Introduction

In this book I investigate the assumption that Russian and Czech nonbinary individuals use language for identity construction. Drawing on the standard variety, which produces the gender binary by means of direct and indirect indexes, constructing female and male identities, the variation in nonbinary speakers’ speech is explored that aims to buck the linguistic gender binary. Regular variation on the local level may solidify and eventually emerge as a linguistic practice for nonbinary identity construction. Therefore, I hypothesize that whenever a linguistic feature indexes a speaker’s gender identity in the standard variety, a nonbinary individual banks on alternatives, that is to say a linguistic practice, to linguistically construct nonbinary identity. Hence, the aim of this book is to explore and describe these practices, providing an in-depth investigation of how Russian and Czech nonbinary individuals linguistically construct gender identity. Before I begin the exploration, description and analyses of nonbinary linguistic practices, I briefly outline how the present book is organized.