THE RISE OF ACE AS A DESCRIPTOR A Linguistic Study Concerning the Jargon within an Online Asexual Community

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the jargon that can be found within an online asexual community. The most common definition of asexuality is that a person does not feel sexual attraction to any gender. This group of people has since the 1950s gained attention in fields such as biomedicine and social sciences. Those who identify as asexual are estimated to be one percent of the population, and although the community has not dealt with much public hostility throughout history, previous studies show that these individuals are considered to lack basic human emotions. This study uses a subforum that can be found on the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) and compares two sets of data, collected from the years 2008 and 2017. This comparison of data which is ten years apart offers an understanding of what lexical words have been used, whether relevant vocabulary to the community is put in a positive, negative or neutral context, and whether there are any significant changes to the vocabulary. The results show both quantitatively and qualitatively that there are in fact some notable changes when it comes to words that are used more frequently, as well as words that seem to have lost their initial meaning over time.