ABSTRACT
In a “two-cultures” model of cross-sex talk, where does lesbian butch/femme dialogue fit? Because both parties are women, one might expect their conversation to reflect the findings for same-sex conversation. Yet the dichotomous nature of the butch/femme dyad suggests that butch discourse will share many of the features that recent linguistic research shows to be typical of men, and that femme discourse will be similar to feminine linguistic behavior. Do butch lesbians talk like men and femmes like women, or is butch-femme talk an autonomous realm independent of heterosexual models? How do lesbians think they talk? In this chapter I will be concerned not with the linguistic production of real lesbians but with fictional representations of butch/femme speech. What are the models for butch fictional dialogue, and is the femme simply the butch’s conversational opposite? Literary texts present strong clues to popular perceptions, which are often very different from linguistic realities.
