The Language Of Gays in The Philippines

Gay Speak as an Armor

"Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where are going" - Rita Mae Brown.

Language is the divine gift of God. It is language that distinguish man from animals. To the philosophers, language may be the instrument of thought. Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system.

Gay language has achieved a higher degree of acceptance in recent years in the Philippines. Both gay and non-gays can be heard uttering gay expressions. But the main role of gay speak for gay people in the Philippines is to function as an "armor" to shield themselves from the chasm and the social stigma caused by gender differences. Gay speak or Gay language in the Philippines is a form of verbal sublimation of gay people against the domineering power of patriarchy.

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Yet the positive response of the people outside the gay community to gay speak has ironically rewarded the homosexuals, giving the chance to petrate mainstream culture and to be socially accepted in it. Basically, gender and sex for humans has different meaning and purpose. In the book of Language and Gender, Eckert and Genet (2008) have the definition that gender and sex are different because gender is not something born with and not something that have and does. Basically, Gay language is a language used by gays that the way how they deliver is different also, some of gays use special terms of communication.

Then the simple reasons there are terms of gay language because they have specific topic that cannot be discussed frankly in front of the public. Additionally, the most topics are about gay activities that related with sexual activity. However, sometimes gay language is used for general activities such as rage list of gay language used in social media. Actually there is no any specific definition when gay language is composed. Generally a language is indicated as gay language based on the vocabularies and pronunciation the way how to pronounce the language. Hence, the most researchers have done about gay language is not far from variety of the vocabularies, pronunciation or the things related with those both categories.

Gay men in the Philippines, especially those who are out speak to each other using a colorful language that invented mixing an English, Tagalog, Visayan and sometimes even Japanese. Those who would hear or read Filipino gay slang for the first time feel like deciphering a Da Vince code. The use of gay language was firstly to avoid having other people hear what you are talking about especially when it comes to sex. This is also means of defying the cultural norms and creating an identity of their own. Gay speak evolves really fast with obsolete and phrases being rewritten and replaced especially when non-gays learn what it means. "This language define the Philippines gay culture and it would probably stay that way for quite a while" – (E. Maruja, 2008)

Some Features of the Gay Speech

According to Cage (2008) "Gay language is defined as a particular register of variety of language that is employed in certain socio cultural contexts by gay people, that it to say this kind of language has its narrow use in some situations and contexts but in others involving the social system of the gay Co-culture". As mentioned earlier, gay men have a way of speaking in the gay world that is different from speech in the heterosexual world. Some of the typical characteristics of the gay speech from studies are lexicon, the use of gendered pronoun, pronunciation and informal language.

According to Bowen (2009) "The indicator that help the gay people to identifies who is gay through the sound production, However it should be noted that not all gay men produce the "gay sound". For instance, voiceless alveolar fricative /s /, voiced alveolar fricative and voiced alveolar lateral /l / are prolonged and produced in a "hyper-articulate way" by gay men. For example. "sso special" and "amazing" not only are consonants lengthened but vowels are prolonged as well for example "sso gooorgeous".

The Flexibility of the Gay Language

A gay language also known as sward speak and gay speak, have this nature of being dynamic original and flexible. It is original and creative in a manner that thought it is harbored from a local word, it is still given a twist. Cleverly define and spoken. A gay language speaker must have a vast knowledge on everything under the sun and trivial ideas that would really stand out when spoken and used. Gay speak, like any other language is constantly changing. But unlike other language words and terms in this colorful tongue undergo change so quickly that it would be impossible to come up with a dictionary of the language that wouldn't become obsolete within a matter of months, weeks or even days. It was said, according to certain research, that gay lingo has originated since the 60's. There were these gays who have coined terms to create a language of their own. This is because human language is modality independent. Depending on philosophical perspective regarding the definition of language and meaning when used as a general concept, 'language' may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication. The researchers should become aware of how the verbal communication reveal biases toward various cultural identities based on race, gender, age sexual orientation and ability. Language is thought to have originated when early hominins started gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the ability to form a theory of other minds and shared intentionally. The main objective of this research is to know how language or gay language transmitted was and how it is being adapted by the society. The use of language is human culture.

Conclusion

The purpose of the topic is to give information and to know the importance of gay language. The importance of communication can be often overlooked. Even with the ability to communicate with each other misunderstanding happen. Remember communication is a two way street that should be embraced and not ignored. Some people can be arrogant to believe they can't go to other places without knowing anything else of the gay language or culture of the gay people in the places. Gay language affords human being the ability to communicate anything they can imagine. Expressive purposes gay language can be used simply to express one's feeling, ideas or attitude that everyone make happy without necessarily taking a reader or listener into consideration. Informative purposes of Gay language is employed with the intention of conveying information to others. When Gay language is used cognitively it is with the intention of affecting theory imaginative audience in some way type of response. Gay language used in literary, stylistic or imaginative ways is poetic. Gay language used for poetic purposes is not necessarily done inverse. It is the way in which the Gay language is used.