Out of the country, out of the closet: Coming out stories in cross-cultural contexts (Proof) (original) (raw)

2017, Journal of Southern Linguistics

Coming out is a widely discussed aspect of queer life in Western societies (Zimman, 2009), having been examined in various settings, including family (Denes & Afifi, 2014), workplace (Marrs & Staton, 2016), and online (Gray, 2009). With increasing migration in the world, analyzing coming-out stories in cross-cultural settings (i.e. of immigrants in America) provides insights into storytellers’ perceptions of cultural differences, such as attitudes toward gayness. To investigate this, gay men with migration history and presently living in the DC area were interviewed about their coming-out experiences. This paper explores immigrants’ coming-out stories by analyzing a narrative told by a gay Indian man wherein he comes out to his Taiwanese classmate. Analysis reveals how the narrator positions himself at three levels (Bamberg, 1997; see also De Fina, 2013) to reflect a gender identity shaped by cultural awareness, in both his self-portrayal in the story world (level 1) and interactions with the interviewer in the storytelling world (level 2). In the story, the narrator comes out cross-culturally both in a foreign country and to his classmate from a different background. He discloses his gay identity by referencing “cut-sleeve,” an idiom indexing homosexuality in traditional Chinese literature. Demonstrating knowledge of Chinese culture, he comes out while positioning himself vis-à-vis his story-world classmate and the interviewer, who is also Taiwanese. Findings suggest that positioning in immigrants’ coming-out stories shows storytellers’ identity construction through their cultural understanding of both story characters and story recipients, thus contributing to our understanding of diverse coming-out stories.