Authors
Celia Kitzinger
Publication date
2005/11/1
Journal
Social problems
Volume
52
Issue
4
Pages
477-498
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Description
Heterosexism has become a recognized social problem since the rise of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) activism in the 1970s. One of its manifestations is heteronormativity: the mundane production of heterosexuality as the normal, natural, taken-for-granted sexuality. My research uses conversation analysis to explore heteronormativity as an ongoing, situated, practical accomplishment by people oriented to other actions entirely. I show that family reference terms—across a dataset of 59 after-hours calls to the doctor—are deployed so as to construct a normative version of the heterosexual nuclear family: a married couple, co-resident with their biological, dependent children. I examine the inferences normatively attached to family reference terms, consider how these inferences are used interactionally, and document how this everyday talk-in-interaction both reflects and reconstitutes the …
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