An individual’s identity is thought to accommodate and reflect his or her changing drives, abilities, beliefs, roles and obligations in an ever-changing environment, and a social or group identity is perceived as a contextually-bound aspect of this. When identity is stigmatised, expressions of identity are constrained by stigma management mechanisms, including group narratives. This study analyses the identity narratives of 64 lesbians as told to another lesbian, in particular referential, structural, interactional and functional aspects as well as a set of quantitative measures. While these lesbians experienced common life events, their narratives comprised a reflection of developmental tasks in one or more of 5 aspects of lesbian identity: lesbian sexual identity, transition to lesbian identity, stigma management, lesbian relationships and lesbian community involvement. The narratives were constrained by group interpretations: common “Lesbian Scripts’ and ‘Thematic Lines’ were identified which were correlated with identity factors. The inclusion of particular scripts and thematic lines in a lesbian’s narrative was associated with her level of identification as a lesbian, her level of commitment to her identity, her attitude to stigma and/or lesbianism, her age, and the number of years she has spent identifying as lesbian. The study concludes that the function of lesbian narrative includes demonstration of group membership, location within the group, demonstration of worthiness and morality, identity repair, and identity affirmation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/182185 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Sharp, Christine E, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, School of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Source | THESIS_CAESS_PSY_Sharp_C.xml |
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