Language and Gender in the Military: Honorifics, Narrative, and I ...

Homosexuals are excluded from service and involuntarily discharged from the service if found out. Homosexual men are apparently constructed as feminized men; and it may well be that lesbians are constructed as an inappropriate feminization of the masculine. In both the case of gay men and women, then, the masculine is feminized—a condition which is unacceptable in the hypermasculine environment of the military. The prohibition of gay women, however, produces its own double bind. Former Army officer Melissa Herbert used sociological survey techniques to examine women veterans’ opinions regarding gender in the military. She found that military women felt that enacting the masculinity of the military environment—often manifest in discourse—drew accusations of lesbianism. Enacting femininity, however, apparently does not solve this dilemma, as several of Herbert’s respondents felt that it was “more important to be perceived as heterosexual than as feminine” (120).

The prohibition of homosexuality makes the study of language and gender in the military slightly problematic. A natural evolution in the study of language and gender has been the linguistic inquiry in queer theory and gender performance within the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) community, and language and sexuality more generally. On a practical level, the need to enact heterosexuality would likely impact interactional style and choices. Thus, if the discourse analyst knows the sexual orientation of an interactant, this fact could be taken into consideration in conducting analysis. Does a gay service member, for example, perform heterosexuality, or simply not perform homosexuality? By regulation, however, military members may not be asked about their sexual orientation. Thus, in examining the intersection of discourse, gender, and the military, the analyst must bear in mind a precarious balance of enactments: compulsory heterosexuality, institutional masculinity, and, for women, sufficient femininity to be regarded as heterosexual but not so much as to seem “unmilitary.” Language and gender scholar Kira Hall describes “queer linguistics” as a field that critically examines assumptions that one’s speaking style is determined by one’s sex or gender identity, making queer theory of utility in examining, for instance, women’s construction of gender identity in a hypermasculine environment.