Conflicting discourses of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’

New statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance for schools in England was published in 2019. One of the major revisions since the preceding version has been the new inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. Some groups in the UK have recently protested against this inclusion of positive teaching about LGBTQ+ identities and relationships, suggesting that, although there is overwhelming support for the new guidance, there are still groups in society who are opposed to democratic teaching about this dimension of equality. Focusing on publicly-available video recordings of the protests, this article firstly critically analyses the key discursive strategies deployed by the anti-LGBTQ+ protest groups to produce discrimination and denial. I then compare the language used by the protest groups against the language used by other UK groups who support and continue to campaign for LGBTQ+ inclusion in RSE. Positive discourse analysis, as a progressive dimension of critical discourse analysis, is used to examine how the language used by these groups functions to resist the discriminatory discourse used by the anti-LGBTQ+ groups analysed in the first part of the article. Analysis of the discourse used by the two sets of groups reveals conflicting discourses around what is perceived to constitute ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ in the context of LGBTQ+ inclusion and schools, suggesting that these are fragile concepts in the current British political climate

Introduction: Schools as queer transformative spaces

This chapter introduces the key themes and questions to be addressed throughout the book. It introduces salient aspects of the social, political, historical and economic context relating to the research presented in the chapters appearing in the volume. The chapter presents the rationale for producing the book. The introduction then outlines the theoretical underpinnings of chapters in the volume which are all informed by queer theory and/or critical feminist theories, with additional insights from psychological, sociological and linguistic perspectives. Specific attention is paid to the utilisation of feminist and queer theories in conceptualisations of space and place in which it is argued that space has the potential to be ‘queered’ through the performative enactment of non-heteronormative identities, desires and practices. We develop this argument by suggesting that schools, as both physical and ideological ‘spaces’, can be queered in ways which open up a range of possibilities for enacting gender and sexual identities, the result of which is a positively transformative social and learning experience for all students. The chapter explains how each of the subsequent chapters will exemplify such process through presenting empirical research which is informed by these theories of queer transformative space

Discourse and identity in a corpus of lesbian erotica

This article uses corpus linguistic methodologies to explore representations of lesbian desires and identities in a corpus of lesbian erotica from the 1980s and 1990s. We provide a critical examination of the ways in which “lesbian gender,” power, and desire are represented, (re-)produced, and enacted, often in ways that challenge hegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality. By examining word frequencies and collocations, we critically analyze some of the themes, processes, and patterns of representation in the texts. Although rooted in linguistics, we hope this article provides an accessible, interdisciplinary, and timely contribution toward developing understandings of discursive practices surrounding gender and sexuality

Conflicting discourses of 'democracy' and 'equality': A discourse analysis of the language of pro- and anti-LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Relationships and Sex Education guidance for schools in England

New statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance for schools in England was published in 2019. The RSE guidance was revised following heavy criticism, as well as a need for RSE to incorporate relevant legal changes in the UK such as the Same-Sex Marriage Act (2013) and the Equality Act (2010). One of the major revisions since the preceding version has been the new inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. Some groups in the UK have recently mobilised against this inclusion of positive teaching about LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. Groups have, for example, held public protests outside schools in Birmingham. The protests suggest that although there is overwhelming support for the new guidance, there are still groups in society who are opposed to democratic teaching about this dimension of equality. This paper firstly analyses the key discursive strategies deployed by the anti-LGBTQ+ protest groups to distort progressive views of gender and sexuality within the UK school context. I conduct a discourse analysis of talk in some of the publicly-available video recordings of the protests, as well as associated press reporting of the protests. The discursive practices are analysed using Van Dijk’s (1992) and Marlow’s (2015) critical discourse analysis frameworks for analysing discriminatory discourse and denial strategies. I then compare the language used by the protest groups against the language used by other UK groups who support and continue to campaign for LGBTQ+ inclusion in RSE. The groups focused on are Schools Out (an education charity focused on making schools safe for LGBT communities) and Imaan LGBTQ (the UK’s leading LGBTQ charity). Positive discourse analysis (Bartlett, 2012; Hughes, 2018; Martin, 2004), as a progressive dimension of critical discourse analysis, is used to examine how the language used by these groups functions to resist the discriminatory discourse used by the anti-LGBTQ+ groups analysed in the first part of the paper. Analysis of the discourse used by the two sets of groups reveals conflicting discourses around what is perceived to constitute ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ in the context of LGBTQ+ inclusion and schools, suggesting that these are fragile concepts in the current British political climate

Sexual diversity and illocutionary silencing in the English National Curriculum

Schools are sites in which heterosexuality is constructed as normal and sexualities which transgress this norm are silenced, often tacitly rather than actively. In this study, linguistic analysis is used to argue that, in school environments, homophobia and heterosexism are discursively realised as much through what is not iterated as through what is explicitly stated or enacted. Elements of critical discourse analysis and speech act theory are used to examine how the language used in the English curriculum programme of study documents constructs certain ideologies about sexuality, and how this may be linked to the cultures of heterosexism and homophobia which, according to recent research, pervade UK schools. Findings reveal that there are marked absences around sexuality in the English curriculum encoded in the experiential values of its vocabulary. These silences are identifiable in classification schemes, over-lexicalisation of ideologically contested words and the semantic profiles created by the collocation patterns surrounding particular words. Drawing on speech act theory, I argue that the cumulative effect of these features is an ‘illocutionary silencing’ around sexual diversity in the English curriculum, which, in turn, effects a discourse of heterosexism