Today, we’re going to drill a bit deeper into identity and think more about intersectionality. We’ve talked about speech communities already, the idea that people are affiliated with (and thus, have sociolinguistic features of) various communities in their lives. Intersectionality is a simple-yet-important insight: Our identities cannot be considered in isolation, as nearly all identities overlap, intersect, and interplay with one another, and experience different power and privilege.

Formalized by Kimberlé Crensaw in the early 1990s, intersectionally is particularly crucial for linguistic work, where many aspects of a person’s identity contribute to a person’s unique way of speaking (idiolect), and they interact.

Identifying Identities (Click in A)

Working with your group, please identify (lol):

1. A pair of meaningful identities of any variety (ideally held by group members) which do not intersect meaningfully. This might sound like…
   • “I’m no different as a mechanical keyboard enthusiast because I happen to be Latina.”
   • “I’m bisexual, but that really doesn’t affect how I interact with other linux users”
2. A pair of meaningful identities which intersect meaningfully. This might sound like…
   • “Coloradans speak differently whether they’re from a rural area vs. an urban area”
   • “Female-identifying folks in eSports talk differently than male-identifying folks in eSports, and also different from female-identifying folks elsewhere”
3. A pair of meaningful identities which are hard to evaluate outside of intersections. This might sound like…
   • “I really can’t say much meaningful about being my sexuality without talking about my gender identity.”
   • “Being Christian in my country is very different from being Christian in the US”
4. A pair of meaningful identities which differ in level of privilege.
   • Perhaps a person faces discrimination for one of their identities, but is granted social power for another in our society
   • “I am lower on the social hierarchy when viewed as this, but higher when viewed as this”

Intersectional Sociolinguistic Features (Click in B)

Now, thinking about this intersectionality in terms of sociolinguistic features (or, if you prefer, a matrix of features which defines an identity):

1. Think of a sociolinguistic feature which is not particularly intersectional, that is, ‘almost everybody who is part of this group has this feature, regardless of who they are’.
2. Think of a sociolinguistic feature which shows some intersectionality, that is, there’s a difference in how it’s used, which depends on another identity, but you can also talk about it in isolation.
   • Something like “Lots of people who are X use this feature, but I’ve noticed people who are Y use it less.”
3. Think of a sociolinguistic feature which is hard to describe without intersectional reasoning, meaning that you really can’t evaluate the feature(s) or a person’s membership in the group without making direct reference to an intersecting identity
   • Think “I can’t tell you what an X person talks like, because it’s completely different if the X person is Y or Z”

Internetsectional Identity (Click in C)

Now, you’re deep into the intersection, so let’s swerve back towards the internet. With your group, discuss the following questions:

1. What internet identities are heavily intersectional?
2. Have you noticed online language use which instantly told you two things about a person?
   • “Oh, now that they said that, I know they’re both a Linux user and a D&D player”
3. Talk about an intersectional group which is really different from either of the larger groups
   • Are Linguistics TikTokers different from both broader Linguists and broader TikTokers?
4. Do you think that different platforms intersect?
   • Are YouTubers who also stream on Twitch different?
   • Are Tumblr users on Twitter different in their tweeting?
5. Does the core intersectional idea of different identities having different levels of privilege and experiencing different kinds of oppression relevant here?
6. How is intersectionality as a concept useful for understanding your domain of internet language use? Is there much intersectionality there?

Finished (Click in D)