Homophobic slurs and public apologies: the discursive struggle over fag/maricón in public discourse

A handful of recent incidents hints at an ideological struggle over the use of the English word fag(got) and the Spanish word maricón in public discourse. This article examines the discursive and ideological struggle over the terms through the comparison of two cases in which Spanish/English bilingual Latinos in the U. S. use what might be considered homophobic slurs in public discourse in two distinct contexts — an informal, off-record sports-related press conference and a radio talk show political interview. The three main aims of the article are to examine and compare the content and context of the two public apologies, to examine the discursive and ideological struggle over the appropriateness of fag/maricón in public discourse through the evaluation of their use, and to contextualize the two case studies within the research on the construction of homophobia in discourse

Intersecting communities, interwoven identities: questioning boundaries, testing bridges, and forging a queer latinidad in the U.S. Southwest

This contribution to the special issue on ‘Languages in Contact, Cultures in Conflict: English and Spanish in the USA’ aims to investigate the concept of queer latinidad in Phoenix, Arizona in an attempt to understand how queer Latin@s in Phoenix see themselves in relation to Latino communities, queer communities, and a queer Latino community. While questioning received notions of ‘community,’ we look at how queer latinidad is constructed or rejected by queer Latinas/os in Phoenix at the dawn of the twenty-first century precisely as national attention has been focused on the state of Arizona, and how this negotiation might blur traditional notions of community and question boundaries between communities by highlighting the racial and ethnic diversity of the (presumed Anglo) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community, as well as the gender and sexual diversities of the (presumed heterosexual) Latino community

Accomplishing marginalization in bilingual interaction: relational work as a resource for the intersubjective construction of identity

This paper examines the use of impoliteness by Spanish–English bilingual pre-adolescents as a resource for accomplishing identities in spontaneous conversational interactions in an elementary school setting. The theoretical approach employed integrates the concept of relational work (Locher 2004; Locher and Watts 2005), which is based on Goffman\u27s (1967) notion of face and which privileges participants\u27 evaluation of language behavior within the norms of the community of practice, with recent work in sociocultural linguistics (Bucholtz and Hall 2004a, 2004b, 2005). This approach views identity as an interactional achievement reached through the use of what they call tactics of intersubjectivity. In this analysis, negatively marked, non-politic behavior is viewed as an interactional resource, which, along with other resources such as codeswitching, bilingual speakers may employ for the purposes of alignment and stance-taking. Specifically, the paper examines how speakers use strategies referred to as impolite (cf. Culpeper 1996) in the performance of a variety of tactics of intersubjectivity to manage local identities (e.g., leader/follower, insider/outsider) as well as membership in broad social categories (e.g., gender, ethnic identities) in interaction, how they engage in conflict talk and what they gain from it, and how codeswitching is (and is not) used in interactions. This analysis is situated within the wider social context of language politics and immigration politics in the individual school, the region, and the US

Electrostatics in the Stability and Misfolding of the Prion Protein: Salt Bridges, Self-Energy, and Solvation

Using a recently developed mesoscopic theory of protein dielectrics, we have calculated the salt bridge energies, total residue electrostatic potential energies, and transfer energies into a low dielectric amyloid-like phase for 12 species and mutants of the prion protein. Salt bridges and self energies play key roles in stabilizing secondary and tertiary structural elements of the prion protein. The total electrostatic potential energy of each residue was found to be invariably stabilizing. Residues frequently found to be mutated in familial prion disease were among those with the largest electrostatic energies. The large barrier to charged group desolvation imposes regional constraints on involvement of the prion protein in an amyloid aggregate, resulting in an electrostatic amyloid recruitment profile that favours regions of sequence between alpha helix 1 and beta strand 2, the middles of helices 2 and 3, and the region N-terminal to alpha helix 1. We found that the stabilization due to salt bridges is minimal among the proteins studied for disease-susceptible human mutants of prion protein

