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I used to be grossed out by this “daddy” thing. But then I started to look at it through the theoretical framework I used for my PhD and gained a new perspective on it. (Maybe I should add this to the list of pros of doing a PhD I use for academic career counselling)
Here is a rough explanation of how this specific sociolinguistic/semantic framework could be applied to "daddy". It is obviously only a partial view of the phenomenon that leaves out many aspects, and also would need to be studied from etymology, psychology, feminism POV. (1/6)
I understand “daddy” as a social type such as a nerd, emo, VSCO girl. “Daddy” is not based on a specific person, an individual’s dad. It is the archetype of all dad characteristics. These characteristics can be clothing, accessories, practices, stances, places frequented etc(2/6)
When such stereotypical relationships between characteristics and social meaning become conventionalised they are indexical associations. E.g. if I asked a couple of people to describe a hipster, they would most probably all come up with relatively similar attributes of how (3/6)
hipsters dress, groom, grocery shop, spend their leisure time. These associations can undergo an iconisation process and become styles, that is, they become styles iconic of the identities of that particular persona. In our case the persona is “daddy”, which through a (4/6)
conventionalised set of attributes has become a style and identity. This attribution happens in a context/a community. The queer/lesbian community shares a repertoire of characteristics associated with the “daddy” persona/style/identity. Within the queer/lesbian community (5/6)
there is a direct indexicality/meaning relationship between the conventionalised “daddy” characteristics and the “daddy” persona/style indexed. Furthermore, “daddy” also indirectly indexes a queer/lesbian identity. (6/6)
To be clear, I still don't think that personally I'm really into "daddy". But the researcher in me is intrigued and would definitely like to further explore/study this "daddy" practice.
