‘Equality on the sea’
interrogating LGBTQ privilege in the tourism discourse of Africa’s ‘gay capital’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.33353Keywords:
lgbtq tourism, queer, multimodal critical discourse analysis, cape town, mediatisationAbstract
In this paper, I examine LGBTQ tourism discourse about Cape Town, South Africa, which is often declared the 'gay capital of Africa'. The paper considers the implications of such claims and how, in the specific case of Cape Town, apparently playful rhetorics obscure deep-seated inequalities under the guise of visibility, equality and globality. Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis informed by queer theory, my paper examines the recurrent linguistic and visual production of these rhetorics in a range of LGBTQ tourism marketing materials, before focusing on the website of one key agent: Out2Africa. Ultimately, I demonstrate how, contrary to the superficially progressive and cosmopolitan discourses of LGBTQ tourism, equality is increasingly represented in consumer media as an individual attainment typified by privileged mobility rather than any true social condition. Under the sway of neoliberal capitalism, mobility is a commodity, identity, and metonym for pride, and equality becomes a slogan.
References
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Evans, D. (1993) Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge.
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Milani, T. and Levon, E. (2016) Sexing diversity: linguistic landscapes of homonationalism. Language and Communication 51: 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.07.002
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Mühlmann, M. (2015) Slippery subjects: intersecting economies of genre in coming-out films, 1995-2015. Conference presentation at SAUTE: Economies of English, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, 24–5 April.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: NYU Press.
Murray, D. (2007) The civilized homosexual: travel talk and the project of gay identity. Sexualities 10(1): 49–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460707072953
Obrador-Pons, P. (2007) A haptic geography of the beach: naked bodies, vision and touch. Social and Cultural Geography 8(1): 123–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360701251866
Oswin, N. (2007) The end of queer (as we knew it): globalization and the making of a gay-friendly South Africa. Gender, Place and Culture 14(1): 93–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690601122358
Pariser, E. (2011) The Filter Bubble. London: Penguin.
Pellegrini, A. (2002) Consuming lifestyle: commodity capitalism and transformations in gay identity. In A. Cruz-Malave? and M. Manalansan IV (ed.) Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism 134–45. New York: NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00283
Puar, J. K. (2002) A transnational feminist critique of queer tourism. Antipode 34(5): 935–46.
Rink, B. (2008). Community and utopia: reflections on De Waterkant. Urban Forum 19(2): 208–20.
Rink, B. (2013) Que(e)rying Cape Town: touring Africa’s gay capital with the Pink Map. In J. Sarmento and E. Brito-Henriques (eds) Tourism in the Global South: Heritages, Identities and Development 65–90. Lisbon: Centre for Geographical Studies.
Skeggs, B. (2004) Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge.
Thurlow, C. (2016) Queering critical discourse studies or/and performing ‘post-class’ ideologies. Critical Discourse Studies 13(5): 485–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1122646
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010a). Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski A. (2010b) Silence is golden: elitism, linguascaping and ‘anti-communication’ in luxury tourism discourse. In A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds) Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space 187–218. London: Continuum.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2014) Visible-invisible: the social semiotics of labour in luxury tourism. In T. Birtchnell and J. Caletrío (eds) Elite Mobilities 176–93. London: Routledge.
Tucker, A. (2009) Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vincent, L. and Howell, S. (2014) ‘Unnatural’, ‘un-African’ and ‘ungodly’: homophobic discourse in democratic South Africa. Sexualities 17(4): 472–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460714524766
Visser, G (2003) Gay men, leisure space and South African cities: the case of Cape Town. Geoforum 34(1): 123–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-7185(02)00079-9
Waitt, G. and Markwell, K. (2006) Gay Tourism: Culture and Context. New York: Haworth Press.
World Tourism Organization (2012) Global Report on LGBT Tourism. Madrid: United Nations World Tourism Organization. Retrieved on 26 October 2015 from www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284414581.
Agha, A. (2011) Meet mediatization. Language and Communication 31(3): 163–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2011.03.006
Altman, D. (1997) Global gaze/global gays. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 3: 417–36. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3-4-417
Bell, D. and Binnie, J. (2004) Authenticating queer space: citizenship, urbanism and governance. Urban Studies 41(9): 1807–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/0042098042000243165
Binnie, J. and Skeggs, B. (2004) Cosmopolitan knowledge and the production and consumption of sexualized space: Manchester’s gay village. The Sociological Review 52(1): 39–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2004.00441.x
Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2016) Embodied sociolinguistics. In N. Coupland (ed.) Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates 173–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107449787.009
Cameron, D. and Kulick, D. (2003) Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791178
Djonov, E. and Knox, J. S. (2014) How to analyse webpages. In S. Norris and C. D. Maier (eds.) Interactions, Images and Texts: A Reader in Multimodality 171–93. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Duggan, L. (2003) The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Elder, G. S. (2004) Love for sale: marketing gay male p/leisure space in contemporary Cape Town, South Africa. In L. Nelson and J. Seager (eds) A Companion to Feminist Geography 578–89. London: Blackwell.
