Name: Ellie Cassalia  
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Velda Khoo
Class: LING 2400: Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Semester: Fall 2023
LURA 2024

Over the summer, I drove my brother, his friends, and basketball teammates to their various hangouts and practices. Although he is only four years younger than I am, I did not understand a lot of the slang he used. It differed greatly from what my friends and I used. Now that he is a freshman in high school, he spends more time with his school friends and basketball team. For my final paper in the course “Language, Gender, and Sexuality,” I analyzed his conversations among these groups and tried to find out not only what he was saying, but why. Why does he speak the way he does and use specific slang words and phrases? I believe it to be a direct result of the groups he is surrounded by for the majority of the time. Many unique groups with different upbringings have formed his way of speech and created a distinctive diction I came to recognize in those car rides.

The three groups I highlighted in my paper were his school-based majority white basketball team, his inner city-based majority black basketball team, and students at his all-boys’ school more generally. I wrote about how my brother has picked up on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and adopted it in a new way while surrounded by his majority Caucasian teammates. I also go into his use of the word “gay” as transcending the typical reference to sexual identity, showing how the all-boys’ school students say “gay” to project themselves as more manly and straight. I delve farther into this notion using Cameron’s 1997 study of men’s homosexual interpretations and the implications of such on confidence and demeanor in order to explain my brother’s subconscious word choice.

Later in the essay, I expand on the idea of presenting oneself as masculine through language choice. Examples from conversations and text messages between my brother and friends support my claim and illuminate why teenage boys talk differently amongst each other compared to other gender and age groups. For example, in the excerpt below, we can see how my brother and his friends use short messages and slang, such as the address term “brooo,” to convey frustration while not seeming too interested, trying to come off as “cool.” Additionally, the use of “gay” stands in for the word “stupid” and negatively connotes the word, making a statement of gay being undesirable.

Figure 1: SMS Text message conversation between Jake and Jonas 

In other similar instances throughout my paper, the need to perform a masculine identity and one-up each other add to how their group setting dynamics work and how their mindsets mirror such beliefs. Through the theories of popular linguists taught in Dr. Hall’s lecture, my brother’s speech seemed to be a perfect example of the ways gender and sexuality influence everyday language.

Additionally, this project was extremely entertaining for myself and my family. On Thanksgiving break, I told them what I was writing my paper on, and we all went around the table giving examples of slang my brother has said that he had to explain to us. I then explained to them what we had been learning in lectures and recitations that showed why he speaks like that and why each of the rest of us do not. They all found it so fascinating and texted me throughout the semester to check in on not only the project, but new information I had learned in class. When I shared my final essay, my family read it together and shared it with others who know my brother well. This project and class were not only extremely interesting and intellectually stimulating, but brought amusement to my entire family that they still reference at dinners and other get togethers.

Title Image Credit

Borison, J. (2019). Boys talking in a school hallway. Your Teen Mag. Retrieved from https://yourteenmag.com/social-life/tips-teen-dating/what-is-consent.

References

1. Cameron, D. (1997). Performing gender identity: young men's talk and the construction of heterosexual identity. In Language and Masculinity, Edited by: Johnson, S and Meinhof, U. 47-64. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.