This volume is the first book-length collection of research on language, gender and sexuality in the societies of central and eastern Europe. Spanning a range of languages and political contexts, the chapters shed light on the intense debates that connect language use, gender equality, sexuality, history and belonging in this region today, while advancing perspectives on semiotic resignification that complicate some western-dominated frameworks in the discipline. Focused on a space increasingly described as a hub of ‘anti-gender’ hostility – as we currently witness in the curtailing of abortion rights, removal of gender from curricula and institutionalisation of anti-LBGTQ rhetoric – the book also foregrounds the rich continuities of feminist theory and protest in post-socialist societies, and their import for rethinking transnational sociolinguistic perspectives on heteronormative patriarchy, ‘anti-genderism’, neoliberalism, imperialism and conflict. Showcasing a range of approaches, themes and angles of inquiry, the book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students researching the topics of gender and sexuality within linguistics, but also within other interdisciplinary areas of the humanities and social sciences.

Ksenija Bogetić holds a PhD in Linguistics (University of Belgrade, Serbia, 2018) and MA in English (University of Oxford, UK, 2013). She works at the intersections of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, gender and language, and cognitive linguistics, in both anglophone and Slavic/Eastern European contexts. Since October 2022, she has been leading a Horizon 2020 project on crisis discourse, unfolding at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana and previously Lancaster University, UK.