IAAK Queer Week 2025

In the session, we will explore online identity construction. In particular, we will investigate how self-identified LGBTQIA+ beauty vloggers index their gender and influencer identities on YouTube. For the first half, we will engage with the concept of identity through a sociolinguistic lens and the participation framework on YouTube. We will familiarize ourselves with Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004, 2005) approach to identity, YouTube’s platform logic and the ambivalent job of influencers in the beauty genre. The second half of the session will involve a more hands-on discussion. Using data of my corpus, we will adopt multimodal discourse analysis to trace various semiotic resources queer influencers draw on and analyse their relevance for authentication processes (Jones 2011).

Bionote: I am currently a PhD Candidate and scholarship holder at the University of Greifswald, looking at online identity construction on YouTube. For my PhD project I explore self-identified LGBTQIA+ influencers and how their identity construction informs the multimodal practice of beauty vlogging.

What is a lesbian? As mundane as this question might seem, it has been subject to considerable scholarly (Rich, 1980; Hark, 1989; McConnell-Ginet, 2011; Sullivan, 2022) and community-internal debate (Martin, 2016; Lavietes, 2023; Rose & Street, 2023). In my fieldwork on lesbian-queer identity construction in Berlin, I have encountered a wide range of labels denoting queer ‘non-men’, most prominently dyke, sapphic, and (queer) FLINTA. On the basis of the identity labels used in online and offline invitation practices for ‘lesbian’ events in Berlin, I will discuss the use of English terminology for queer identities in  German-speaking contexts in general, and the semantic instability of lesbisch/lesbian in particular.

Bionote: Vroni Zieglmeier (they/them) is a doctoral candidate and research associate at the chair of English linguistics in Heidelberg. They research the interaction of identity, the voice, and the body in a queer-lesbian choir in Berlin.

This seminar will discuss the following text:

• Arnold, J.E., Mayo, H.C. & Dong, L. (2021). My pronouns are they/them: Talking about pronouns changes how pronouns are understood. Psychon Bull Rev 28, 1688–1697. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01905-0³ (Open Access) 

There's also an optional reading (Arnold et al. 2020) which is a companion paper to their findings:

• Arnold, J. E., Mayo, H., & Dong, L. (2020). Individual differences (or the lack of them) in comprehension of singular they. UNC Language Processing Lab Technical Report #3. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10323213⁴.

Gender and diversity are highly relevant and controversial topics discussed in a wide range of discipilines at the University of Bonn.

The research colloquium aims to connect scholars and scientists working on these topics and offer the opportunity to present and discuss their own projects in an transdisciplinary environment.

At each session, the speaker will present a current research project for approximately 30 minutes. Afterwards, there will be time for questions and discussion, including beyond the presented project. This weeks project is by Caroline Würtz from Engagement Global (Förderprogramm für Kommunale Klimaschutz- und Klimaanpassungsprojekte, FKKP).

Drag is an art form that celebrates queer expression and occasionally brings it to the stage.

The Bonn drag artists Thisbe Leaf and Roger Moon offer a peek behind the curtain and an insight into drag performance. There will also be a short excursion into the world of drag families and community. We finish with an Q&A.

This seminar will discuss the following text:

Robinson, J. (2012). A gay paper: Why should sociolinguistics bother with semantics?, English Today, 28(4), 38-54.

You can find the text in the eCampus folder. 

Abseits der monogamen Norm erkundet die Polyamorie vielfältige Lebens- und Liebeskonzepte.

Der Abend bietet ein vielseitiges Programm: Verlegerin Natacha Jill Colin stellt das Buch Polysecure vor, Paula Höll präsentiert poetische Texte. Anschließend zeigen wir Kurzfilme aus der Kooperation mit dem Medienprojekt Wuppertal e.V., gefolgt von einem Publikumsgespräch.

Die Filme beleuchten polyamore Beziehungen aus zwölf Perspektiven und regen zur Reflexion über alternative Liebes- und Lebensmodelle an.

