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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 31:2 (2021) ► pp.338–357

“When I came to the US”

Constructing migration in gay Indian immigrants’ coming-out narratives

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From a social constructionist perspective, this study examines three gay Indian immigrants’ coming-out narratives as the locus of the discursive construction of both one’s physical and social location within the changing context. It advocates reconceptualizing “coming out” as dynamic and situated in interaction. Also, it investigates the intersection and construction of identities by analyzing coming-out narratives in sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Washington, DC. Drawing on Bamberg’s three levels of positioning (1997), the analysis highlights how narrators bring about their identities as they contrast the social constructs in India, i.e., the absence of such concept, and in the US, e.g., the acceptance of homosexuality, by reenacting dialogue before and after migration. This study adds to positioning theory and contributes to the cross-cultural dimension of research on coming-out narratives. The qualitative analysis also provides a linguistic perspective that views narrating coming out as an interactive process for constructing intersected identities.

Keywords: gay immigrant, coming out, narrative, positioning, identity, India, cross-cultural context, social constructionism
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • Reconceptualizing and recontextualizing coming-out narratives
    • Narrative, migration, and identity
    • Identity and positioning in narrative
  • Data
  • Analysis
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 18 May 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19088.wan
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Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Sandler, Elisabeth Theresa
2022. An overview of coming out research: Introducing a three‐lens typology. Sociology Compass 16:2 DOI logo
Wang, Ping-Hsuan
2022. ‘The words has been immigrate’: Chronotopes in context-shaping narrative co-construction about Taiwanese loanwords with Taiwanese Americans. Language in Society 51:1 ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Ping-Hsuan
2023. Coming out for another. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 33:2 ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo

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