Discourse analysis of LGBT speech: Discursive formations and the constitution of subjects and meanings

Abstract

This article discusses the interpretive gestures of LGBT subjects and their identification processes. It also performs a discursive listening of their statements about themselves and conditions of production and analyzes the processes by which subjects and meanings are (un)done, considering the constitutive heterogeneity of the statement. We then  pose the questions: How do LGBT subjects produce statements about themselves? What meanings are evident when they are invited to talk about their experiences? What does it mean to be part of this group? The main theoretical framework was based on the works of Michel Pêcheux (1997, 2024), among others. The empirical work involved semi-structured interviews addressed to two gay men, a bisexual woman, and a non-binary transvestite who identified herself as pansexual, aged between 20 and 50 years. We conclude that, affected, in a contradictory and tense way by normativity and by the insistence to exist despite it, the subjects are constituted from their identification, or not, with circulating knowledge in antagonistic discursive formations that are a manifestation of an ideological formation of customs. From the relation of forces between the discursive formations, effects of purge, curtailment, hope and humanity resonate.