On Philippine gay lingo

by Danton Remoto*

I want to raise three points in this essay. First, that gay language serves as a mediator in the universe of Philippine languages. Second, that this language comes form a carnival of sources, a bricollage, as Claude Levi-Strauss would put it. Third, that this language has been appropriated by the heterosexual mainstream.

But they never considered the fact that Philippine gay language is a language of slippages: it sits on a site full of fractures and fissures.

Since the 1960s, Tagalog, the mother lode of Filipino, has metamorphosed into another variant called Taglish, or Tagalog English. Taglish has become the language of the educated elite and the middle class. One of its steady sources has been gay language, which has generated so many words and idioms that have been inserted in the mainstream of the everyday Taglish.

In fact, since the 1970s, gay language has even become a mediator among the many languages spoken in the country. In a sense, it is like the mestizo, the fair-skinned progeny of the brown, Malay ancestors with the Spanish or American colonial masters. The mestizo speaks Taglish, a mélange of languages which, according to Dr. Vicente Rafael, "evokes yet collapses the colonial relationship. It is the most unstable, and thus the most malleable, of languages."

Gay language belongs to this realm. It has the "capacity to disrupt" because of its colorful associations, its elements of parody and spirit of play, its sheer jouissance. Moreover, Dr. Rafael adds it is capable of "embodying the possibilities of language."

Read the full article here.

*Remoto is one half of the editors that made the Ladlad series possible. The third deviation is now available (daresay nationwide?). Nice cover art don't you think? Wondering who the artist is.