Lazar, Michelle - Semiotics of Homonationalism

Semiotics of Homonationalism
Michelle M. Lazar
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality
Edited by Kira Hall and Rusty Barrett
Subject: Linguistics, Sociolinguistics Online Publication Date: Oct 2019

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212926.013.51
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter discusses homonationalism as an analytical concept, which was developed

originally to describe how queer identities get mobilized instrumentally to align with ne
oliberal agendas of nation-states. The chapter also discusses how this concept has been
harnessed in newer ways to “do” a tactical politics of resistance by queer movements in
illiberal contexts. Studies from the social sciences, broadly, and sociolinguistics, particu
larly, are presented, with a focus on how homonationalism as a discourse is semiotically
construed in particular contexts. A detailed case study involving the Pink Dot movement
in Singapore demonstrates the semiosis of homonationalism (in the sense of a resistive
politics), through the multi- and inter-semiotic co-deployment of spoken and written lan
guage, color, visual images, photographic footages, symbols, music, and represented ur
ban landscapes and embodiment cues. The chapter concludes by highlighting homona
tionalism as a complex analytical site at which queer politics can get done as well as un
done.
Keywords: homonationalism, semiosis, queer politics, resistance, Pink Dot, Singapore
Introduction
Homonationalism is an analytical concept developed to describe the ways in which
LGBTQ identities are mobilized instrumentally to align with neoliberal interests of the na
tion-state (Duggan 2003; Puar 2007). From the point of view of language and sexuality
studies, homonationalism as an investigative focus presents a productive site for sociolin
guistic theorization and analysis in a number of ways. The first involves a theorization of
identity. While an intersectional approach to social identity (Crenshaw 1991) has gained
sociolinguistic currency in recent years in theorizing, importantly, the interrelationship of
multiple identities in discourse, the metaphor of intersection implies a “meeting point” of
otherwise discrete and more or less stable identities. The conceptualization of homona
tionalism, instead, activates the Deleuzian notion of assemblage to refer to identities as
“dispersed but mutually implicated and messy networks, [which draw] together enuncia
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tion and dissolution, causality and effect, organic and non-organic forces” (Puar 2007:
211). The second links language and sexuality research to a sociolinguistics of multiple
geo-scales (Blommaert 2010). Although the portmanteau homonationalism points to the
nation-state as the scale of immediate attention, processes of homonationalism impact
and are impacted by parastate, nonstate, and suprastate actors in relationships of com
plicity and/or resistance, and performed for local as well as global stakeholders (e.g. oth
er nations, investors, and tourists). Thirdly, a sociolinguistics of homonationalism neces
sarily invites a transdisciplinary perspective, with a convergence of studies, for example,
on sexuality, nationhood, and cultural politics. A sociolinguistics of homonationalism,
then, is as much a study of language and sexuality as it is a political discourse analysis.
Finally, in sociolinguistic terms, homonationalism is understood as a discourse, analyz
able for its discursive meanings and how it gets deployed as a discursive strategy in par
ticular sociopolitical contexts. Relatedly—and the attention of this chapter—are the (mul
ti-) semiotic realizations of homonationalist discourses. This ranges from a focus on the
linguistic semiotic to a co-deployment of multimodal resources, which includes not only
the more familiar semiotic foci on language and visual images, but also symbolically me
diated materiality, corporeality, and affect (see also Milani and Levon 2016; Milani, this
volume).
In what follows, the idea of homonationalism is outlined, both in its original sense as a de
politicized activity by powerful institutional actors in (neo)liberal contexts as well as in a
newer sense of a kind of creative resistive politics performed by subaltern LGBTQ con
stituents in illiberal contexts. The development of this analytical concept is presented first
with reference to selected studies from the social sciences, followed by contributions
specifically from sociolinguistics with regards to semiotic expressions of homonationalist
discourses. A worked example demonstrating the semiotics of homonationalism in the
context of Singapore is then provided, before the chapter concludes by (re)shifting the fo
cus to the politics of homonationalist discourses.
Homonationalism: The Development of the An

alytical Concept
The concepts homonationalism and its antecedent, homonormativity, were proposed by
U.S. scholars to refer critically to a type of narrowly conceptualized equality politics pro
moted by neoliberal politicians, corporations, and media in the West since the mid-1990s
(Duggan 2003; Puar 2007; see also Motschenbacher this volume). Referring to a shift in
U.S. lesbian and gay rights movements toward a framework of non-redistributive neolib
eral sexual politics, Lisa Duggan (2003:50) described “homonormativity” as
a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and insti
tutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promoting the possibility of a de-mo
bilized gay constituency and a privatized gay culture anchored in domesticity and
consumption.
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Building on Duggan’s critique, Jasbir Puar (2007) developed the term homonationalism
(short for “homonormative nationalism” or “national homonormativity”) to theorize a con
vivial U.S. exceptionalism explicitly in relation to the nation. As explicated further,
homonationalism is not only a state practice, but involves along with it the convergence
of transnational capitalism with human rights paradigms as well as broader global phe
nomena such as Islamophobia (Puar 2013: 337). Symbolic and economic capital under
gird nation-states’ pursuit of homonationalism. Firstly, the perception of gay-friendliness
and tolerance is becoming an international gold standard of a nation’s social progress
and democracy. This is invoked, in part, as a response to the so-called global threat of in
tolerant “Islamo-fascism.” The second is a commercial, economic imperative to leverage
internationally on “pink” tourism and commodity culture (Puar 2013). Yet, as critiqued by
Puar (2007), homonationalism assimilates acceptable racialized—notably, white (and mid
dle-class)—segments of the queer population as belonging to the “nation,” in so far as
these are complicit with heterosexuality as the norm. At the same time, undesirable sexu
al-racial “others,” positioned in opposition to the domesticated, virtuous (homosexual) cit
izens, are excluded and do not belong. Either way, homonationalism serves as a discipli
nary technology. Puar (2007: 50) explains as follows:
Homonormativity is both disciplined by the nation and its heteronormative under

pinnings and also effectively surveils and disciplines those sexually perverse bod
ies that fall outside its purview. Thus the nation not only allows for queer bodies,
but also actually disciplines and normalizes them; in other words, the nation is not
only heteronormative, but also homonormative.
As an analytical concept, homonationalism has achieved resonance in other (neo)liberal

