Multilinguals in bed: sex talk between partners with different first languages

Abstract

This study analyzes the conversational exchanges between non-monolingual couples during their sexual intercourse from a sociolinguistics perspective. The study also aims to define sex talk and its perception among the specified partners to put the spotlight on this taboo, uncommon topic in a globalized world where having a different race, ethnicity, background, and mother tongue does not necessarily prevent people to couple up. Partners who do not share the same first language are the main subject of this research. Their intentional or unintentional use of specific phrases, language preferences, and cultural backgrounds is investigated through sets of narrative interviews with one or both members of a relationship. Due to the novelty of this study, the interviewees do not belong to any specific type of linguistic and cultural background. However, there have been criteria set for choosing the participants based on the length and monogamy of their relationship. The general purpose is to find out if their different languages have different capacities for expressing sexual communication among them and how two parties in a long-term, monogamous relationship view their sexual relationship through their common language(s). The results of this study may not be able to be generalized to all non-monolingual couples. A wide variety of relationships integrating with specific sexual orientations, interracial, and multilingual features are addressed briefly and brought up as a possibility for further inspection.