ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the robust theoretical framework undergirding this book, while also offering early insight into its critical, queer-inflected perspective on the discursive production of LGBTQ equality under neoliberal capitalism. Orienting the book around the concept of global queer mobilities, this chapter introduces existing literature regarding the sociolinguistics of globalization, queer theory/linguistics and the mediatization of social life, in order to carve out a unique, methodologically innovative space for the book to navigate. Through the framework introduced here, using the example of the #LoveTravels campaign by Marriott hotels, I outline not only the complex, contradictory articulations of sexual freedom, cosmopolitanism and material privilege described in this book, but also my own entanglement with them. This chapter thus provides a preview of this book’s queer, autoethnographic style, demonstrating how these fit within its overall analytical framework, referred to as a ‘critical discourse ethnography’. Finally, this chapter offers a discussion of the concepts of scale, chronotope and genealogy; illustrating the dimensions and relational procedures which ‘enworld’ LGBTQ people in discourse, as well as the spatiotemporal consequences of these scalar processes, and my book’s critical challenge to them.
