Journal of Language and Sexuality 1:1 (2012), 1–14. doi 10.1075/jls.1.1.01lea issn 2211–3770 / e-issn 2211–3789 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Launching a new phase in language and sexuality studies William L. Leap and Heiko Motschenbacher, editors Journal of Language and Sexuality 1 1. Introduction 1.1 Language and sexuality studies as an emerging feld Language and sexuality studies is a relatively recent addition to the research agenda in sociolinguistics, discourse studies, feminist linguistics and related felds. Tese studies acknowledge that discussions of language and gender do not fully capture the linguistic representations of desire, afect and emotion, and also that the lin- guistic dimensions of desire, afect and emotion require social, historical as well as psychological discussion. 2 In some cases, studies of language and sexuality have emphasized linguistic practices associated with local vs. global ambiguities of sexual sameness (Boellstorf 2005, Cohen 2005, Kulick 1998, Valentine 2007). But language and sexuality studies also address issues that need not be so closely tied to ambigu- ity or transgression, for example the reinvention of linguistic intimacy through the use of new reproductive technologies (Inhorn 2007) or new forms of social media (Earle & Sharp 2007, Gray 2009). As these examples suggest, far from being autono- mous in its detail, sexuality is a contingent formation, embedded within broader placements of gender, race/ethnicity, economic status, age, ability, religious back- ground, or regional/national loyalties that emerge within the social moment. Studies of vocabulary — words, phrases, construction of lexicon — have been a source of insights into the interface of language and sexuality (see early contri- butions on “homosexual slang and argot” in Cameron & Kulick, eds. 2006), and so have studies that display the narrative voice of the sexual subject (Leap 1999, Gaudio 1997, 2001, Johnson 1998, Moonwomon 1995, Morrish 2002). Increas- ingly, in order to explore the speakers’ engagement with sexuality’s contingent for- mation, studies of language and sexuality rely on the forms of linguistic practice