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This article presents a short overview of the field of language and sexuality since the mid-1990s and discusses two issues that have repeatedly played a role in my own work in the field during the last decade: the incompatibility of the termhomosexualwith non-heteronormative language use, and the question of what counts as queer linguistic work.

As an introduction to the special issue, this paper presents an overview of previous corpus linguistic work in the field of language and sexuality and discusses the compatibility of corpus linguistic methodology with queer linguistics as a central theoretical approach in language and sexuality studies. The discussion is structured around five prototypical aspects of corpus linguistics that may be deemed problematic from a poststructuralist, queer linguistic perspective: quantification and associated notions of objectivity, reliance on linguistic forms and formal presence, concentration on highly frequent features, reliance on categories, and highlighting of differences. It is argued that none of these aspects rules out an application of corpus linguistic techniques within queer theoretically informed linguistic work per se and that it is rather the way these techniques are employed that can be seen as more or less compatible with queer linguistics. To complement the theoretical discussion, a collocation analysis of sexual descriptive adjectives in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is conducted in an attempt to address some of the issues raised. The concluding section makes suggestions for future research.

Prompted by the increased visibility of inclusive pedagogies, the present article discusses the concept of “inclusion” in relation to foreign language teaching from a linguistic perspective. The foreign language classroom constitutes a special environment that poses specific language-related challenges to inclusive education. In an effort to face these challenges, the present article elaborates how linguistic research and insights can contribute to an implementation of inclusive foreign language education. In terms of theorisation, the narrower and broader senses of educational inclusion are outlined, the notion of “linguistic barrier” is introduced, and various ways in which linguistic exclusion may manifest itself are identified. It is argued that purely cognitivist approaches to second language acquisition are insufficient for achieving higher levels of inclusivity, as they do not cater for the social and contextual aspects that shape practices of exclusion and inclusion. Alternative approaches such as sociocultural theory are shown to be better equipped for this purpose. Various prominent exclusion-related dimensions are discussed with respect to their repercussions in language and linguistic practices, among them exclusion related to learners with special needs, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and non-native language users. Suggestions are made of how to proceed methodologically in linguistic investigations of exclusionary practices, with the aim of creating effective, linguistically based inclusion strategies. It is suggested that typological, discourse analytic and ethnographic linguistic approaches are most promising in this respect. The concluding section recapitulates central aspects that have surfaced in the theoretical and methodological discussion, calls for inclusion-oriented changes in foreign language teaching and highlights conspicuous parallels between the inclusive EFL classroom and English as a lingua franca communication.

This article provides an ethnographically based discourse analysis of linguistic practices of heterosexual construction in a transnational media context, Eurovision Song Contest press conferences. It aims to shed light on how research on heterosexualities can contribute to the critical discussion of heteronormativity as commonly found in Queer Linguistics. The analysis identifies the following patterns of heterosexual construction: 1. talk about spouses, partners and family, 2. talk about heterosexual love song lyrics, 3. binary gender polarisation, and 4. the projecting of heteronormative desire onto participants. This order roughly corresponds to an increase in the heteronormative force of the constructions found. More blatant forms of heteronormative enforcement prove to cause negative reactions in this community of practice. It is argued that the sexual constructions documented incorporate aspects of both sexual identity and desire and that the transnational salience of the context facilitates a stronger confrontation of heterosexual construction with alternative discourses.