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12 results in Cambridge Elements

Gender and Uptalk in Hong Kong English

Gender and Uptalk in Hong Kong English
  • Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales, Chan Pui Yu Ivy, Zhang Xiaohan Harry, Ng Chui Yin Judy, Chung Yan Ching Karina
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026
  • This Element interrogates the complex role of gender in shaping the sociolinguistic variable of UPTALK within Hong Kong English, highlighting its interaction with other sociodemographic factors. Foregrounding gender as a central factor, the Element employs a robust array of methodologies to dissect how gender interacts with social factors, identities, and social types across a sample of sixteen participants. Findings unveil new perspectives on gender-dependent meanings of UPTALK, demonstrating that while gendered stylistic accommodation plays a notable role, UPTALK is not merely a gender marker. Instead, it embodies complex social meanings shaped by a broad spectrum of individual, cognitive (awareness), and contextual factors. By integrating both production and perception/attitudinal data from a relatively unexplored context, the Element provides a holistic, nuanced understanding of how UPTALK can function as a multifunctional sociolinguistic resource, offering insights into the theorization of language variation and social meaning, with particular focus on the role of gender.
Language, Gender and Biopolitics

Language, Gender and Biopolitics
  • Meaning-Making and Intersex Variations in Healthcare
  • Brian W. King
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • This Element examines language, power and intersex variations within clinician accounts in Hong Kong, examining how they communicate about intersex traits to patients and their families. Employing interactional sociolinguistics, the research analyses clinician interviews as dynamic social interactions, focusing on how communicative stances are negotiated and social practices are enacted. The Element probes the influence of biopower on clinicians' stances (encompassing gender, sexual difference, racialization and ableism) and explores the possibilities of emancipation from these biopolitical constraints. Findings highlight the tension between medical structuring forces and the formation of intersex subjects and bodies, impacting their autonomy and livability. Gender is relevant as both a power system and a lived reality, critical for understanding the bioregulation of innate sex characteristics and advancing broader implications for gender and language studies and healthcare communication. This research challenges gender-sceptical discourses and highlights the transformative potential of gender frameworks in medical and social contexts.
Linguistic Representations of Women in Old English Prose

Linguistic Representations of Women in Old English Prose
  • A Corpus-Based Phraseological Study
  • Anna Cichosz, Tomasz Dobrogoszcz
  • Published online:
    08 January 2026
    Print publication:
    05 February 2026
    • Element
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      • Open access
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  • This Element traces the origins and earliest manifestations of gender bias in the English language. The analysis is based on a corpus of Old English prose texts, written between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. The results are interpreted in the historical, cultural and literary context of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Europe. The investigation shows a significant difference in the way women and men are presented in Old English texts, with the former clearly associated with family life, portrayed in the context of their physical appearance, marriage and childbearing, rarely involved in meaningful activities and presented as possessions of their male relatives. Situating the linguistic representations of women in the context of Christianity, the Element demonstrates that late Old English can be seen as a vehicle of language bias that will establish male domination for centuries to come. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Discourse and Queer Sinophone Male Identities

Discourse and Queer Sinophone Male Identities
  • A Western Immigrant Perspective
  • Phil Freestone
  • Published online:
    12 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025
  • This Element analyses the sociolinguistic navigation of cultural and ideological influence among queer male-identified individuals in Chengdu and Taipei. By analysing how queer and ethnically Chinese-identified individuals navigate ideological influences, it investigates some of the complexities of culture and identity and their dependence on semiotics and situated communication. Thus, the social affordances and constraints relevant to specific individuals in these contexts are described not only in terms of influences like 'Chinese culture' or 'Western ideology', but also in terms of the ongoing communicative processes through which they orient themselves to diverse structural influences. As such, this Element engages with the diversity typically subsumed into common identity categories. In turn, through its qualified deconstructionist approach to identity, it sheds novel light on the ideological complexity that tends to underlie queer individuals' performance of 'who they are', in Sinophone contexts and elsewhere.
Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss

