ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes a more systematic connection between Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and language and sexuality studies. Normativity is a key concept in language and sexuality studies and has proven a valuable tool for the description of sexuality discourses across cultures. The power struggle associated with the competition of dominant and marginalised discourses surfaces in the perception of sexual practices, desires and identities as non-normative and affects sexuality-related communication. Theoretical approaches to norms often distinguish descriptive from prescriptive norms. The regularities associated with descriptive norms may turn into prescriptive norms and are then taken as yardsticks for acceptable behaviour and enforced by society through a sanctioning of violations. CDS constitutes a useful approach for language and sexuality studies that can complement the ethnographic approaches that have predominated in this field. It does not locate sexuality-related linguistic performances at the level of local co-construction alone but also views such performances in relation to wider social discourses.
