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Blanche was interested to read of a new linguistic development at the popular gay blog JoeMyGod.blog-spot.com. Blogger Joe notes a growing tendency for gay men to make a difference between married and MARRIED-married. Readers can get a sense of the difference between the two from the following reported conversation at a gay campground. An attractive, muscular man walks by and three men other men discuss him as follows:

Camper 1: Woof!
Camper 2: Agreed.
Camper 3: Married. Lives in Boston.
Camper 1: Damn, too bad.
Camper 2: No, he's not married, but he lives with his lover.
Camper 1: Oh, so I've got a shot.
Camper 2: I didn't say that. Just that he's not married-married.
Camper 1: So, they're just lovers?
Camper 2: Right. Just lovers.

T

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he crucial part comes when Camper 2 says "he's not married-married." When spoken aloud, the first instance of the word married will be louder and more emphatic than the second, often shown by capitalization.

"Married-married" is an example of what linguists call "contrastive reduplication." Reduplication in general is repeating all or part of a word, as in phrases such as "namby-pamby." There are few different kinds in English, but the one in "married-married" is called "contrastive" because it has a sense of highlighting the item under discussion as a real, true, or prototypical instance of something in contrast with other things that go by the same name.

The point of discussion on Joe.My.God was whether "married-married" is disrespectful to people whose relationships are not recognized by the state. So suppose a couple in Topeka and couple in Amherst both have a commitment ceremony, live together, and consider themselves married. But the couple in Amherst has a marriage license from the state of Massachusetts.

Is it disrespectful to say that Bill and Fred in Topeka are "married," but Tom and Ramón in Amherst are "married-married"? Joe thinks that it is. "A couple of years ago, I wrote a post titled, 'What is a Husband?'" Joe writes, "wondering whether once gay marriage became a reality, would we be flippantly giving 'verbal downgrades' to relationships that haven't been made 'legal.' The exchange above is just one of the several times I've heard such a distinction made in the past few months. And I hate it."

But key to deciding whether such language is disrespectful is getting a clear idea of what exactly it means. A few years ago, several linguists published a study of contrastive focus reduplication that is helpful in understanding how it is used in English. One possibility is that when we say something is "blah-blah" we mean "really and truly blah, in contrast with other things that are sometimes called 'blah,' but are not really." So we can imagine an exchange like this:

Father: When I come home, my seven-year-old likes to point his gun at me.
Friend: Your son has a gun?
Father: Not a gun-gun, but a toy gun.

A toy gun is not really a gun, but something that looks like a gun. So when the father says "gun-gun," he means something that is really a gun -- not a fake gun or a toy gun.

But that is not the only meaning of contrastive focus reduplication. Another possibility is that when we say "blah-blah," we mean "the most common kind of 'blah'" or "the most typical kind of 'blah.'" So we can also imagine the following dialogue:

Professor 1: Do you like teaching?
Professor 2: Yes, it's fine. Once I had a job-job and I couldn't stand it.

Here Professor 2 certainly has a job, goes to work, and gets paid. But when he talks about a job-job, he means the most common or typical kind of job, where you work from nine to five and get two weeks of vacation.

When we think about the phrase "married-married," as said by gay men, we need to figure out what the speaker intends, since it could have two meanings. One possibility is that he means the couple in Topeka are in a fake marriage, and if that is the intent, that does seem disrespectful.

But the other possibility is that the speaker means that a married-married couple is one which is married in the most common or typical way. And the most typical kind of marriage in this country does involve a marriage license, a wedding, and all the other accoutrements of a legally recognized union. So it's entirely possible (and maybe even likely) that when someone says married-married, he or she only means "married in the most common/typical way." There's nothing homophobic or disrespectful about that.