Language, Gender and Pregnancy Loss
  • Beth Malory
  • Published online:
    21 October 2025
    Print publication:
    13 November 2025
    • Element
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      • Open access
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  • This Element explores the gendered dimensions of the ways language used to describe, define, and diagnose pregnancy loss impacts experiences of receiving and delivering healthcare in a UK context. It situates experiences of pregnancy loss language against the backdrop of gender role expectations, ideological tensions around reproductive choice, and medical misogyny; asking how language both reflects and influences contemporary gender norms and understandings of maternal responsibility. To do this, the Element analyses 10 focus group transcripts from metalinguistic discussions with 42 lived experience and healthcare professional participants, and 202 written metalinguistic contributions from the same cohorts. It demonstrates the gendered social and symbolic meanings of diagnostic terminology such as miscarriage, incompetent cervix, and termination or abortion in the context of a wanted pregnancy, as well as clinical discourses, on the experience of pregnancy loss and subsequent recovery and wellbeing. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Pride in Asia

Pride in Asia
  • Negotiating Ideologies, Localness, and Alternative Futures
  • Benedict J. L. Rowlett, Pavadee Saisuwan, Christian Go, Li-Chi Chen, Mie Hiramoto
  • Published online:
    17 January 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • This Element provides a transregional overview of Pride in Asia, exploring the multifaceted nature of Pride in contemporary LGBTQIA+ events in Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. This collaborative research that combines individual studies draws on linguistic landscapes as an analytical and methodological approach. Each section examines the different manifestations of Pride as a discourse and the affordances and limitations of this discourse in facilitating the social, political, and cultural projects of LGBTQIA+ people in Asia, illustrating both commonalities and specificities in Asian Pride movements. Analyzing a variety of materials such as protest signs, t-shirts, and media reports, each section illustrates how modes of semiosis, through practice, intersect notions of gender and sexuality with broader social and political formations. The authors thus emphasize the need to view Pride not as a uniform global phenomenon but as a dynamic, locally shaped expression of LGBTQIA+ solidarity.
Queering Language Revitalisation

Queering Language Revitalisation
  • Navigating Identity and Inclusion among Queer Speakers of Minority Languages
  • John Walsh, Michael Hornsby, Eva J. Daussà, Renée Pera-Ros, Samuel Parker, Jonathan Morris, Holly R. Cashman
  • Published online:
    08 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element aims to deepen our understanding of how the fields of multilingualism, second language acquisition and minority language revitalisation have largely overlooked the question of queer sexual identities among speakers of the languages under study. Based on case studies of four languages experiencing differing degrees of minoritisation – Irish, Breton, Catalan and Welsh – it investigates how queer people navigate belonging within the binary of speakers/non-speakers of minoritised languages while also maintaining their queer identities. Furthermore, it analyses how minoritised languages are dealing linguistically with the growing need for 'gender-fair' or 'gender-neutral' language. The marginalisation of queer subjects in these strands of linguistics can be traced to the historical dominance of the Fishmanian model of 'Reversing Language Shift' (RLS), which assumed the importance of the deeply heteronormative model of 'intergenerational transmission' of language as fundamental to language revitalisation contexts.
Feminism, Corpus-assisted Research and Language Inclusivity

Feminism, Corpus-assisted Research and Language Inclusivity
  • Federica Formato
  • Published online:
    15 November 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • This Element presents an investigation into the use of the gender inclusive strategy schwa in a corpus of tweets; the schwa is employed in Italian to overcome grammatical (feminine and masculine) morphological inflections, having at its core linguistic and social binarism. The investigation is set in a country where LGBTQIA communities still face institutional discrimination, yet it is contextualised in the growing work on inclusivity discussed in languages and contexts worldwide. The corpus is examined quantitatively and qualitatively, as well as read through a triangulation of two frameworks: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings, obtained from corpus-assisted research and digital ethnography, show that the new linguistic strategy is used creatively, functionally, and not exclusively as a self-representation tool but is also a viable and powerful replacement for generic sexist language.
LGBTQ+ and Feminist Digital Activism