Western political contexts and, as will be discussed, also in nonliberal political contexts.
The following presents an uptake of the concept in selected studies in the wider social
sciences, followed by its study within sociolinguistics more specifically.
Extending Puar’s construction of the United States as an exceptional nation-state, a simi

lar case is made about Norway (Petersen, Kroløkke, and Myong 2017). Through an analy
sis of Norwegian news reports concerning two high-profile cases of gay male couples
seeking to become parents through transnational commercial surrogacy, Michael Pe
tersen, Charlotte Kroløkke, and Lene Myong demonstrate the construction of Norway as
an exceptional nation marked by equality, tolerance, and reproductive rights for its homo
sexual citizens. Norwegian exceptionalism, they argue, is premised upon Western, white,
able-bodied, educated, and affluent “liberated gay subjects” who are aligned with the re
production of heteronormative national family values. At the same time, through a colo
nial framework that is activated, the moral superiority of Norway in its philanthropic duty
to rescue vulnerable non-white children from the global south is also achieved.
Francesca Ammaturo (2015) applies the dynamics of homonationalism to the supranation

al context of the Council of Europe’s (COE) efforts to forge a common European identity.
She shows how, through the COE’s so-called Pink Agenda (a host of political and legal
measures), a prototypical European LGBTQ citizen is produced and a queer-friendly im
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age of Europe is emphasized. Premised upon civilizational assumptions, however, the

model of European citizenship generates moral hierarchies that identify between tolerant
and intolerant member states of the COE and promotes Europe’s moral superiority on hu
man rights in saving persecuted non-European queer asylum seekers. Ammaturo notes
that in turning LGBTQ rights into a civilizational argument, the concerted political effort
appears to be to establish dichotomies internationally, rather than a genuine commitment
to achieve substantial equality of all citizens. In fact, she argues that sexual non-norma
tive persons subject to political instrumentalization are made more vulnerable both in Eu
rope and beyond.
Unlike studies dealing with the construction of Western exceptionalism in upholding liber
al democratic values, John Treat (2015) presents the somewhat anomalous case of illiber
al Singapore’s (short-lived) experimentation with homonationalism. As a nation-state that
has resolutely upheld sodomy laws since the 1930s, even if seldom enforced, Singapore’s
political leaders engaged with homonationalistic practices for a brief period from 2001 to
2004, motivated by capitalistic reasons. For that brief period, economic planners and
complicit gay activists had found common ground in promoting the island as “a queer
playground”; spaces for queer entertainment were tolerated and an annual weekend of
gay events, called “Nation Parties,” was advertised widely, promoting Singapore as a gay-
friendly tourist destination and financial hub. However, Treat notes that the freedoms al
lowed to sexually diverse people were always dispersed as privileges provisionally grant
ed by the government and not inherently from respect for human dignity and individual
sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the leeway granted to LGBTQ people was with
drawn as soon as the government perceived the growing popularity of the Nation Parties
as threatening the nation’s ideologically revered Asian cultural values, positioned as anti
thetical to Western liberal values and a perceived Western gay lifestyle.
Although these studies demonstrate the productivity of homonationalism as an analytical

concept applied to various scales and sociopolitical contexts internationally, they lack the
fine-grained empirical analysis offered by sociolinguistic studies on the subject. The few
language and sexuality studies that engage with the discourse of homonationalism con
tribute toward an understanding of the processes of semiosis involved in its performance.
The studies reported provide close linguistic and/or multimodal attention to empirical da
ta; the latter of which deals with multi-semiotic complexity as well as inter-semiotic intri
cacy.
Reporting on a larger study regarding shared identity construction among a group of

British working-class LGBTQ youth, Lucy Jones (2016) found the data was indicative of
broader issues concerning LGBTQ identity and homonationalist ideology. Specifically, she
found that rather than basing their difference vis-à-vis heterosexual people, sexual non-
normative youths constructed their identity in opposition to a perceived out-group based
on ethnicity, notably, people of South Asian descent who were framed as inherently homo
phobic and as outsiders of a progressive Western society. Jones’s ethnographic discourse
analysis supports Puar’s claim about the existence of a homonationalist discourse in con
temporary Western culture. On the one hand, the constructed ideal queer subject was in
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deed found to be white, or at least discursively aligned with the white majority. On the
other hand, just as the categories Muslim and gay are seen to be mutually exclusive in
U.S. homonationalist discourse, so, too, being South Asian and gay in this British context.
Tommaso Milani and Erez Levon’s (2016) study of the “Brand Israel” campaigns and Tel
Aviv Pride offers empirical support to Puar’s theoretical discussion of homonationalism in
the Israeli context. Driven by the Israeli state, its official tourism mechanism, and other
queer complicities, Israel is marketed as embracing sexual diversity in a bid to promote
itself as a progressive democratic nation. Underlying that is a desire to improve its public
image abroad as well as to draw Western “pink” tourists to Israel as a gay paradise. The
championing of gay and lesbian rights in Israel, as Milani and Levon argue, is in effect an
adaptation of a hegemonic republican system that legitimizes Israel’s ongoing grave hu
man rights violations in other areas. Using a linguistic landscapes approach, the authors
provide an analysis of the semiotic complexity of homonationalism comprising discourse,
materiality, corporeality, and affect.
Finally, drawing on a critical multimodal discourse analysis, I explicate the discourse of

