Harvey Keith, Shalom Celia. Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance and Intimacy

Routledge. 1997. — 249 pages. — ISBN: 041513692XThis original and intriguing collection explores the pressures exerted upon language in the expression of romantic and sexual desire. Simultaneously, it reveals the ways in which language itself exerts its own constraints on the subject's capacity to express desire.The contributors, while using the approaches and methods of empirical linguistics, engage directly with issues of relevance in gender studies and cultural studies. They examine and probe:Language used to mediate romantic and sexual desire
Language used by the media to represent intimacy and desire
Attitudes and assumptions about romantic and sexual desire embodied in English
Implications for the construction of romantic and sexual identityWords
Metaphors of Desire
Kissing and Cuddling: the Reciprocity of Romantic and Sexual Activity
‘Everybody Loves a Lover’: Gay Men, Straight Men and a Problem of Lexical Choice
Narratives
The Organisation of Narratives of Desire: a Study of First-Person Erotic Fantasies
‘An Explosion Deep Inside Her’: Women’s Desire and Popular Romance Fiction
‘You Would If You Loved Me’: Language and Desire in The Teen Novel
Voices
‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’:Love and Desire on the Telephone
‘Bunnikins, I Love You Snugly in Your Warren’: Voices from Subterranean Cultures of Love
That Great Supermarket of Desire: Attributes of The Desired Other in Personal Advertisements
Speaking its Name: The Poetic Expression of Gay Male Desire
Discursive Categories and Desire:Feminists Negotiating Relationships