Homophobic grammar

Abstract

This study analyzes a historical example of how participants in military policy formation within the US Senate harnessed lexicogrammatical resources to legitimate queer exclusion from military service. Intended as a conceptual rather than definitive study, I analyze text taken from a US Senate hearing related to the implementation of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (repealed in 2011). The investigation focuses on how transitivity and phoricity are drawn on to produce homophobic formations. My findings indicate that the text exhibits a process of lexicogrammatical selection that enables homophobic formation to unfold at the discourse-semantic level. I then explore how lexicogrammatical and discourse-semantic choice-making flows from the social practice of which the text is part, which in turn reflects the ideological structures that configure the practice. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of my preliminary findings’ implications in terms of analyzing homophobic formation.