"I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness

This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working-class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people’s identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experience...

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Main Author: Jones, Lucy
Format: Article
Published: Wiley 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48118/
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author Jones, Lucy
author_facet Jones, Lucy
author_sort Jones, Lucy
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working-class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people’s identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experienced from those in their local community. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, and using theoretical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics, the strategies that the young people employ to negotiate this othering are explored; they reject certain stereotypes of queer culture (such as Gay Pride or being ‘camp’), and aim to minimise the relevance of their sexuality to their social identity. It is argued this reflects both the influence of neoliberal, ‘homonormative’ ideology, which casts sexuality in the private rather than public domain, and the stigma their sexuality holds in their local community. These findings point to the need to understand identity construction intersectionally.
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spelling nottingham-481182020-05-04T19:52:32Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48118/ "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness Jones, Lucy This article outlines the shared identity construction of five gay and lesbian members of an LGBT youth group, situated in a conservative, working-class, Northern English town. It is shown that the young people’s identity work emerges in response to the homophobia and ‘othering’ they have experienced from those in their local community. Through ethnography and discourse analysis, and using theoretical frameworks from interactional sociolinguistics, the strategies that the young people employ to negotiate this othering are explored; they reject certain stereotypes of queer culture (such as Gay Pride or being ‘camp’), and aim to minimise the relevance of their sexuality to their social identity. It is argued this reflects both the influence of neoliberal, ‘homonormative’ ideology, which casts sexuality in the private rather than public domain, and the stigma their sexuality holds in their local community. These findings point to the need to understand identity construction intersectionally. Wiley 2018-02 Article PeerReviewed Jones, Lucy (2018) "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22 (1). pp. 55-76. ISSN 1467-9841 Othering; Identity; LGBT youth; Homonormativity; Homophobia; Intersectionality http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josl.12271/full doi:10.1111/josl.12271 doi:10.1111/josl.12271
spellingShingle Othering; Identity; LGBT youth; Homonormativity; Homophobia; Intersectionality
Jones, Lucy
"I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title_full "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title_fullStr "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title_full_unstemmed "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title_short "I'm not proud, I'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
title_sort "i'm not proud, i'm just gay": lesbian and gay youths' discursive negotiation of otherness
topic Othering; Identity; LGBT youth; Homonormativity; Homophobia; Intersectionality
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48118/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48118/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/48118/