Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This is a documentary on netflix that looks what the stereotypes of how gay men speak. It also looks at the homophobia that present in in the conformity to the speech pattern and the stigma of "sounding gay". Stereotypes of speech patterns for gay men show indexicalitys of language. Hearing a person speak in a certain tone, pattern, etc. and using a social constructed stereotype, one is assumed to be gay if their speech pattern conforms to the stereotype and index identities that they might hold. Now whether this index is accurate of the person's identities are not is the problem that is being addressed in the documentary. The documentary also looks at how this stereotype of gay speech originated and how it was socially constructed to convey that the speaker is gay when conforming to this style of speech. The documentary as whole however assumes a naturalness to the speech patterns and features of straight males, and ignores the fact that there also features and patterns that are stereotypical of straight males that speak English that can be used to index their identities as well and is no way natural and is constructed by society as well.