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History of Abstinence Education in the United States and Utah’s Sex Education
Methods of Queer Linguistics and CDA: The Construction of Heteronormative Temporality
The Introductory PowerPoint: Heteronormative Parameters of Utah’s Sex Education Material
Junior High (JH) and High School (HS) Resource Guides: Heteronormativity vs. “Bad Sex”
Methods of Queer Linguistics and CDA: The Construction of Heteronormative Temporality
In 2016, I first began my research on Utah’s sex education materials on the state education website, where I found the junior high and high school resource guides open to the public for download. My interest was personal—not only do I live in Utah, and study language, but my children attend public schools. The language in the materials seemed to emphasize heteronormative ideology; therefore, my hypothesis was that a lexical analysis would reveal heteronormative language patterns. I decided to utilize queer linguistics to parse the texts; the linguistic construction of heterosexuality is of special interest in queer linguistics because a restricted focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identities assumes heterosexuality as the default and non-discursively constructed norm (Motschenbacher 153). Queer theory researchers have therefore focused on the construction of heteronormative discourse; they found that specific forms of heterosexual relationships are acceptable, influencing males and females to conform to stereotypical careers, hobbies, age relations and actions that locate them firmly in the gender binary (Motschenbacher 156, 158).
The introductory “Health Sexuality Education Review” PowerPoint (PPT) for teachers is 50 slides, the junior high resource guide is 61 pages, and the high school resource guide is 115 pages. Between these three materials, legislators have created a detailed and elaborate plan for teachers and parents to guide students through abstinence-based education. Abstinence-based language appears often in the texts, but in order to track the moral associations that seemed to appear with this language, I decided to use coding tools from Michael Halliday. “Hallidayan Linguistics” examines the social interactions encoded in language, as well as the context in which these structures are formed (Halliday). Hallidayan Linguistics offers specific tools for examining textual materials like the sex education documents and is one of the springboards for the development of CDA. An important aspect of Hallidayan Linguistics is its emphasis on the relationships between linguistic units, such as co-occurring words and phrases. Therefore, drawing from Halliday, I utilized tools of lexical cohesion, repetitive patterns of words and semantic meaning (Halliday and Hasan 318-20). By identifying repetition and collocation, we can see the coherence of other themes of heteronormativity develop. Repetition is the repeated form of the same lexical item, such as “marry,” “married” and “marriage,” which appears in the education materials. Collocation is the co-occurrence of words that form associations, such as the negatively connoted lexical patterns around the word “sex,” when “sex” is not associated with abstinence, family, or marriage, which also appears in the materials (Halliday and Hasan 288).
I first studied the “Health Sexuality Education Review” PPT for teachers and analyzed the slides for main themes and the messages that would introduce the junior high and high school materials. The PPT set the boundaries and expectations for what would be taught in the other materials—the repetition of abstinence language occurs again and again, as well as the authoritative mandates of Utah state law on restrictions in teaching about the details of intercourse, “advocating for homosexuality” and “advocating for contraception.” The tone of restriction has a punitive quality, and this continues when I read the text using collocation, or co-occurring words. Co-occurring words that accompany topics of sex or sexuality outside abstinence or marriage are frequently negative.
After analyzing the PPT, I then approached the junior high and high school resource guides with a coding scheme—students do not see the introductory PPT, but the resource guides are shared with them, and therefore have more impact. After coding the guides for repetitive words, I counted the number of repetitions in the junior high guide and the high school guide. Repetitive words were concentrated around the concept of heteronormative time, often co-occurring with positive judgment words. Repetitive words also concentrated around the concept of sex, though these were almost always co-occurring with negative judgment words.
Through these tools of lexical cohesion, I identified two motifs—heteronormative temporality and the negative depiction of sex. Halberstam writes that:
Respectability, and notions of the normal on which it depends, may be upheld by a middle-class logic of reproductive temporality. And so, in Western cultures, we chart the emergence of the adult from the dangerous and unruly period of adolescence as a desired process of maturation; and we create longevity as the most desirable future, applaud the pursuit of a long life (under any circumstances), and pathologize modes of living that show little or no concern for longevity. (4) (my emphasis in bold)
Halberstam’s quote comments on the dichotomies of thought in Western heteronormative spaces. Adulthood versus adolescence, and longevity versus transience, are both apparent themes in the sex education materials. Time is emphasized again and again in the sex education curriculum, adding a sense of urgency for students, which I will demonstrate in the data analysis. Time figures into heteronormative institutions like marriage and family. Halberstam writes, “because we experience time as some form of natural progression, we fail to realize or notice its construction. Accordingly, we have concepts like ‘industrial’ time and ‘family’ time, time of ‘progress’…‘austerity’ versus ‘instant’ gratification, ‘postponement’ versus ‘immediacy’” (7). Family time includes family schedules for child-rearing, such as appropriate bedtimes and wake times, normative aspects of heterosexual lifestyles which present themselves as necessary behaviors. To all these different forms of temporality, we assign value and meaning, feeling rewarded by adhering to heteronormative time, or guilty or dissatisfied if we exist outside of it (Halberstam). These heteronormative time frames emerge again and again in the sex education data, with the repetition and co-occurrences of words, along with the associated positive value.
After coding the junior high and high school materials, I then applied Irvine and Gal’s three concepts of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure to analyze and organize the codes (403). As I will discuss, a sense of responsibility is attached to heteronormative ideology and the emerging lexical patterns. Accompanying them is a sense of morality, as we see in the two motifs of heteronormative temporality and the negative depiction of sex.