The following materials will be discussed:

• Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson, Kapeamahu (2020): https://www.pbshawaii.org/the-healer-stones-of-kapaemahu/⁶ (Open Access)
• Dean Hamer and Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, “Kapaemahu: Toward Story Sovereignty of a Hawaiian Tradition of Healing and Gender Diversity” (2022) (eCampus)
• Franni Choi, Queer Check-Ins (2019): https://apa.si.edu/queer-check-ins/⁷ (Open Access)

When Legally Blonde came to theaters in the summer of 2001, few could have predicted the staying power the film would ultimately end up having in popular culture; Though positively received by critics, the movie about blonde, pink-obsessed Elle’s journey from L.A. to Harvard seemed destined remain a “featherweight comedy” that “balanced between silliness and charm”1. Almost two and a half decades later, that “silliness and charm” has inspired a sequel, an upcoming third installment, a Barbie doll and an acclaimed Broadway rendition. Reese Witherspoon, the star of the movie, has said “At least once a week I have a woman come up to me and say, ‘I went to law school because of Legally Blonde.’”2 What is it about this movie that continues to capture our imagination and interest more than two decades after its release? This talk will first outline the basic principles of critical discourse analysis before turning attention to recent research in sociocognitive discourse analysis, epistemic mental model construction and the neuropsychological perspective on context-dependent realizations. A discussion of these concepts as they relate to gendered identity construction in entertainment-media (and the narrow spectrum allocated to gendered identity construction in the early 2000s) will follow. Particular attention will be paid to the unique way Legally Blonde showcases and “plays” with our mental model constructions of femininity, friendship, ambition, intelligence and elitism, how this impacts emotional-response in the audience, and how this process, in turn, creates new mental models of collective identity construction.

Bionote: Elizabeth is a PhD candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and assistant at the Chair of English Linguistics currently beginning her second year of doctoral research under Professor Dr. Stephanie Hackert. Her doctoral dissertation analyzes changes in discourse and narrative tone in popular media representations of witches during the lifespan of Roe v. Wade, as well as the religious underpinnings of mental model constructions of witches in the United States dating back to The Salem Witch Trials. Her current research interests revolve around using sociocognitive discourse analysis to examine the role entertainment media plays in gendered identity construction in Western society.

This seminar will discuss the following text:

McKinnon, S. (2017). “Building a thick skin for each other” - The use of ‘reading’ as an interactional practice of mock impoliteness in drag queen backstage talk. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 6(1), 90-127. 

You can find the text in the eCampus folder. 

We will... 

• Discuss a text dealing with the translation of non-binary pronouns of characters on English-language TV shows to Polish, a language without similar resources for expressing non-binary identities
• Discuss ways to translate these identities faithfully to German
• Look at how pronouns are used in English articles on non-binary/gender nonconforming celebrities compared to other languages with less widely accepted non-binary pronouns
• This seminar will discuss the following text (OpenAccess): Misiek, S. (2020). Misgendered in Translation?: Genderqueerness in Polish Translations of English-language Television Series. Anglica, 29(2), 165-185. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7311/0860-5734.29.2.09⁹

We will ... 

• Discuss a text dealing with how two transgender YouTubers challenge dominant trans- and heteronormative discourses by focusing on the different linguistic strategies employed
• Examine further related data to explore the different ways these strategies can be used to subvert dominant discourses
• This seminar will discuss the following text (OpenAccess): Bruns, H. (2023). “That’s all it takes to be trans”: Counter-strategies to hetero- and transnormative discourse on YouTube. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 283, 53-76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2023-0002¹⁰ 

The Queer Lab wishes to bring together students and researchers of the University of Bonn who work on queer topics from different perspectives. Creating an informal interdisciplinary research exchange will help explore data from different angles to uncover features of analysis previously hidden behind disciplinary knowledge.

In this week’s Lab, we will kick off the collaborations by presenting first insights of the “Queer Identities Project” (QuIP) on queer coming out videos on YouTube by Svenja Kranich & Hanna Bruns. We will start off the exchange by presenting our general research idea and some first results of our explorative study before we look at some of our data together. We are hoping for a fruitful joint discussion about interesting points of analysis and challenges.

We hope to see many of you there with snacks and coffee!

If you are interested, you can find transcripts of the data that we will discuss on eCampus.