homonationalism in Singapore (Lazar 2017), not from a statist perspective as in Treat
(2015) , but as articulated more recently by Pink Dot SG, a local LGBTQ constituency, in
performing a tactical resistive politics within illiberal Singapore. Although not challeng
ing heteronormativity, and in fact actively forming alliances with the straight majority,
Pink Dot has deployed a homonationalist discourse pragmatically to create a noncontes
tive yet rallying public presence under the watchful eye of the authoritarian government.
The study extends Duggan and Puar’s homonormative theses in a number of ways. Firstly,
it focuses on the uptake of the discourse by a queer activist group rather than by power
ful institutional actors. Secondly, it considers the deployment of a homonationalist dis
course as a political discursive strategy borne out of pragmatic necessity, thus contesting
the view that homonationalism is inherently depoliticized. And thirdly, it argues that in
stead of adopting an exclusionary stance with regard to sexual-racial others, the homona
tionalist discourse in this context is concertedly inclusive of Singapore’s multiethnic, mul
ti-religious communities as constitutive of the national imaginary.
A Semiotic Analysis of Homonationalism: The

Case of Pink Dot SG
This section offers a worked example to demonstrate how a homonationalist discourse is
semiotically performed. The example here develops further an aspect of the analysis pre
sented in my earlier study (Lazar 2017). In that study, I discussed the emergence of Pink
Dot SG in Singapore, a queer social movement, which seized the opportunity to organize
a free-to-all peaceful rally at the Speaker’s Corner in Hong Lim Park, when the ruling
government relaxed its licensing rules for public assembly there in 2008. Since 2009,
Pink Dot has been holding an annual outdoor event in the park, and each year it publi
cizes the event via its website and on YouTube through the production of promotional
videos. In Lazar (2017), one of the videos (for the year 2014) was selected for an in-depth,
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multimodal analysis of the emergent homonationalist discourse. The argument advanced

there was that Pink Dot’s homonationalist discourse mirrored closely Singapore’s
“Shared National Values,” as published in a 1992 white paper. The brainchild of former
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, the proposed five values constitutive of Singapore’s na
tional ideology were: (i) nation before community and society before self; (ii) family as a
basic unit of society; (iii) community support and regard for the individual; (iv) consensus,
not conflict; and (v) racial and religious harmony. In the example in the following section,
I provide an expanded focus on the first Shared Value concerning the nation, by analyzing
eight of the videos from 2009 to 2016 (Pink Dot SG 2019). The videos take various for
mats, for example, as LGBTQ personal narratives, scripted stories, or a montage of views
by straight allies and queer persons. All the videos were transcribed in terms of language
and other semiotic modalities.
In the analysis, the enmeshing of sexual/gender non-normativity and nationalism is

achieved multi- and inter-semiotically through the co-deployment of spoken and written
language, color, visual images, photographic footages, symbols, music, and represented
urban landscapes and embodiment cues. The assemblage of homonationalist identities ev
ident in the Pink Dot videos will be discussed in three sections: (i) the framing of “Pink
Dot” itself; (ii) the entextualizing of Singapore’s National Day Parade elements; and (iii)
the embedding of a range of other national indexicals, i.e., buildings and institutions that
come to signify national identity.
Framing of “Pink Dot”
From the outset, the deliberate framing of “Pink Dot” as a concept and as an event estab
lishes it incontrovertibly in homonationalistic terms. In unpacking the semiotics of “Pink
Dot,” I first discuss the color symbolism, followed by the conceptualization of “Pink Dot”
as an idea. The following is an excerpt from the inaugural promotional video of 2009.
(1) We chose pink because it’s a blend of red and white. You know the color of
Singapore’s national flag?
(2) Pink is the color of our ICs [abbreviation for: National Registration Identification
Cards].
(3) So come to Hong Lim Park on May 16 at 4:30 pm dressed in pink! Pink hats, pink
tops, pink umbrellas, pink dresses—whatever else you think you can wear that is in
pink. (2009 Pink Dot video)
Launching for the first time, the Pink Dot organizers provided an explicit rationalization
on the choice of color (note the self-determined reason clause “We chose pink because
…”). Downplaying global associations of the color with sexual minorities (Altman 2001;
Koller 2008), the organizers, instead, deliberately reframe the connotations of pink to pri
oritize local nationalistic signification. In so doing, the singularity of the meaning of pink
in this case is disrupted in favor of an imbricated double meaning, which emphasizes na
tional identities while keeping sexual identities latent. The categorical statements “it’s a
blend of red and white” (1) and “Pink is the color of our ICs” (2) situate—and saturate—
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pink in nationalistic overtones of Singapore’s flag—the blending of colors itself symbolic