Tracing the magnetic field of IRDC G028.23-00.19 using NIR polarimetry

The importance of the magnetic (B) field in the formation of infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) and massive stars is an ongoing topic of investigation. We studied the plane-of-sky B field for one IRDC, G028.23-00.19, to understand the interaction between the field and the cloud. We used near-IR background starlight polarimetry to probe the B field and performed several observational tests to assess the field importance. The polarimetric data, taken with the Mimir instrument, consisted of H-band and K-band observations, totaling 17,160 stellar measurements. We traced the plane-of-sky B-field morphology with respect to the sky-projected cloud elongation. We also found the relationship between the estimated B-field strength and gas volume density, and we computed estimates of the normalized mass-to-magnetic flux ratio. The B-field orientation with respect to the cloud did not show a preferred alignment, but it did exhibit a large-scale pattern. The plane-of-sky B-field strengths ranged from 10 to 165 μG, and the B-field strength dependence on density followed a power law with an index consistent with 2/3. The mass-to-magnetic flux ratio also increased as a function of density. The relative orientations and relationship between the B field and density imply that the B field was not dynamically important in the formation of the IRDC. The increase in mass-to-flux ratio as a function of density, though, indicates a dynamically important B field. Therefore, it is unclear whether the B field influenced the formation of G28.23. However, it is likely that the presence of the IRDC changed the local B-field morphology.We thank J. Montgomery, T. Hogge, and I. Stephens for constructive discussions on the analysis. We are grateful to R. Crutcher for permission to include his Zeeman data. This research was conducted in part using the Mimir instrument, jointly developed at Boston University and Lowell Observatory and supported by NASA, NSF, and the W.M. Keck Foundation. This research made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), under contract with NASA. This publication made use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which was a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/Caltech, funded by NASA and NSF. This work is based in part on data obtained as part of the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. The ATLAS-GAL project is a collaboration between the Max-PlanckGesellschaft, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the Universidad de Chile. It includes projects E-181.C-0885, E-078.F-9040(A), M-079.C-9501(A), M-081.C-9501(A), and Chilean data. This publication makes use of molecular line data from the Boston University-FCRAO Galactic Ring Survey (GRS). The GRS is a joint project of Boston University and Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, funded by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-9800334, 0098562, 0100793, 0228993, and. 0507657. A.E.G. acknowledges support from FONDECYT 3150570. This work was supported under NSF grants AST 09-07790 and 14-12269 and NASA grant NNX15AE51G to Boston University. We thank the anonymous referee for valuable feedback, which improved the quality of this work. (NASA; NSF; W.M. Keck Foundation; E-181.C-0885 - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; E-078.F-9040(A) - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; M-079.C-9501(A) - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; M-081.C-9501(A) - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; E-181.C-0885 - European Southern Observatory (ESO); E-078.F-9040(A) - European Southern Observatory (ESO); M-079.C-9501(A) - European Southern Observatory (ESO); M-081.C-9501(A) - European Southern Observatory (ESO); E-181.C-0885 - Universidad de Chile; E-078.F-9040(A) - Universidad de Chile; M-079.C-9501(A) - Universidad de Chile; M-081.C-9501(A) - Universidad de Chile; AST-9800334 - National Science Foundation; 0098562 - National Science Foundation; 0100793 - National Science Foundation; 0228993 - National Science Foundation; 0507657 - National Science Foundation; 3150570 - FONDECYT; AST 09-07790 - NSF; 14-12269 - NSF; NNX15AE51G - NASA

Using sports infrastructure to deliver economic and social change: Lessons for London beyond 2012

Over the last two decades, there has been a new trend emerging within sport, which has seen a shift, from investment for the sake of sport, to investment in sport for good (Sport England, 2008). In the context of the latter approach, there has been an emergence of the use of sport to address regeneration objectives, largely stemming from the belief of government and other sporting and non-sporting organizations, that it can confer a wide range of economic and social benefits to individuals and communities beyond those of a purely physical sporting nature, and can contribute positively to the revitalization of declining urban areas (BURA, 2003). This commentary will examine regeneration legacy in the context of the London Olympic Games. In particular, it will focus on the use of sports stadia as a tool for delivering economic and social change, and by drawing upon previous examples, suggest lessons London can learn to enhance regeneration legacies beyond 2012