A study investigated beliefs, attitudes, and values upper-division college students have about gender and sexuality and how language is a medium by which these ideologies are created, challenged, and maintained. Further, it looks at how these ideologies are interdependent and interrelated, how symbolic systems of the campus interact as students constitute a social ideology of gender and sexuality, and how the campus is a site of cultural reproduction for gender and sexual ideologies. Data are drawn from tapes of talk in classrooms and student organization meetings and written texts such as student essays, electronic mail discussion, posters, graffiti, and articles, ads, and letters to the editor of the student newspaper. Principles of discourse analysis were used to explore how the semantics and pragmatics of language usage reflect and affect participants' notions of gender, sexuality, power, and dominance. Discussion of the data focuses on three ways in which language functions to constitute ideology: production; resistance; and opposition to resistance. Results suggest that there is a correlation between ideological and pragmatic functions of language; gender and sexuality do affect learning and participation in the community; and discourse practices maintain a value system and delineate specific roles and values for members. (Contains 50 references.) (MSE)