of diversity is emblematic of Singapore’s national identity—as well as the National Regis
tration Identification Cards owned by Singapore citizens. In the invitation to the public in
(3), then, to wear pink openly, the combined symbolism of participants as Singaporeans
supporting sexual minorities comes into play. Footages of Pink Dot rallies featured in sub
sequent videos, in fact, present a visual oversemiotization of pink through symbolic-at
tributive processes (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) of participants in pink clothing and ac
cessories, carrying similarly hued paraphernalia like balloons, umbrellas, and lights.
The invocation of the national flag colors for homonationalistic purposes is rehearsed in a
promotional video six years later.
(4) [Male voice-over:] This is where we call home—where we love, where we hope,
where we’re red, white, and all the colors in-between. (2015 Pink Dot video)
Here, nation is metaphorically “home” and its citizens are creatively metaphorized
through identification with the flag colors. The national symbolic hues of red and white
are represented as two color reference points, encompassing a spectrum of pink. In other
words, the inclusive “we” pronoun embraces gender/sexual diversity within the wider
boundaries of national identity. The homonationalistic reading of the verbal text is rein
forced intersemiotically and intertextually by simultaneously showing earlier Pink Dot ral
ly footages. As the verbal references to nation are spoken, various camera angles captur
ing the Pink Dot event are displayed—from a medium-close shot of people’s faces bathed
in pink light (at the words “home”) to a distant aerial shot of a sea of pink illuminated by
the torchlights of the participants (at the words “all the colors in-between”). Figure 1 is
an example of an aerial shot from the 2015 video.
Figure 1: Aerial shot of the Pink Dot formation.
Source: Pink Dot video
The concept of “Pink Dot” itself is overdetermined with nationalistic meanings. It is a re
formulation of the expression “Red Dot,” which originated from a disparaging remark
made by a neighboring foreign leader in 1998 to refer to Singapore’s miniscule territorial
size, represented merely as a red dot on the world map. Reclaimed as a symbol of nation
alistic pride by Singapore’s political leaders, the term has since gained popular purchase;
recently, local businesses have come out in financial support of the LGBTQ movement ex
pressed as “Red Dot for Pink Dot.” The name “Pink Dot,” therefore, draws on the seman
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tics of reclaimed nationalistic identity, while at the same time recoding the color to reflect
the imbricated homonationalistic meanings. The meaning of Pink Dot is elaborated in the
following examples.
(5) Pink Dot stands for a Singapore in which all Singaporeans, regardless of their
sexual orientation, are free to love and be loved. (2009 Pink Dot video)
(6) I think Pink Dot represents something very important … for us all, in that it’s a
symbol of-—of everyone’s right to love. (2010 Pink Dot video)
Through linguistic choices of the distributive determiner (“all”) and the indefinite pro
noun (“everyone”), the relevance of Pink Dot is elevated from a partisan event and com
munity to an inclusive national scale. Rather than focus on individual rights to lobby for
legal recognition of the LGBTQ constituency, Pink Dot symbolizes a nationalistic drive for
the freedom and right of Singaporeans collectively, through a universal discourse of love
that is intelligible to all. The language of (5), in particular, reads like a manifesto in the
imagining of Singapore’s homonationalism.
Like all manifestos, the Pink Dot ideals are yet-to-be-achieved realities, which make par
ticipation at the rallies significant future-impacting present actions. Participating on site
in Pink Dot events brings about a space-time convergence.
(7) It will not end discrimination and prejudice overnight but with Pink Dot, we can
come together to show lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people they are not
alone. We can stand together to make a statement about the Singapore we want to
live in. A Singapore that is more open-minded and progressive. (2011 Pink Dot video)
(8) While we wait for someday to arrive, we can do our part today to make society
more inclusive and open-minded. We can take a stand against discrimination and
prejudice. We can join hands to support the freedom of every Singaporean to love.
Every year with Pink Dot, we celebrate our solidarity in diversity. Every year with
Pink Dot, we bring that someday a little closer. And as more and more of us stand up
to be counted, the sooner that someday will come. So see you at Pink Dot 2012. Let
us make someday happen. (2012 Pink Dot video)
In the above, “discrimination and prejudice” are an existing social malaise; yet, the mix
ture of future and present temporalities is suggestive of the dynamic possibility for
change. On the one hand, the modality of certainty signals that attitudinal change takes
time (not “overnight”) (7) and even presupposes an indefinite waiting time (“someday”)
(8). On the other hand, proactive action in the present (“today”) shortens the indefinite
ness of the future (“the sooner that someday will come”) through achievable targets. Note
the repeated use of the modal “can” preceding material processes of action (“we can
come together to show,” “We can stand together to make,” “we can do our part today to
make,” “We can take a stand,” “We can join hands to support”). The shift from the can-do
clauses to the categorical present in (8), in fact, shows Pink Dot’s role in enabling possi
bility to become an actuality: “Every year with Pink Dot, we celebrate our solidarity in di
versity. Every year with Pink Dot, we bring that someday a little closer.” The use of com
paratives also signals the dynamic aspect of social change made conceivable through par
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ticipation in Pink Dot. While in (7) the comparative in “A Singapore that is more open-
minded and progressive” points to an aspirational future, in clause (8) the “more inclusive
and open-minded” society is achievable today.
Finally, the represented significance of Pink Dot extends beyond semantics or an imagi
nary concept to performance of a corporeal semiotics. By a semiotics of corporeality, I re
fer to the embodied performances of meaning; in the case of Pink Dot, this involves the
creation of a symbol made manifest through the configuration of human bodies. Beyond
attending a rally, participants are expected to form a human Pink Dot comprised of di
verse bodies coming together, regardless of gender and sexuality, and photographed aeri
ally as a singular, undifferentiated mass of pink. Transcending a conceptual idea, “open-
minded” Singaporeans are here invited to become the Pink Dot symbol itself, represent
ing the nation’s progressive future (see 9–11). As a public LGBTQ event, the formation of
Pink Dot is uniquely Singaporean in origin; note the contrastive reference to implied in
ternational gay protest marches and pride parades in (11). Moreover, only Singaporeans
(as indicated in the nominal phrase “open-minded Singaporeans”) may participate in
forming this national symbol.
(9) Together we shall celebrate diversity and equality. And create a symbol for
Singapore’s more inclusive future. Come and make Pink Dot with us. (2009 Pink Dot
video)
(10) By coming together to make this pink dot, we’re standing up for a Singapore in
which all Singaporeans are free to love and be loved by both friends and family.
(2010 Pink Dot video)
(11) Pink Dot is not a protest or a parade. It is a fun, peaceful celebration of love,
where open-minded Singaporeans come together to form a human pink dot. (2012
Pink Dot video)
Entextualization of Singapore’s National Day Celebrations
A performance of nationalism is also achieved through a process of “entextualization,” in

