Polari The Lost Language Of Gay Men

Download or read book Polari - The Lost Language of Gay Men written by Paul Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polari is a secret form of language mainly used by homosexual men in London and other cities during the twentieth century. Derived in part from the slang lexicons of numerous stigmatised and itinerant groups, Polari was also a means of socialising, acting out camp performances and reconstructing a shared gay identity and worldview among its speakers. This book examines the ways in which Polari was used in order to construct 'gay identities', linking its evolution to the changing status of gay men and lesbians in the UK over the past fifty years.

Download or read book Polari - The Lost Language of Gay Men written by Paul Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polari is a secret form of language mainly used by homosexual men in London and other cities during the twentieth century. Derived in part from the slang lexicons of numerous stigmatised and itinerant groups, Polari was also a means of socialising, acting out camp performances and reconstructing a shared gay identity and worldview among its speakers. This book examines the ways in which Polari was used in order to construct 'gay identities', linking its evolution to the changing status of gay men and lesbians in the UK over the past fifty years.

Download or read book Fabulosa! written by Paul Baker and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Richly evocative and entertaining.”—Guardian “An essential book for anyone who wants to Polari bona!”—Attitude “Exuberant, richly detailed. . . . A delightful read.”—Tatler Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colorful roots are varied—from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers’ slang—and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne (“Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!”). Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humor, and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely reemergence in the twenty-first century. With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history—a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy, and ingenious language.

Download or read book Fantabulosa written by Paul Baker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2004-05-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polari has been the secret language of gay men and women through the twentieth century. But more than a language, Polari is an attitude. From the prisons and music halls of Edwardian England to Kenneth Williams, American Gls in London and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Polari has been used to laugh, bitch, gossip and cruise. Like all slang, Polari users coined an ever-changing vocabulary. Derived from words used by criminals, circus artists, beggars and prostitutes, it also employed Italian, Yiddish, French, rhyming slang and backslang. Polari speakers camped up a storm, from West End chorus boys and office workers to East End sea-queens. Since gay liberation, lesbian and gay slang has become less a language of concealment than a language of specialization, though the tradition of camp remains. A carefully researched and entertaining read, Fantabulosa presents a lexicon of Polari and a more general dictionary of lesbian and gay slang. If you don't yet know what vada the bona cartes on the ommee ajax, parkering ninty, a Mexican nightmare or a nellyectomy mean, then this is the book for you.

Download or read book Public Discourses of Gay Men written by Paul Baker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queer linguistics, an aspect of sociolinguistics is brought together with corpus linguistics to investigate the way gay male identities are constructed in the public domain.

Download or read book Fairytales for Lost Children written by Diriye Osman and published by Angelica Entertainment Limited. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FAIRYTALES FOR LOST CHILDREN is narrated by people constantly on the verge of self-revelation. These characters - young, gay and lesbian Somalis - must navigate the complexities of family, identity and the immigrant experience as they tumble towards freedom. Set in Kenya, Somalia and South London, these stories are imbued with pathos, passion and linguistic playfulness, marking the arrival of a singular new voice in contemporary fiction. Praise for FAIRYTALES FOR LOST CHILDREN: 'Fantastic writing. I am most highly impressed. I've read some of the stories more than once and saw in each of them plenty of talent everywhere - in every sinew and vein.' - NURUDDIN FARAH 'There is nothing more humbling than good writing except when the author is fiercely beautiful and ferociously generous of heart. That Diriye Osman should possess so much talent is only fair in light of his goodness. Read this book.' - MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO -The characters in these fairy tales are displaced in multiple, complicated ways. But Osman's storytelling creates a shelter for them; a warm place which is both real and imaginary, in which they find political, sexual, and ultimately psychic liberation.' - ALISON BECHDEL 'East Africa. South London. Queer. Displaced. Mentally Ill. My excitement over Osman and his writing comes, in part, out of delight at the impossibility of categorisation.' - ELLAH ALLFREY The Telegraph

Download or read book Sexed Texts written by Paul Baker and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2008 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexed Texts explores the complex role that language plays in the construction of sexuality and gender, two concepts often discussed separately but, in practice, closely intertwined. It locates sexuality and gender as socially constructed, and examines language use in terms of socio-historical factors, linking changing conceptualisations of identity, discourse and desire to theories surrounding regulation, globalisation, new technologies, marketisation and consumerism. This book draws on a range of theoretical perspectives and published research, and takes examples from written, spoken, internet, non-verbal, visual, mediascripted and naturally occurring texts. Some of the questions addressed in the book include: how do people construct their own and other's gendered or sexual identities through the use of language? What is the relationship between language and desire? In what ways do language practices help to reflect and shape different gendered/sexed discourses as 'normal', problematic or contested? Taking a broadly deconstructionist perspective, the book progresses from examining what are seen as preferable or acceptable ways to express gender and sexuality, moving towards more 'tolerated' identities, practices and desires, and finally arriving at marginalized and tabooed forms. The book locates sexuality and gender as socially constructed, and therefore examines language use in terms of socio-historical factors, linking changing conceptualisations of identity, discourse and desire to theories surrounding regulation, globalisation, new technologies, marketisation and consumerism.