"Openly Gay" : the sociolinguistics of an adverb

 

Some people tell me I spend too much time thinking about language but I'm afraid it's a habit I can't break (nor want to, he adds sotto Voce ).

We used to think very intensely during the 'Activator' project about words and why one chooses a particular word over others. When you are making a statement on the fly you can sometimes 'feel' a particular word jumping to the front of the queue because it clearly suits the moment.

So "openly gay". I was reading about the 80s pop group Bronski Beat, and Wikipedia describes them as openly gay. And it was the 'openly' that caught my eye. Why choose that particular adverb? What is its sociolinguistic function? What does it tell us about the opinion of the writer? Why did they not just write 'gay'? Which other adjectives could follow the adverb 'openly' with the same purpose and heft in the adverb? Which ones would sound wrong?

It's clearly semantically related to the adverb ' unapologetically' but who wanted them to apologise and why? You could make a verb structure such as 'not hiding  the fact that they are X' and that seems to be on the same sociolinguistic page. But what are the limits. Try these ones: Can you be openly:

straight

bisexual

religious

atheistic

Christian 

selfish

scornful

Irish

Who decides what you need to apologise for? (or in this case, of course, not apologise). 

It seems like it has to be something that is your choice, so openly Irish is wrong. But 'openly scornful' sounds fine. Also, it doesn't seem to work for things that are choices anyone could make. I don't think 'openly Republican' or 'openly Democrat' work, for this reason. 

There is certainly the fact that someone, possibly most people, object to the thing that you are flaunting (there's another loaded word). So 'openly racist' sounds right (linguistically rather than ethically) and openly misogynistic/misandrist also works for me. So maybe the way openly works is to say that the adjective is a choice that someone has made and which (some) other people think is wrong. Then if you don't try to hide 'X' you will be 'openly X'.

There was a huge fascination for me in this sociolinguistic loading of words because you could end up with close synonyms pointing in different directions, showing a positive or negative attitude of the speaker, layered over the base meaning of the word. Consider two synonyms of 'thin': would you rather be slim or skinny.?

You could even have negative words with a positive layer on top. I consider the word roué to have a much more forgiving and tongue in cheek attitude than libertine or lothario. 

And I openly challenge you to come up with your own sociolinguistically  loaded vocabulary in the comments. I will offer a set to start with:

Freedom fighters/insurgents/rebels/terrorists