volving the re-citing/re-siting of symbolic practices from one semiotic context to another
(Bauman and Briggs 1990; Silverstein and Urban 1996). Discussed in this section is en
textualization of symbolic practices of Singapore’s National Day in the Pink Dot videos.
Singapore’s independence in 1965 is commemorated annually on August 9 with a festive
National Day Parade (NDP), culminating in a grand display of fireworks in the night sky.
Familiar elements of the National Day celebrations are entextualized in a number of ways
in Pink Dot’s promotional videos. Firstly, a highlight of the parade is the ceremonial dis
play of the national flag airlifted by helicopters. As the Pink Dot rallies coincide around
the time of the NDP rehearsals, footages of the Singapore flag carried across the sky are
entextualized in the 2014 and 2015 videos. (See Figure 2).
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Figure 2: Airlifted flag of Singapore.
Source: 2014 Pink Dot video
The visuals work with the verbal texts below to construe a heightened sense of patrio
tism.
(12) I remember the year we had the helicopter with a Singapore flag flying past. It
was like a happy National Day. (2014 Pink Dot video)
(13) Singaporeans should make our society more inclusive. (2015 Pink Dot video)
In (12), as the words “I remember the year we had” is spoken, a medium-close shot of the
symbolic-attributive representation of the speaker in a pink blouse cuts to an aerial view
of masses of people gathered as dots of pink. These images of Pink Dot are juxtaposed
with the continuation of the utterance “the helicopter with a Singapore flag flying past,”
reinforced through a visual reiteration of that nationalistic image. The final identifying re
lational clause clinches the connection overtly between the two events—the experience of
being at Pink Dot was like being at the NDP. Juxtaposing of the flag in relation to Pink Dot
is also undertaken in (13). Whereas the nationalistic significance is established in the first
part of the clause by instigating proactiveness in “Singaporeans” (depicted in relation to
the helicopter-carried flag image), the latter half of the clause cuts to a cross-section of
the Pink Dot assembly. A mid-shot of the Pink Dot crowd gazing open-mouthed toward the
sky zooms to a close-up of two women looking up smiling. In the overlaying of the Pink
Dot rally with the nationalistic flag symbolism, the nation not only is recalled on the Pink
Dot occasion via space-time enregisterment, but a convergence of the two kinds and
scales of celebration is also achieved. Pink Dot both subsumes the nation and, arguably, is
elevated to a national-scale celebration. At the same time, the awestruck affective re
sponses of the Pink Dot participants at the nationalistic spectacle show LGBTQ support
ers as perfectly aligned with virtues of national allegiance. Patriotism and support for sex
ual minorities, in other words, are not conflictual or mutually exclusive, but coterminous.
Secondly, a nationalistic song is usually commissioned yearly for the NDP. “Home,” origi
nally composed by Dick Lee and performed by Kit Chan, two highly acclaimed local musi
cal talents, is a Singapore classic. The NDP theme song for 1998 and repeated in 2004, it
was also remade for Total Defence Day in 2011—a day marked annually to remind Singa
poreans of the time when Singapore fell to Japanese occupation, so as to build resolve to
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keep the nation safe, secure, and sovereign (Total Defence 2018). Deeply saturated with
national, patriotic significance, the lyrical ballad was again recycled as the soundtrack for
the 2013 Pink Dot video. That year, the promotional video was produced in the form of a
scripted narrative comprising three separate but interweaving mini-narratives that fea
tured the struggles and hopes of local LGBTQ characters: a middle-aged gay Chinese cou
ple, a transgender Malay teenager, and a twenty-something lesbian Indian woman. Unify
ing the mini-narratives were two features. In each story, a promising resolution culminat
ed in the participation at Pink Dot; and the nationalistic soundtrack embedded and bound
the mini-narratives together into a whole. At the same time, in recycling the NDP classic
within the Pink Dot context, newer homonationalistic meanings accrued to the song itself.
In order to illustrate the co-articulation of sexual/gender diversity with national identity

in the entextualization of the song in the video, I provide here an analysis of one of the
mini-narratives, namely, the story about the lesbian woman, “Cynthia.” The story revolves
around Cynthia’s homecoming to Singapore after having lived abroad and about the
strained relationship she has had with her mother, who cannot accept her daughter’s non-
normative sexual identity. In seeking understanding and acceptance, she pens a letter
inviting her parents to join her at Pink Dot 2013, and the story concludes on an optimistic
note, with the parents and daughter reuniting in Hong Lim Park. Throughout the narra
tive, there is a semiotic interplay of the double meanings of “home” (the title of the theme
song); at times referring to “family” and at other times conflating with “nation.”
The scene is set prior to the soundtrack, with Cynthia shown holding a cellphone expec
tantly to her ear, only to hear a distinct disconnect tone signaling that the intended recipi
ent, her mother, had hung up. As the camera shifts to a close-up profile shot of a dejected-
looking Cynthia, the lyrics begin with the words “Whenever I am feeling low …” mirror
ing her affect verbally. The next scene opens on a wide shot of street traffic in New York
City (visually cued by its iconic yellow cabs and a sign in the background that reads “New
York Doctors”). Standing beside a yellow cab, Cynthia is portrayed in transactional action
processes of holding and kissing another woman tenderly, with a red Singapore passport
in her hand, which comes into view, symbolic-attributively. Simultaneous with the scene
are the lyrics “There is a place that will stay within me wherever I may choose to go.” In
ter-semiotically, the visuals identify her as a lesbian Singaporean in New York City, while
the locative predicate shows her verbally anchored to Singapore. The narrative continues
with Cynthia’s homecoming, visually indexed by a landing plane, followed by a wide-angle
shot of her walking with her suitcase along the corridor of a residential flat. The chorus
“This is home truly, where I know I must be” plays in the background, carrying the dual
meanings of “home”—as family residence and as national belonging.
Poignantly ironic to the lyrics, the next scene zooms in on the sense of home-as-family to
reveal a familial relationship of estrangement. Through a series of over-the-shoulder
shots, the mother’s and daughter’s body language and averted gaze signal an emotional
impasse, although verbally the accompanying lyrics end on a note of optimism (“start
anew,” “comfort”): “When there are troubles to go through, I look around and start anew.
For there’s comfort in the knowledge that home’s about its people too.” The penultimate
Page 11 of 17

