Heteronormativity in First Encounters: An Interactional Analysis

Abstract

Conversations between people who meet for the first time follow specific constraints. For instance, speakers are constrained as to what topics they can talk about, and how. Analysing recordings of non-institutional informal conversations in Norwegian between previously unacquainted speakers, this paper argues that conversationally appropriate displays of heterosexuality are a way of fulfilling constraints on friendly encounters in such settings. In the conversations this is done through references to former and present (heterosexual) partners, through talk about marriage and attraction, and through the construction of homosexuality as “the other” and as having negative connotations.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Kristin Hagen for access to full transcriptions of NoTa-Oslo conversations, and for her prompt and friendly help, and two anonymous reviewers and the NORA editors for helpful comments and suggestions. Many thanks also to Tommy Olofsson for his Norwegian insights.

Notes

1 The example is constructed, but based on field notes of similar examples in Swedish.

2 Norsk talespråkskorpus–Oslodelen, Tekstlaboratoriet, ILN, Universitetet i Oslo. http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nota/oslo/.

3 Note that the speaker's use of homser (gays) for the male characters in the film Alexander is anachronistic. Free men in Ancient Greece could have sexual relations with men as well as with women, and they categorized sexuality in other ways than based on the sex of the participants (Foucault, 1992).