Evans, D. (1993) Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge.
Evers, C. (2009) ‘The Point’: surfing, geography and a sensual life of men and masculinity on the Gold Coast, Australia. Social and Cultural Geography 10(8): 893–908. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360903305783
Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman.
Ferguson, J. (2006) Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822387640
Gardner, B. (2017). Elite discourses of conservation in Tanzania. Social Semiotics 27(3): 348–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2017.1301799
Heller, M., Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. (2014) Introduction: sociolinguistics and tourism – mobilities, markets and multilingualism. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(4): 425–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12091
Hennessy, R. (2000) Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. London: Routledge.
Koller, V. (2008) ‘Not just a colour’: pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication. Visual Communication 7(4): 395–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357208096209
Kress, G. R. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd edition). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203619728
Leap, W. L (2010) Globalization and gay language. In N. Coupland (ed.) The Handbook of Language and Globalization 555–74. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324068.ch25
Littlewood, I. (2001) Sultry Climates: Travel and Sex Since the Grand Tour. New York: De Capo Press.
Livermon, X. (2012) Queer(y)ing freedom: black queer visibilities in post-apartheid South Africa. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 18(2–3): 297–323. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1472908
Machin, D. (2013) What is multimodal critical discourse studies? Critical Discourse Studies 10(4): 347–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2013.813770
Manalansan IV, M. F. (2015) Queer worlding: the messy art of being global in Manila and New York. Antipode 47(3): 566–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12061
Massey, D. B. (1994) Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Milani, T. (2013) Expanding the queer linguistic scene: multimodality, space and sexuality at a South African university. Journal of Language and Sexuality 2(2): 206–34. https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.2.2.02mil
Milani, T. and Levon, E. (2016) Sexing diversity: linguistic landscapes of homonationalism. Language and Communication 51: 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.07.002
Motschenbacher, H. and Stegu, M. (2013) Introduction: queer linguistic approaches to discourse. Discourse and Society 24(5): 519–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926513486069
Mühlmann, M. (2015) Slippery subjects: intersecting economies of genre in coming-out films, 1995-2015. Conference presentation at SAUTE: Economies of English, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, 24–5 April.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: NYU Press.
Murray, D. (2007) The civilized homosexual: travel talk and the project of gay identity. Sexualities 10(1): 49–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460707072953
Obrador-Pons, P. (2007) A haptic geography of the beach: naked bodies, vision and touch. Social and Cultural Geography 8(1): 123–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360701251866
Oswin, N. (2007) The end of queer (as we knew it): globalization and the making of a gay-friendly South Africa. Gender, Place and Culture 14(1): 93–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690601122358
Pariser, E. (2011) The Filter Bubble. London: Penguin.
Pellegrini, A. (2002) Consuming lifestyle: commodity capitalism and transformations in gay identity. In A. Cruz-Malave? and M. Manalansan IV (ed.) Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism 134–45. New York: NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00283
Puar, J. K. (2002) A transnational feminist critique of queer tourism. Antipode 34(5): 935–46.
Rink, B. (2008). Community and utopia: reflections on De Waterkant. Urban Forum 19(2): 208–20.
Rink, B. (2013) Que(e)rying Cape Town: touring Africa’s gay capital with the Pink Map. In J. Sarmento and E. Brito-Henriques (eds) Tourism in the Global South: Heritages, Identities and Development 65–90. Lisbon: Centre for Geographical Studies.
Skeggs, B. (2004) Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge.
Thurlow, C. (2016) Queering critical discourse studies or/and performing ‘post-class’ ideologies. Critical Discourse Studies 13(5): 485–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1122646
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010a). Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski A. (2010b) Silence is golden: elitism, linguascaping and ‘anti-communication’ in luxury tourism discourse. In A. Jaworski and C. Thurlow (eds) Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space 187–218. London: Continuum.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2014) Visible-invisible: the social semiotics of labour in luxury tourism. In T. Birtchnell and J. Caletrío (eds) Elite Mobilities 176–93. London: Routledge.
Tucker, A. (2009) Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vincent, L. and Howell, S. (2014) ‘Unnatural’, ‘un-African’ and ‘ungodly’: homophobic discourse in democratic South Africa. Sexualities 17(4): 472–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460714524766
Visser, G (2003) Gay men, leisure space and South African cities: the case of Cape Town. Geoforum 34(1): 123–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-7185(02)00079-9
Waitt, G. and Markwell, K. (2006) Gay Tourism: Culture and Context. New York: Haworth Press.
World Tourism Organization (2012) Global Report on LGBT Tourism. Madrid: United Nations World Tourism Organization. Retrieved on 26 October 2015 from www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284414581.
Published
2018-12-05
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Comer, J. (2018). ‘Equality on the sea’: interrogating LGBTQ privilege in the tourism discourse of Africa’s ‘gay capital’. Gender and Language, 12(4), 479-503. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.33353
