Interactional positioning in short stories told by an immigrant university student - heterosexual male performance

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8412.2017v14n2p2116

This paper aims to analyze how the interactional positioning of an immigrant university student shapes him as a heterosexual man in line with a more conservative ‘heterosexual matrix’. This stance emerge in short stories told in a narrative interview situation. This analysis, developed on the Applied Linguistics field, was undertaken based on the three sorting levels of narrative activities listed by Bamberg (2002), as well as making use of Wortham's (2001) analytic tools — reference and predication; metapragmatic descriptors; quotation; indexical evaluation and epistemic modalisation. The study suggests that the university student deconstructs some feminist discourses in his short stories to position himself as a heterosexual man.