LGBTQ+ and Feminist Digital Activism
  • A Linguistic Perspective
  • Angela Zottola
  • Published online:
    08 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024
  • This Element focuses on the linguistic and discursive practices employed by digital citizens to promote their causes on social media, that is to engage in digital activism, drawing attention to the growing importance of this phenomenon in relation to gender identity and sexuality issues. I propose the label LGBTQ+ Digital Activism to join the already existing one Feminist Digital Activism and argue that, while these have been areas of interest from sociology and communication specialists, digital activism is still to be embraced as a field of research by applied linguists. I point out to a number of linguistic and discursive features that are popular among digital activists and support this through the analysis of the use of the hashtag #wontbeerased combining Social Media Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. I suggest that further research is needed to explore how language is used to propagate and popularize emancipatory discourses online.
Legal Categorization of 'Transgender'

Legal Categorization of 'Transgender'
  • An Analysis of Statutory Interpretation of 'Sex', 'Man', and 'Woman' in Transgender Jurisprudence
  • Kimberly Tao
  • Published online:
    23 February 2024
    Print publication:
    21 March 2024
  • This Element analyzes the foundational frame of legal reasoning when courts interpret the 'plain language' and 'ordinary meaning' of terms such as 'sex', 'man' and 'woman'. There is a rich and complicated line of cases on how to define these terms and how to legally categorize transgender people. When dealing with different legal issues, judges need to give a clear 'yes' or 'no', determinate answer to a legal question. Marginal categorizations could be problematic even for experts. It analyses nine decisions that relate to transgender people's workplace protection under Title VII in United States and the right to marry in United Kingdom and Hong Kong. It brings in a historical discussion of the development of interpretative practices of law and legal categorization of transgender individuals across past decades, drawing on the intricate relationship between time and statutory interpretation.
Queering Sexual Health Translation Pedagogy

Queering Sexual Health Translation Pedagogy
  • Piero Toto
  • Published online:
    30 November 2023
    Print publication:
    18 January 2024
  • Sexual health campaigns to tackle the rise in sexually transmitted infections in England are at the core of sexual health charities' and grassroots organizations' work. Some of them collaborated with the author's translation students to produce inclusive translations of their sexual health content (website and multimedia content). The role of translation and localization within multicultural contexts can be seen as 'social activism' promoting sexual health and community engagement, with a view to providing wider healthcare access and information using inclusive language. This Element presents students' approaches to sexual health translation, using language as a vessel for change and striking a balance between clients' expectations, translation industry best practices, and socio-educational needs. The data analysis of the students' experiences will make the case for wider embedding of queer pedagogy approaches into the translation curriculum.
The Language of Gender-Based Separatism

The Language of Gender-Based Separatism
  • A Comparative Analysis
  • Veronika Koller, Alexandra Krendel, Jessica Aiston
  • Published online:
    10 July 2023
    Print publication:
    03 August 2023
  • This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), reflect the changing and complex (anti-)feminist ideologies of their time. The authors outline the historical and political background of those discourses and how they are influencing contemporary gender relations. The materials analysed comprise ten manifestos, which are examined with a combination of data-led discourse analysis and theory-led argumentation analysis. The manifestos are similar in that both sets of authors construct homogenous in-groups and out-groups as well as dichotomies between them. There are some differences though in how this is linguistically realised and who is classified as an out-group. Both groups cast social actors in particular roles and establish ethical norms, but strategic planning and utopias are more prominent among lesbian separatists. Freedom, advantage and authority are central in each group's argumentation, but lesbian separatists also stress humanitarianism while MGTOW focus on financial matters.