Clinical Register: Professional Language in Sexual Health and Care
Clinical register is the formal, precise, and neutral style of language used in healthcare to describe anatomy, symptoms, sexual health, behavior, and medical conditions.
Person-Centered Terminology: Respectful Language About Identity and Health
Person-centered terminology uses accurate, respectful language that recognizes a person as more than a diagnosis, disability, sexual behavior, gender characteristic, or health condition.
Coded Language: Hidden Meaning, Identity, and Sexual Communication
Coded language uses words, symbols, or expressions whose deeper meaning depends on shared knowledge, often helping people communicate identity, attraction, or sexuality indirectly.
Colloquial Register: Informal Language in Sexual Communication
Colloquial register is the informal style used in everyday speech and can include slang, euphemisms, idioms, and conversational expressions about sexuality and relationships.
Respectful Terminology: Accurate, Inclusive, and Non-Stigmatizing Language
Respectful terminology uses accurate and considerate words for people, identities, bodies, health, relationships, and sexuality without unnecessary stigma or degrading assumptions.
Double Entendre: Double Meaning, Sexual Humor, and Wordplay
Double entendre is an expression with two possible meanings, often combining an innocent interpretation with a sexual, suggestive, or humorous one.
Innuendo: Indirect, Suggestive, and Sexual Meaning in Language
Innuendo is an indirect or suggestive expression that implies a meaning without stating it openly, often using ambiguity, humor, tone, or context to suggest something sexual.
Sexual Discourse: Language, Culture, Power, and Sexual Norms
Sexual discourse is the wider system of language, ideas, narratives, and institutions through which societies discuss, define, regulate, and understand sexuality.
Dysphemism: Harsh, Offensive, and Derogatory Language
Dysphemism is a deliberately harsh or insulting expression used instead of a neutral term and can reinforce sexual stigma, gender stereotypes, or derogatory social judgment.
Sexual Metaphor: Figurative Language About Sex and Desire
A sexual metaphor uses symbolic comparison to express sexual desire, attraction, bodies, or intimacy indirectly through images such as heat, hunger, nature, or electricity.