Rodrigo Borba – författare

This collection brings together established and exciting new voices to shed light on the language of and about sex work, offering an empirically nuanced understanding of commercial sex through language.While there is burgeoning literature on sex work in the social sciences, there has been little work to date centering it from a linguistic perspective. Chapters make the case for language as central to sex work practices and the transactions of intimacy in the negotiation of services, promotional strategies and the performance of desire. Featuring insights from diverse geographic contexts, the chapters critically reflect on different dimensions of language and sex work, including sex work, gender and desire; online sex work; sex work and race; sex worker advocacy; and the language of victimization and exploitation. The volume illuminates the ways in which commercial sex work is negotiated in embodied linguistic interaction and attendant issues of power, identity, gender, race and desire.This book systematizes the body of growing knowledge around language and sex work from an interdisciplinary lens. It is key reading for scholars, policymakers and activists in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, as well as fields such as anthropology, sociology, criminology and health and social care.

Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2026This book takes a queer linguistic and intersectional approach to the analysis of young LGBTQ+ people's identity constructions, showing how their language use reveals their marginalisation in society. The author develops a framework for an intersectional sociocultural linguistics (ISL) and applies it to linguistic ethnography with members of four LGBTQ+ youth groups in the UK. She shows how the young people’s identities are informed by different intersecting categories (including race, class, and family situation) which influence their unique life experiences. She uses discourse analysis to explore the links between such intersections and the ways in which the young people position themselves in relation to each other, their youth group, and the wider world.In focusing on these individual, varied identity constructions, the book provides a unique, in-depth insight into the reality of being young and LGBTQ+ today. It also reveals the need for an intersectional approach when analysing marginalised groups.