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There are many ways that we can express our identities. We can alter the way we look, the things we're interested in, the way we dress. But one thing we're pretty much stuck with is our voice. Sure the words coming from our mouths can be tailored to a situation or a desired persona, but the actual sound of our voice is difficult to change. For writer David Thorpe, the sound of his own voice always had him contemplating the same question: "Do I sound gay?" However, his wasn't simply an inquisitive statement; it was an expression of dissatisfaction that he had a gay voice, even though he was openly gay. Using his own struggle with his identity as the common thread, he consults linguists who illuminate the mechanical traits of gay speech and attribute this common characteristic to a strong feminine influence in the early lives of gay men.

The notion of a "gay lisp"-an offensive stereotype to many people-has been a confusing phenomenon for linguists. For decades, popular depictions of gay men have sometimes portrayed them pronouncing the letter "s" as more of a "th" sound-even though studies have failed to find "lispier" speech in gay men than in straight men. Now, however, preliminary data from a small study presented here last week at the biannual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) show that young boys who don't identify with their assigned gender use "th"-like pronunciation at slightly higher rates than their peers who do, although they seem to grow out of that tendency. The authors speculate that stereotypes of gay adults may be rooted in the speech of boys who go on to identify as gay.

A coded lexicon mostly spoken by gay men, Swardspeak draws from English and Tagalog, as well as Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Japanese. It's what might be referred to as an "anti-language," the lingua franca of an "anti-society"-in this case, the Philippines' gay subculture.

This short documentary explores the reasons that some men sound stereotypically gay, whether they are or not.

The evolution of the word "gay" that is now used as an insult.

Everyone needs a copy editor. Today, the Texas Republican Party is probably wishing it had one, too. Check out this sentence from the just-adopted 2016 party platform: As Texas Monthly rightly points out, the sentence actually says that homosexual behavior "has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans."

"For the past three years, Brendon Ayanbadejo, a backup linebacker and standout special-teams player for the [Baltimore] Ravens, has been advocating for same-sex marriage-writing about it, talking about it, appearing as one of the stars of a video campaign launched by backers of a measure to legalize it in Maryland. It's not his day job, but he's gotten enough attention for it that an anti-gay-marriage Maryland state legislator wrote to the owner of the Ravens and demanded that he shut Ayanbadejo up."

Polari (also spelt Palarie, Parlary, Palare and various other ways) is a language most commonly associated with gay men (and to a lesser extent lesbians), used in the first two-thirds of the 20th century in British cities that had large and mainly underground gay subcultures. Originally a secret language, passed down via word of mouth, it was a necessity in a world where homosexuality was stigmatized. According to author Paul Baker, "Polari could be seen as a form of anti-language, a term created by Michael Halliday in 1978 to describe how stigmatised subcultures develop languages that help them to reconstruct reality according to their own values."

This glossary offers definitions of LGBTQ terms.

Please watch.

The original Mr. Sulu employs rhetoric to reduce to absurdity a bill introduced in Tennessee that would forbid public school teachers from discussing homosexuality in classrooms.

Enthymeme highlighted...

Enthymeme highlighted...

270 Catholic bishops from around the globe, representing 13 different language groups, will be convening for a week-long meeting this month. Their goal: to come up with a single document of their findings to present to Pope Francis. The final version of that document will be written in the lingua franca of the Catholic Church, which is Italian. Italian has not been the official language for all synod business for very long. Pope Francis changed the official language of synod business from Latin to Italian a couple of years ago. In the past, when the bishops gathered for a synod, they produced documents in Latin. Unlike Latin, Italian is a living language of the real world, and arguably a more neutral linguistic choice than English. However, much controversy has arisen over both translation and ideological issues, and what true meaning and intent is being conveyed by document language and wording. Massimo Faggioli, a theology scholar, noted that under previous popes, the synods worked very differently. Bishops used to gather for the purpose of rubber-stamping Vatican policy. There was no real debate over the true meaning of the official text. "But now, these texts matter," Faggioli says. "[The bishops] know that if they vote on one text or another, that might change the direction of the Catholic church on some teachings, which was not something anybody was thinking about under Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict." Pope Francis has said he wants a more decentralized Catholic Church. And he has encouraged the bishops at the synod to speak boldly, even about subjects on which they disagree. Some of the most contentious issues at this synod are about whether or not to allow Communion to people who've been divorced and remarried, premarital cohabitation, and how the Church should talk about gays and lesbians.

This article addresses the controversy behind swearing around kids. There was a linguist who used to be a massive swearer, but he noticed that his linguistic tendencies and language style changed once he had kids. He decided to do a study with college students regarding their responses to swearing in lectures (since swearing around kids would be considered unethical). He addressed two types of profanity in this study; swearing and slurs. He found that slurs generated a negative reaction to the people at whom the slurs were about (Black people, gay people, etc.), but cussing didn't have an impact.

This article explains the controversy behind swearing around kids. A professor from UC San Diego explored this topic due to his own self interest. As a lover of profanity, he seems to have seen himself change his language while being around his own kids. In a experiment conducted on college students, he came across profanity as slurs and cussing. Slurs created a negative reaction to those that the slurs were about that consisted of gender preferences and skin color, but swearing didn't seem to show.