scene shows a close-up of a letter written by Cynthia, which ends with an indirect invita
tion to her parents to meet her at the Pink Dot event: “I will be at Pink Dot tomorrow …
that celebrates the Freedom to Love.” Accompanying this is a fuller rendition of the cho
rus: “There’ll always be Singapore. This is home truly, where I know I must be. Where my
dreams wait for me, where the river always flows.” In this scene, Pink Dot and Singapore
are inter-semiotically intertwined through the point of view of the lesbian protagonist;
note the personal pronouns in the letter and the lyrics that bind the two together. This
homonationalist consonance is emphasized in the closing scene, when the parents turn up
at Pink Dot attired symbolic-attributively in pink, and the mother and daughter embrace
amid pink balloons and bubbles. The accompanying song concludes with “For this is
where I know I’m home,” and the video ends by zooming out to an aerial shot of the hu
man Pink Dot superimposed with the caption “For a Singapore we can all call home.” In
ter-semiotically, LGBTQ Singaporeans, Pink Dot, and the nation are enmeshed and
aligned.
Finally, the act of shining lights during the Pink Dot formation is reminiscent of NDP as
well. Although in earlier years, the creation of the human Pink Dot in daylight relied on
aerial photography of pink umbrellas and balloons en masse carried aloft, since 2012 the
formation has taken place after sunset, through the illumination of pink lights from flash
lights and cellophane- covered cellphones. Aerial shots represent the crowds as a shim
mering sea of pink, while wide shots show participants waving their flashlights and
phones at designated times (e.g. 2013 Pink Dot video). The collective action of waving
lights resembles the ritualistic NDP practice, in which participants are given light sticks
and are coordinated to wave them about at certain moments in a united gesture of nation
alistic pride.
Embedding of National Indexicals
In this section, I discuss an assortment of national institutions and buildings that get in
corporated into the Pink Dot videos. I refer to these as national indexicals, which discreet
ly yet recognizably signify national identity by their very presence in the relocated dis
course context. They appear in the Pink Dot videos as parts of the ordinary setting, narra
tive context, or wider discourse, and contribute toward a banal homonationalism (cf. Bil
lig 1995; see also Milani and Levon 2016). I view national indexicals as part of a wider
concept of embedded semiotics. The familiar practice of commercial product placements
in media genres such as films and television programs constitutes embedded marketing
that, in signification terms, is a form of embedded semiosis that derives particular conno
tational value from the discursive context in which it is implanted. I am suggesting that
the reverse happens in the case of the national indexicals embedded in the Pink Dot
videos, which transfer nationalistic value into the emplaced discursive environment.
One such national indexical is reference to National Service (NS)—a two-year mandatory
military service required of all male citizens aged eighteen and above. NS is referenced
unobtrusively in the Pink Dot videos in two ways; one of which is by inserting mention of
NS personnel into a wider discourse. In the 2009 video, in response to an implied ques
Page 12 of 17

tion, “Do you know anyone who is gay?,” various snapshots of people citing LGBTQ indi
viduals they have known from all walks of life are presented, among which mentions of
two different gay men in NS are interspersed:
(14) I had a sergeant who is gay.

(15) I knew this guy in the army. He got the best trainee award and he is gay.
The fact that these two individuals are mentioned among sexual minorities in other roles
(e.g. bosses, policemen, architects, students, lecturers, friends, and siblings) normalizes
gay persons’ contributions also to the national defense. Not only are these individuals in
volved in NS training, they are depicted as exemplary, as noted in the functional catego
rization denoting a position of responsibility (“sergeant”) and in the superlative (“the best
trainee award”). In both instances, non-normative sexuality is not represented as their
primary identity, but subordinated to the nationalistic identity through a postmodifying
defining clause (14) and an elaborating conjunctive clause (15).
Sexual minorities in relation to NS are not always presented positively, though. In two
other videos, the challenges for gender/sexual nonconforming persons even as they serve
the nation are highlighted. In the first video, the challenge is verbally recounted in a
transsexual person’s personal narrative: “Um, I had to do the whole two years’, um, Na
tional Service, what the psychiatrist said was that um, maybe it might ((laughs)) make me
more of a man after it, but—apparently not” (2010 Pink Dot video). In a second video, a
visual re-enactment of harassment and bullying of a gay recruit by his peers in the dormi
tory is presented (2011 Pink Dot video). In the two examples, the queer persons are rep
resented as having to endure prejudice and a lack of understanding. In the first instance,
the modulated clause (“I had to do”), together with the fillers and the ironic laughter, con
vey a sense of obligation and resignation in having to undergo NS due to the psychiatric
nonvalidation of her transsexual identity. In the latter example, the recruit is visually rep
resented as attempting helplessly to retrieve his cellphone from his peers, who toss it
about among themselves as they pass derogatory remarks (“you faggot”) with reference
to a photo of a young man they see on his phone.
A second set of indexicals pertains to represented images of Singapore’s national media

