Contact
Biography
BA, MA, PhD (Sheffield); PGCHE (Edge Hill); FHEA
I work in the area of language, gender and sexuality (or queer linguistics) within the broader field of sociolinguistics. My research makes use of critical discourse analysis and sociocultural linguistics alongside feminist and queer theory. In most of my published research, I've used linguistic ethnography to explore identity construction in communities of practice, including an older lesbian group and LGBTQ+ youth groups.
Most recently, I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork with young LGBTQ+ people in four socioeconomically and culturally variable locations in the UK. I am currently examining the strategies used by my participants to negotiate norms and ideologies of gender and sexuality in their everyday interaction. Specifically, the project is focused on intersectionality to consider how factors such as the young people's socioeconomic class, ethnicity, location, and support networks impact on their experiences as LGBTQ+ people and their subsequent identity constructions. During 2023/24, I will be undertaking a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to develop this into a monograph.
As part of my work with LGBTQ+ youth, and in collaboration with them, I have developed an LGBT+ Youth Manifesto (a social media campaign sharing their vision of a more inclusive society) and a briefing paper for policy-makers. The briefing paper makes a series of recommendations for best practice regarding the support of young LGBTQ+ people; watch this short video summarising these recommendations or read the policy brief here.
Published research that I have produced in collaboration with colleagues includes critical discourse analysis of how same-sex marriage and HIV prevention are represented in the mainstream media, of Twitter discourse around the hashtag #NotAllMen, and into the naming choices of people who get married. I've also analysed identity construction in transgender YouTube video diaries, as well as narratives produced by patients at a transgender health clinic.
Website: queerlinglang.wordpress.com/
ResearchGate: researchgate.net/profile/Lucy-Jones-55
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8947-9577
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lucyjonesphd/
Expertise Summary
I am currently President-Elect of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA), having previously served on the committee from 2015-2021. I was elected to the BAAL Special Interest Group on Language, Gender and Sexuality board in 2013 and served on the committee until 2021. I am on the Organising Committee for the annual conference on Language and Sexuality (Lavender Languages and Linguistics), and hosted this at Nottingham in April 2017. I am also a member of the Linguistic Ethnography Forum. I was an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Language and Sexuality from 2013-18, and the journal's Editor for Book Reviews from 2018-2023. I served on the Editorial Board for the journal Gender and Language between 2017-2020, and have been a member of the Advisory Board for the Journal of Language and Discrimination since 2016. I also chair the North and Midlands Language, Gender and Sexuality Reading Group. I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2012.
Teaching Summary
Undergraduate modules
Language in Society
Language and Feminism
Studying Language
Postgraduate modules
Language, Gender and Sexuality
Selected Publications
I welcome research proposals from prospective postgraduate students with an interest in the relationships between language and identity, both in terms of interaction and representation, and particularly in relation to gender and/or sexuality; discourse analysis, including ethnographic approaches and those making use of critical discourse analysis; feminist and queer linguistics; media discourse.
Previous and current PhD students who I've supervised have worked on projects including: the representation of queer women in an online corpus; cross-cultural multi-modal critical discourse analysis of advertisements in British and Arabic women's magazines; discourses of teenage abortion; immigration discourse in the UK Government; identity and language in an online asexuality forum; taboo language and homophobia; discourse and identity in the House of Lords.