Marginally speaking

This article engages with the semantic ambiguity of the notion of the ‘margins’,together with its heuristic potential. It begins by discussing how the margins can bestrategically employed as unsettling vantage points through which to re-read existingsociolinguistic research on ‘non-normative’ linguistic practices in Sweden. Moreover,on the basis of data on same-sex desire in South Africa, the article shows how adoptinga perspective ‘from the margins’ runs on a razor-thin edge between reason andirrationality, intelligibility and absurdity, shedding light on the limits of sociolinguisticsand (critical) discourse analysis.