embedded within video frames. The national broadcast and broadsheet—Mediacorp and
The Straits Times, respectively—are known for their “nation-building” mandate as de
fined by the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party) government, which shapes the represent
ed media content. In the Pink Dot videos, the named national media are depicted in re
gard to homosexual content, either as presenting the current conservative state of affairs
or as projecting a hoped-for progressive future. In the 2012 video, two contrastive scenar
ios pertaining to censorship of gay desire on a Mediacorp television program are repre
sented. On the one hand, the Mediacorp logo appears at the top right-hand corner of a
television screen, on which a frozen close-up profile shot of two men facing each other,
without touching, is shown. On the other hand, the two men are shown in extreme close-
up in the bi-transactional action process (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996) of kissing each
other, accompanied by a voice-over: “Someday, gay people will be free to express them
Page 13 of 17

selves without censorship.” Rather than present this as a comment about media censor
ship generally, the visual display of the Mediacorp logo specifically calls out the national
broadcaster.
Another set of contrastive media representations is found in the videos across separate
years, involving the main English-language national newspaper, The Straits Times. A
close-up scenario of the 2012 video reveals The Straits Times masthead, below which is
featured a newsworthy story headlined “377A Repealed: Positive progress for Singapore’s
LGBT community.” In this instance, the desire for liberalization of gay civil rights is imag
ined as an achieved reality published matter-of-factly in the national newspaper. A news
photo of the Parliament House is pictured for political weight. In stark contrast to this
hoped-for reality, a 2015 video segment in fact represents the existing reality as depicted
in the close-up of an online national report: “Singapore High Court upholds criminaliza
tion of homosexuality,” accompanied by an emblematic photo of the (new) Supreme
Court.
Thirdly, distinguishable urban infrastructure featured in Pink Dot videos also index Singa
pore and construe a banal homonationalism. One set of infrastructure involves the city
skyline, representative of Singapore in images depicting it as a cosmopolitan city-state or
as a tourist destination, except that in this case, the images are homonationalized in rela
tion to the Pink Dot campaign. For example, aerial time-lapse shots of the human Pink
Dot ensemble at Hong Lim Park shown at the end of the videos widen to reveal the sur
rounding panoramic views of the CBD skyscrapers and the Singapore Flyer, the world’s
tallest Ferris wheel observatory (e.g. 2012 Pink Dot video). Other examples include a
high-angle extreme wide shot panning Singapore’s distinctive skyline, showing office sky
scrapers, red-roofed shop houses, and public residential flats, including Pinnacle @ Dux
ton (a landmark award-winning, fifty-story residential development), to the chorus of the
“Home” soundtrack (2013 Pink Dot video). Or a lesbian woman, whose narrative is fea
tured in the video, is seen cycling with a friend against the backdrop of touristic high
lights such as the Gardens by the Bay, Marina Bay Sands, the ArtScience Museum, the
Singapore Flyover, and CBD skyscrapers (2016 Pink Dot video).
The representation of high-rise public residential housing known as Housing Develop

ment Board or “HDB flats” in the Pink Dot videos particularly index a banal homonation
alism of LGBTQ Singaporeans in their ordinary, everyday setting. The HDB was set up by
the ruling government in 1960 to provide affordable public housing on a massive scale,
which has made these flats (home to more than 80 percent of the population) characteris
tic of the national urban landscape. Intended to encourage home ownership, the govern
ment-subsidized HDB flats have played an integral role in Singapore’s nation-building
process (Hill and Lian 1995). Visibly featured in a few videos, the HDB flats provide a
sense of location and national belonging of LGBTQ subjects, while at the same time
homonationalizing vast areas of Singapore’s lived public spaces. Sometimes the flats
function as background scenery. In the 2013 video, a wide shot of an HDB estate, com
plete with a typical town council banner featuring four MPs (presumably), comes into
view, as a gay couple is driving past. The “Home” soundtrack in the video anchors the im
Page 14 of 17

age in the lyrics “I will always recall the city. Know every street and shore.” In a 2016
video, using the technique of focalization, the local residential landscape is presented
through the eyes of a young gay man from within a moving public bus. From his perspec
tive, we glimpse Singapore’s “heartland,” where the majority of Singaporean families
work, live, and play, and which signifies a distinctive “Singaporeanness.” The depicted
heartland shows a local coffee shop, blocks of HDB flats, among which is the uniquely
rainbow-painted block in a familiar residential neighborhood; although, in this context,
the global pride colors might not be coincidental.
Beyond the portrayal of HDB flats functioning as a passing backdrop, gender/sexual non
conforming subjects are represented as residents of HDB homes. The example of “Cyn
thia” discussed earlier is a case in point. She is shown walking along a common HDB cor
ridor toward her family home, against a backdrop of other neighboring blocks painted in
the national red and white colors (2013 Pink Dot video). In other videos, too, LGBTQ per
sons featured are shown approaching or leaving their HDB flats or inside their residential
apartments (2016 Pink Dot video). These come to index “home” truly; in fact, in addition
to the double-sense mentioned earlier, the locating of LGBTQ persons in HDB flats sub
verts the heteronormative conjugal family structure for which these flats were originally
designed.
Conclusion: From Semiotics to Politics of

Homonationalism
In this chapter, homonationalism as a productive analytical concept in the study of lan
guage and sexuality was discussed, with a focus on the semiotic realizations of a homona
tionalist discourse. The case study of Pink Dot SG demonstrated a semiotic complex at
work that involved multi- and inter-semiotic processes involving language, visual images,
color, songs, and symbolically mediated affect, corporeal, and material forms. The semi
otic complex comprised a semiotic-material/spatial dialectic that was noteworthy, too, in
that, on the one hand, conceptual ideas get materialized (e.g. the corporeality of the hu
man Pink Dot in Hong Lim Park), and on the other hand, a semiotization of banal spatial
landscapes (e.g. cityscapes and urban dwellings) occurs.
In concluding, however, the focus needs to be re-shifted from semiotics to politics, for at
the heart of the semiotization of homonationalism lies the dynamics of power/resistance.
Homonationalism construed by state (or suprastate) actors, as seen, is deeply problemat
ic for the political instrumentalization of queer politics and disciplining of queer identities
for self-serving nationalistic agendas. As Puar (2013) reminds us, it is not only state or in
stitutional actors per se who promulgate homonationalism; rather, it is achieved through
the complicity of nonstate actors as well. From a critical perspective, then, the hege
monies of homonationalism and neoliberalism undergirding it require active contestation.
Yet, from a critical perspective, too, homonationalism can be harnessed to perform a con
textualized politics of resistance as well (Lazar 2017). While queer radicals would criti
cize Pink Dot’s approach as assimilationist, it is nonetheless a creative and tactical way of
Page 15 of 17

