Power bottom, gay versatile, top persistant, and other borrowings from English in erotic biographies of gay and bisexual porn stars on French adult websites
Mateusz Białas
University of Warsaw, PolandMateusz Białas holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical, Descriptive, and Automatic Linguistics from Université Paris Cité and in General Linguistics from the University of Warsaw. He is a conference interpreter, a certified English and French teacher, and an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw (Poland). In the years 2018-2024, he worked in the Department of Lexicology and Pragmalinguistics at the University of Białystok, Poland. He specializes in the sociolinguistics of language practices, focusing particularly on persuasive discourses such as hegemonic political discourse and external pornographic discourse. His research interests and activities are predominantly centered on rhetoric, textual and discursive linguistics, pragmatics, lexical semantics, direct and relay simultaneous interpreting, as well as the study of emotion, identity, and body within the language sciences.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1209-4142
Abstrakt
This paper examines lexical borrowings from English in the erotic biographies of gay and bisexual porn actors available on French websites. The study adopts an anthropological perspective, drawing on David Le Breton’s concept of the ‘liberated’ body and Marie-Anne Paveau’s typology of pornographic discourse. Three main types of borrowings have been identified: full borrowings (e.g., bareback), hybrid borrowings (e.g., hardeur), and semantic calques (e.g., versatile). The analysis reveals that full borrowings are predominant in the corpus, particularly in conceptual and lexical anaphors referring to specific antecedents, namely male porn stars. Moreover, these borrowings serve various functions in constructing the representations and identities of porn actors within the discourse examined, reflecting both their physical attributes, social roles, and sexual preferences. The investigation emphasizes the significance of borrowings as one of the key mechanism for enriching the French language, especially in the context of persuasive discourse, which mirrors the evolution of societies and contemporary cultural and social phenomena. Ultimately, the study may contribute to the understanding of how linguistic borrowings shape the portrayal of marginalized groups in media and influence the broader discourse on sexuality and identity.
Słowa kluczowe:
biography, bisexual, body, borrowing, discourse, gay, identity, pornstarBibliografia
Primary sources
Erotic biographies accessed from: https://www.videosxgays.com/. (April 2024)
Secondary sources
Białas, M. (2021a). L’amour dans toute sa nudité: le langage des biographies d’acteurs X gay et bisexuels sur les sites Internet pornographiques. Folia Litteraria Romanica, 16, 141–148.
Białas, M. (2021b). Entre pornographie et politique. La fabrication de l’ethos de puissance dans le discours pornographique externe: le cas des biographies érotiques d’acteurs X homo- et bisexuels en ligne. e-Scripta Romanica, 9, 148–157.
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https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/romanica/
University of Warsaw, Poland
Mateusz Białas holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical, Descriptive, and Automatic Linguistics from Université Paris Cité and in General Linguistics from the University of Warsaw. He is a conference interpreter, a certified English and French teacher, and an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw (Poland). In the years 2018-2024, he worked in the Department of Lexicology and Pragmalinguistics at the University of Białystok, Poland. He specializes in the sociolinguistics of language practices, focusing particularly on persuasive discourses such as hegemonic political discourse and external pornographic discourse. His research interests and activities are predominantly centered on rhetoric, textual and discursive linguistics, pragmatics, lexical semantics, direct and relay simultaneous interpreting, as well as the study of emotion, identity, and body within the language sciences.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1209-4142
