UC Davis

This dissertation investigates how feminist and LGBTQ undergraduate students involved in activism on UC Davis use language to construct their identities, focusing on two gender and sexuality-based resource centers (the women’s center and LGBTQ center). It seeks to address two research questions. First, how do cisgender, trans, and nonbinary students draw on linguistic resources to construct their dynamic gender identities? Second, in what ways do policies and practices in the two centers aid them in their identity formation (thus either reproducing or challenging larger ideologies regarding language and gender)?The dissertation is situated within sociolinguistics, with theoretical and methodological influences from linguistic anthropology and feminist studies. It seeks to describe and analyze a snapshot of a constantly changing linguistic and ideological landscape regarding gender and sexuality. These shifts in ideologies have been enacted, produced, and reproduced through linguistic strategies and policies. Online and real-life progressive feminist and LGBTQ communities have expounded on the importance of language in anti-discrimination and pro-social justice efforts. The analysis also compares larger media discourses around feminist language with how language is used in a small, localized context. On-campus resource centers are ideal environments to study these phenomena. University students, especially those at prestigious institutions, are often more radical in their political beliefs, and close contact to like-minded individuals on campus allow them to organize and build solidarity. On-campus centers like the women’s center and LGBTQ center provide physical spaces for students to gather, learn, and organize. This creates a community within the larger university community specifically dedicated to issues of equity and social justice, including feminism. I collected written materials from both centers, including pamphlets in their physical space and posts on their websites and social media accounts. I also interviewed students and staff members affiliated with each center. I used discourse and prosodic (intonation) analysis to explore underlying ideologies and speakers’ attitudes toward these ideologies and practices. Results indicate that knowledge of language norms acts as social capital within activist spaces on campus. What is considered acceptable language changes quickly, and students who are able to master the terminology are respected by other students. They also police any transgressors of these norms within interactions in the community. These seasoned community members, along with staff members, socialize new students into the informal policies about language within the centers’ physical and online spaces. Students also report learning about new terms and how to use them on social media like TikTok and Instagram. A major ideology promoted by both centers in their written materials and echoed by student participants is the importance of language for self-identification. By selecting identity labels and third-person pronouns, members to reify their inclusion within the LGBTQ community and express how they fit within it. Part of this ideology mandates that other members should affirm each other’s linguistic choices to be inclusive. This dissertation has implications for the field of sociolinguistics as well as feminist and LGBTQ activist communities. Instead of prescribing how activists should use language, the dissertation investigates how language is actually used. It explores how widespread ideologies about language, gender, and sexuality are upheld, challenged, and negotiated at a local level.