‘that's so gay’: a contemporary use of gay in Australian English

Recently, a different usage of the word gay has appeared in Australian English. In addition to the earlier meaning of gay being ‘happy’, ‘carefree’ and ‘frivolous’ (1st meaning), and to a later meaning of gay being synonymous with ‘homosexual’ (2nd meaning), it appears that gay is now being understood by young people to mean ‘stupid’, ‘lame’ or ‘boring’, as in ‘That shirt is so gay’, or ‘How gay is that?’ (3rd meaning). Two studies were performed to ascertain who is aware of this new meaning of gay within contemporary Australian society (Study 1) and to examine the 3rd meaning in more detail, by focussing on how young people from Canberra (Australia), aged 18–30, currently understand the word gay (Study 2). The results of Study 1 showed that the word gay functions as a sociolinguistic variable with older people (60+) being more likely to interpret gay as having the 1st meaning, whereas younger people (18–30 year olds) were more likely to interpret gay as having the 3rd meaning. The results of Study 2 showed that young people (18–30 year olds) understand the meaning of gay differently depending upon whether the subject is animate (e.g. ‘he’, ‘she’) or inanimate (e.g. ‘that film’); whether it is used with the verb ‘to look’ or the copula ‘to be’; and whether the word gay is used in conjunction with the intensifier so (e.g. ‘They're gay’ compared to ‘They're so gay’). Gay was more likely to be interpreted in the negative 3rd meaning in sentences with an inanimate subject. Studying this new meaning of the word gay is important for understanding semantic change and discovering current language trends in contemporary Australian English.