“doing” politics in illiberal contexts, namely, by toeing the line yet simultaneously pushing
boundaries (Chua 2014). The discourse of homonationalism, then, is a complex site at
which queer politics can get done and undone.
References
Altman, Robert. 2001. “Global gaze/global gays.” In Sexual identities, queer politics, ed.
Mark Blasius, 96–117. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ammaturo, Francesca Romana. 2015. “The ‘Pink Agenda’: Questioning and challenging
European homonationalist sexual citizenship.” Sociology 49, no. 6: 1151–1166.
Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and performance as critical per
spectives on language and social life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88.
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal nationalism. London: Sage
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni

versity Press.
Chua, Lynette. 2014. Mobilizing gay Singapore: Rights and resistance in an authoritarian
state. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and
violence against women of color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6: 1241–1299.
Duggan, Lisa. 2003. The twilight of equality?: Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the at
tack on democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hill, Michael, and Kwen Fee Lian. 1995. The politics of nation building and citizenship in
Singapore. London: Routledge.
Jones, Lucy. 2016. “If a Muslim says ‘homo,’ nothing gets done: Racist discourse and in-
group identity construction in an LGBT youth group.” Language in Society 45, no. 1: 113–
133.
Koller, Veronika. 2008. “Not just a colour: Pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual
communication.” Visual Communication 7, no. 4: 395–423
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual de
sign. London: Routledge.
Lazar, Michelle M. 2017. “Homonationalist discourse as a politics of pragmatic resistance

in Singapore’s Pink Dot movement: Towards a southern praxis.” Journal of Sociolinguis
tics 21, no. 3: 420–441.
Milani, Tommaso, and Erez Levon. 2016. “Sexing diversity: Linguistic landscapes of
homonationalism.” Language & Communication 51: 69–86.
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Petersen, Michael Nebeling, Charlotte Kroløkke, and Lene Myong. 2017. “Dad and daddy
assemblage resuturing the nation through transnational surrogacy, homosexuality, and
Norwegian exceptionalism.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 23, no. 1: 83–112.
Pink Dot SG. 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/pinkdotsg?gl=SG&hl=en-GB. Ac

cessed July 2018.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Puar, Jasbir. 2013. “Rethinking homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East

Studies 45: 336–339.
Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban, eds. 1996. Natural histories of discourse. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Total Defence. 2018. Ministry of Defence. https://www.mindef.gov.sg/oms/imindef/

mindef_websites/topics/totaldefence/campaigns/TD2018.html. Accessed July 2018.
Treat, John Whittier. 2015. “The rise and fall of homonationalism in Singapore.” Positions:
East Asia Cultures Critique 23, no. 2: 349–365.
Michelle M. Lazar
Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore
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Semiotics of Homonationalism

Subject: Linguistics, Sociolinguistics Online Publication Date: Oct 2019

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses homonationalism as an analytical concept, which was developed

Keywords: homonationalism, semiosis, queer politics, resistance, Pink Dot, Singapore

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Homonationalism: The Development of the An­

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Homonormativity is both disciplined by the nation and its heteronormative under­

As an analytical concept, homonationalism has achieved resonance in other (neo)liberal

Extending Puar’s construction of the United States as an exceptional nation-state, a simi­

Francesca Ammaturo (2015) applies the dynamics of homonationalism to the supranation­

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

age of Europe is emphasized. Premised upon civilizational assumptions, however, the

Although these studies demonstrate the productivity of homonationalism as an analytical

Reporting on a larger study regarding shared identity construction among a group of

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Finally, drawing on a critical multimodal discourse analysis, I explicate the discourse of

A Semiotic Analysis of Homonationalism: The

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

multimodal analysis of the emergent homonationalist discourse. The argument advanced

In the analysis, the enmeshing of sexual/gender non-normativity and nationalism is

Framing of “Pink Dot”

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

pink in nationalistic overtones of Singapore’s flag—the blending of colors itself symbolic

Figure 1: Aerial shot of the Pink Dot formation.

Source: Pink Dot video

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Entextualization of Singapore’s National Day Celebrations

A performance of nationalism is also achieved through a process of “entextualization,” in­

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Figure 2: Airlifted flag of Singapore.

Source: 2014 Pink Dot video

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

In order to illustrate the co-articulation of sexual/gender diversity with national identity

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Embedding of National Indexicals

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

(14) I had a sergeant who is gay.

A second set of indexicals pertains to represented images of Singapore’s national media

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

The representation of high-rise public residential housing known as Housing Develop­

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Conclusion: From Semiotics to Politics of

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal nationalism. London: Sage

Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­

Lazar, Michelle M. 2017. “Homonationalist discourse as a politics of pragmatic resistance

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

Pink Dot SG. 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/pinkdotsg?gl=SG&hl=en-GB. Ac­

Puar, Jasbir. 2013. “Rethinking homonationalism.” International Journal of Middle East

Total Defence. 2018. Ministry of Defence. https://www.mindef.gov.sg/oms/imindef/

Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore

Subscriber: Universitaetsbibliothek Bern; date: 15 September 2020

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