Biography

William L. Leap is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the American University (Washington, DC). He is the founder of the annual, and now international, Lavender Language and Linguistics Conference. His writings about language and sexuality address topics as varied as race/class inequities in sexual discourse, language socialization, homophobia/hate speech, gay pornography, trans-national circulations of subaltern voices, and problems of queer historiography. Key publications include Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English (1996), Speaking in Queer Tongues: Gay Language and Globalization (co-edited with Tom Boellstorff (2004), and Language Before Stonewall: Language, Sexuality, History (2020). He is finishing a monograph exploring “the queer potential of translanguaging” of speakers of American Indian English, speakers of isiXhosa and English in Capetown (ZA) area Black townships, and speakers of Pashto in Northwest Pakistan.