“God forbid, a man!”: homosexuality in a case of quality TV

More than in other areas of research, linguistic features of gayspeak and topics relative to homosexuality appear to be sensitive to issues such as the time of production of the text, the context, the patronage (i.e. distribution companies and broadcasters), time of broadcast and type of audience. Although early explorations of language and sexuality concerned themselves almost exclusively with lexical items, recognised as the feature which could best reveal the sociocultural qualities of a group of people, the analysis of gayspeak has benefited, in more recent years, from the intersection of other fields of studies. Research has thus been extended from lexicon to other linguistic and non linguistic areas which may have ideological import and which can be used as valid tools also in the field of audiovisual translation. These considerations have influenced the analysis of the present case study, an investigation of the dialogue exchanges containing features of gayspeak in the five seasons of the drama series Six Feet Under (Alan Ball, USA, 2001-2005).