The Interactional Production of Narratives on Trans Categories: The Role of Body Modifications

Authors

  • Willian Maciel Krüger Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre
  • Marcela Alberti
  • Alexandre do Nascimento Almeida Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2021.77

Keywords:

Gender, Membership Categories, Biomedical Discourse, Transsexuality, Travestility

Abstract

In this article, we investigate how participants self-identified as travestis and transsexual women negotiate gender identity categories during meetings of a support group in a non-governmental organization in Porto Alegre, Brazil. We are interested in (a) how trans categories become relevant in talk-in-interaction and in (b) how these categories are constructed vis-à-vis biomedical discourse about transsexuality. The corpus of this research is composed of seven hours of video-recorded interaction, which were analyzed and transcribed following Conversation Analysis (CA) theoretical principles and methodological procedures. Our results point out that participants oriented to the role of body modifications in stressing identity category differences among travestis, transsexual women and gay men. We noticed that narrative analysis inspired by CA emerges as a powerful apparatus to understand the process of membership categorization. Data are in Brazilian Portuguese.

Author Biographies

Willian Maciel Krüger, Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre

Willian Maciel Krüger is an undergraduate student of Psychology at the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil. His research interests are Psychotherapy, Talk-in-interaction, and Gender Studies.

Marcela Alberti

Marcela Alberti holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology and Health from the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil. Her research interests are Psychotherapy, Talk-in-interaction, and Gender Studies.

Alexandre do Nascimento Almeida, Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil

Alexandre do Nascimento Almeida is a tenured professor at the Department of Education and Humanities at the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Brazil. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. He is a professor at the Graduate Program in Health Education at UFCSPA. His research interests are gender studies, talk-in-interaction, and health education.

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Published

2021-01-26

How to Cite

Maciel Krüger, W., Alberti, M., & do Nascimento Almeida, A. (2021). The Interactional Production of Narratives on Trans Categories: The Role of Body Modifications. Open Gender Journal, 5. https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2021.77

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Section

10th European Feminist Research Conference in Göttingen (2018)

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