LAVENDER LANGUAGES INSTITUTE: Dr. William Leap, “What lies beyond the lavender lexicon?”, 4 November  2022, 7:00 PM

For the launch of the fall/winter program we are happy  to welcome Dr. William Leap, founder of the Lavender Languages Institute at Florida Atlantic University. In his lecture, Leap invites us to look at LGBTQI +  language not only as a word-list, a lexicon, but a complex system of spoken and written language structures, written texts, music, dance, visual and applied arts, story-telling, and all kinds of emotional or affective messages that are almost, but never really put into tangible forms. Taking examples from his studies of “gay languages” in the urban US, from American Indian reservations, in South Africa Black townships, and elsewhere, William Leap aims to show how the speaker can convert language knowledge into social action. Additionally, some tools will be offered for those interested in their own studies of what lies “beyond the Lavender Lexicon”.

William L. Leap is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University (Washington, DC) and an Affiliate Professor in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL). A linguist by training, Leap has worked with American Indian Tribes on projects to combat the loss of Tribal language fluencies. Since the 1980s and the AIDS Pandemic, Leap’s research has addressed the language use of gay men, women-identified women, trans subjects and others whose gender or sexuality  “is not made, and cannot be made to conform” to dominant, binary standards.