Ostermann2017

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Ostermann2017
BibType ARTICLE
Key Ostermann2017
Author(s) Ana Cristina Ostermann
Title ‘No mam. You are heterosexual’: Whose language? Whose sexuality?
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Gender, language and sexuality, Conversation Analysis, Brazilian Portuguese, helpline, survey, heteronormativity, Membership Categorization Analysis
Publisher
Year 2017
Language English
City
Month
Journal Journal of Sociolinguistics
Volume 21
Number 3
Pages 348–370
URL Link
DOI 10.1111/josl.12240
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This study analyzes phone calls to a Brazilian governmental health helpline. By means of Conversation Analysis and categorization analysis, it investigates a demographic survey at the end of the calls, used to collect information about the caller, including the caller's sexual orientation. What was originally a wh-question (‘What is your sexual orientation?’) is most frequently transformed by call takers (who conduct the survey) into a polar question (‘Are you heterosexual?’), a format that triggers complex interactional trajectories and activates categorizations that demonstrate ‘in-action’ heteronormative understandings about gender and sexuality. The analysis reveals the helpline callers’ unfamiliarity with what academics and activists have mostly considered everyday and perhaps universal terminology, and thus calls for more bottom-up and ecologically valid ways of talking about sexual orientations. This investigation also contributes to questioning the traditional dichotomy of the micro and macro perspectives, demonstrating how situated interactions respond to a wider sociocultural repertoire which makes what is local simultaneously translocal.

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