Applying queer theory to language, gender, and sexuality research in schools 1

This chapter reviews a range of studies that conceptualise relationships between language, gender, and sexuality through the lens of queer theory as a form of critical theory. Queer theory is largely seen as an interdisciplinary theoretical approach that utilises methods from a range of other paradigms in order to problematise and destabilise taken-for-granted, socially sanctioned notions of gender and sexuality. In applied linguistics, queer theory has mainly been used to uncover how binary conceptualisations of gender and heteronormativity are discursively constructed, and how culturally recognised categories of gender and sexuality are produced through language. This chapter outlines work which has been influential in the development of queer linguistics (the application of queer theory to applied linguistics) as a theoretical and methodological approach (e.g. Leap 2013, 2015; Motschenbacher 2010) and considers research which has applied queer theory to the study of language, gender, and sexuality (e.g. Gray 2015; Milani 2015; Sauntson 2012).