in Society has aimed since its inception to be an academic platform which not only showcases research on ‘all aspects of language as part of social life’ (Hymes 1972:13), but also and most importantly leads ‘to a reconstruction of social theory in the light of linguistic methods and findings, and of linguistic theory on a social basis’ (1972:2). For Hymes, these aims could only be achieved with the help of an interor multidisciplinary cross-fertilization between linguistics and other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and many others. Fifty years later, Hymes’s ambitious vision is still highly relevant to the journal’s mandate: namely, the publication of empirically-grounded analyses that push linguistic and social theory in new and exciting directions. Put bluntly, empirically interesting manuscripts with little or no theoretical advancement or, conversely, theoretical essays without empirical grounding fall outside the remit of the journal. In this regard, wewant to be clear that we are keen to honour the theoretical and methodological breadth that has characterised Language in Society over the years, spanning the gamut of sociolinguistic inquiry, from variationist sociolinguistics to conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology. In line with current discussions in the social sciences and the humanities about decoloniality and Southern theories (Maldonado-Torres 2011; Milani & Lazar 2017; Phipps 2019; Pennycook & Makoni 2020; Heugh et al. 2021), we also welcome empirically robust studies that challenge Northern=Western epistemological biases in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and cognate fields and help us to re-orient our research questions, trouble established ways of seeing and ultimately contribute to getting us to ‘think otherwise’ (Foucault 1977; see also Pennycook 2012). A key issue for an interdisciplinary journal that bridges linguistics with other traditions within the social sciences and the humanities is the balance between the ‘linguistic’ and the ‘social’. In this respect, Hymes was quite vague in his foundational editorial: ‘individual contributions will range from predominantly linguistic to predominantly social in character, but it is hoped that there will be something of each in all’ (Hymes 1972:14). While we agree that it is difficult if not impossible to set strict guidelines on what the ratio should be between the two, we strongly encourage authors to simultaneously seek to answer big linguistic and social questions in their articles. For it is only through such a bifocal lens that the theoretical development of the study of language in social life can happen. If we look back at the articles published in the journal, it might be somewhat of an understatement to say that the study of language and social processes has

AbstractFollowing Blommaert (2005), this paper examines what he calls a ‘forgotten’ context within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Conversation Analysis (CA) – that of text trajectories. For Blommaert, a limitation of both CDA and CA is their focus on “the unique, one-time” instance of a given text and, by extension, the (limited) context associated with such an instance of text. Such a focus, according to Blommaert, ignores a salient feature of communication in contemporary societies – the fact that texts and discourses move around, are repeatedly recontextualized in new interpretive spaces, and in the process undergo significant transformations in meaning. The text trajectory investigated in this paper begins in a legal institution, more specifically, with a 2004 American rape trial, Maouloud Baby v. the State of Maryland. This legal case garnered much media attention and, as a result of such exposure, references to the case have appeared in both mainstream and social media outlets. Hence, as a ‘text’ that has displayed considerable movement across different contexts within the legal system and, subsequently, beyond the legal system to mainstream and popular forms of media, the Maouloud Baby trial constitutes fertile ground for the exploration of a text's trajectory. Indeed, in keeping with Blommaert's claims, I show how this trial's ‘text’ undergoes significant transformations in meaning as it is recontextualized in different kinds of interpretive spaces (both within the legal system and outside of it) and how these transformations in meaning reproduce larger patterns of gendered inequalities.

Cultural norms surrounding heterosexuality have been shown to influence legal and popular understandings of rape. In particular, Nicola Gavey has proposed that normative ideas about men’s aggressive, hard-to-control sexuality and women’s passive, acquiescing sexuality operate as a ‘cultural scaffold’ for rape – they provide a sense-making framework that allows rape to be understood as ‘just sex’. This paper, a case study of the 2013 Steubenville (Ohio, USA) rape trial, attempts to show how the social media evidence in the trial, especially the photographic evidence, was able to unsettle some of these discourses surrounding heterosex. Following work by Webb Keane and Crispin Thurlow on semiotic ideologies, I argue that the special status assigned to the digital images by the trial participants, relative to the linguistic representations, had significant consequences for the outcome of the trial. Crucially, it brought into stark relief the problematic nature of the defence’s claim that passivity and silence on the part of the complainant was tantamount to consent.

Research on language and gender encompasses a variety of methods and focuses on many aspects of linguistic structure. This review traces the historical development of the field, explicating some of the major debates, including the need to move from a reductive focus on difference and dichotomous views of gender to more performative notions of identity. It explains how the field has come to include language, gender, and sexuality and how queer theory and speaker agency have influenced research in the field.

This chapter reviews research on linguistic representations of sexual violence in the media and the legal system, illustrating how such representations can be informed by broader ideologies of gender and sexuality. In reviewing this literature, the chapter demonstrates, in particular, how discourses of normative heterosexuality help to give meaning to representations of sexual violence. The text then turns to a case study of the 2013 Steubenville (Ohio, U.S.A.) rape trial in order to show how the social media evidence in this case, specifically the photographic evidence, was able to unsettle these discourses in ways that the more typical “he said/she said” evidence of sexual assault trials may have had (more) difficulty doing.

Journal of SociolinguisticsVolume 20, Issue 2 p. 229-240 Review Article ‘Sociolinguistic’ dimensions of discourse analysis† Susan Ehrlich, Corresponding Author Susan Ehrlich York University, Canada Address correspondence to: Susan Ehrlich Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada sehrlich@yorku.caSearch for more papers by this author Susan Ehrlich, Corresponding Author Susan Ehrlich York University, Canada Address correspondence to: Susan Ehrlich Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada sehrlich@yorku.caSearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 June 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12180 † I thank Alice Freed, Allan Bell and Andy Gibson for very useful comments on an earlier version of this review article. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume20, Issue2April 2016Pages 229-240 RelatedInformation

Research examining representations of sexual violence against women and children has identified some recurring linguistic patterns. These include (1) the obscuring of perpetrator responsibility and the assigning of blame to “sexually available” women; and (2) depicting violence and assault in terms normally associated with consensual sex.