In Buller Men and Batty Bwoys, Wesley Crichlow focuses primarily on the lives of nineteen Black gay and bisexual men in Toronto and Halifax, seeks to give voice to those who have been displaced, and explores the process of self-definition in the context of racial, ethnic, and sexual conformity. Crichlow's perceptive study brings to the foreground several concepts, including the role of homophobia in Black identity, and the problematics of Black 'heteronormativity,' in relation to Black men who engage in same-sex practices. In his sociological analysis, Crichlow introduces to the discipline Audre Lorde's unique literary genre, "biomythography," which emphasizes the connections between the creation of culture and community (through mythology and story-telling) and the creation of personal identity (through names, labels, and group membership). At the same time, he problematizes and celebrates the multiple differences among the men he interviewed as he aims to broaden the study of Black history, Queer Studies, and culture in a Canadian context by bringing sexuality into the various theories that attempt to generalize experience. Buller Men and Batty Bwoys offers the reader critical insight into the complex lives of Black gay and bisexual men in Canada. Equally important, Crichlow's research makes a substantial and original contribution to the limited body of academic work in this area.

Peer-to-peer music exchange, sampling, and digital distribution have garnered much attention in recent years, notably in debates about authorship, intellectual property, media control, and ‘Web 2’. However, empirical scholarship on how these technologies are used creatively by musicians and fans is still sparse. In this interdisciplinary ethnography of ‘bedroom producer’ culture, Andrew Whelan examines interaction and exchange within a specific online milieu: peer-to-peer chatrooms dedicated to electronic music, focusing on a genre known as ‘breakcore’. The author draws on semantic anthropology, ethnomethodology, sociolinguistics, and critical musicology to explore the activity afforded by this controversial and criminalised environment. Through in-depth analysis of often ritually vituperative text-based interaction, discussions of music, and the samples used in that music, Whelan describes the cultural politics and aesthetics of bedroom producer identity, highlighting the roles gender and ethnicity play in the constitution of subcultural authenticity. Empirically driven throughout, this book also engages with a spectrum of social theory; in doing so, it highlights the intersections between gender, interaction, technology and music. This book will prove valuable for students and scholars with interests in gender and language use, computer-mediated communication, online subcultures and virtual community, and the evolution, production and distribution of electronic music.

The classic introduction to the Caribbean's popular music brought up to date.

A groundbreaking collection of fourteen essays on the struggles, pleasures, and contradictions of queer culture and public life in Canada. Versed in queer social history as well as leading-edge gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and post-colonial studies, In a Queer Country confronts queer culture from various perspectives relevant to international audiences. Topics range from the politics of the family and spousal rights to queer black identity, from pride parade fashions to lesbian park rangers.

World Englishes on the Web focuses on linguistic practices at the intersection of international migration and social media, examining the language repertoires of Nigerians living in the United States, and their negotiations of identity and authenticity on a Nigerian web forum. Based on a large corpus of informal, multilingual, interactive, online writing, this book describes how diasporic Nigerians employ African-American Vernacular English, Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and ethnic Nigerian languages in an online community of practice. The project combines corpus linguistic methods—relying on a corpus management tool custom-made for web forum data—with ethnographically-informed qualitative analyses of morphosyntactic, lexical, and orthographic features, and immigrants’ language attitudes and ideologies. It is relevant particularly for linguists and other social scientists interested in World Englishes, the sociolinguistics of globalization and computer-mediated communication, corpus linguistics, and pidgin and creole languages

Global English Slang brings together nineteen key international experts and provides a timely and essential overview of English slang around the world today. The book illustrates the application of a range of different methodologies to the study of slang and demonstrates the interconnection between the different sub-fields of linguistics. A key argument throughout is that slang is a function played by specific words or phrases rather than a characteristic inherent in the words themselves- what is slang in one context is not slang in another. The volume also challenges received wisdom on the nature of slang: that it is short-lived and that slang is restricted to verbal language. With an introduction by editor Julie Coleman, the topics covered range from Inner City New York slang and Hip Hop Slang to UK student slang and slang in Scotland. Authors also explore slang in Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, India and Hong Kong and the influence of English slang on Norwegian, Italian and Japanese. A final section looks at slang and new media including online slang usage, and the possibilities offered by the internet to document verbal and gestural slang. Global English Slang is an essential reference for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working in the areas of lexicology, slang and World Englishes.

No one would attack equality, would they? Quentin Letts just might. Not the notion of equality itself but the way it has become an industry for lobbyists, class warriors and New Labour's ageing Trots. Egalitarianism is a mania for today's policymakers and the soupy-brained halfwits we contrive to elect to public office. Appalled by free thinking, these equality junkies want to crush all individualism in our nation of once indignant eccentrics. Equality has been defiled by the ethnic grievance gang, by the harpies of feminist orthodoxy, by those risk-averse jackboots of town-hall bureaucracy with their quotas and creeds. Fair damsel Liberty has been whored by the best practice brigade, by the proceduralists of multinational corporatism in their company ties, by the glottal-stopping, municipal bores who insist that everyone must have prizes and that no culture can be dominant. Tilters against convention are assailed for their 'inappropriate' behaviour. Supporters of grammar schools are 'snobs'. Social nuance, once a vital lure to self-improvement, is deemed 'unacceptable'. Twenty-first century Britain's political cadre is so paralysed by class paranoia that it stops us attaining the best in schools, manners, language, fashion, popular culture. Elitism is a dirty word. The BBC stamps out the Queen's English because it is not 'accessible'. Celebrity morons are cultural pin-ups. Thick rools, OK. The glottal-stopping oikishness of our urban streets can be linked to modern equality's refusal to deplore. The prattishness of Jonathan Ross arises from a mad insistence that vulgarity is valid. Still think equality is such a great thing? You might not after reading this urgent, exasperated, witheringly funny book. Praise for 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain: '[Quentin Letts] discharges his duty with flair and tracer precision...an angry book, beautifully written.' The Spectator