ABSTRACT
Grounded in a Foucauldian genealogical approach to discourse analysis and in Goffmanian-inspired interactional analysis, this paper investigates how knowledge systems that pathologize transsexuality as a mental disorder get gradually embodied in consultations at a Brazilian gender identity clinic. The research draws upon 13-month ethnographic fieldwork at one of the Brazilian gender clinics. It analyses how biomedical discourses make available semiotic resources for the identification of "true transsexuals", solidifying, thus, a metapragmatic model of identity. The analyses focus on socialization trajectories (WORTHAM, 2006) during which a new transsexual client of the clinic gradually learned how to entextualize (SILVERSTEIN AND URBAN, 1996) the identity model of "true transsexual" and, thus, gradually became a docile body for the purposes of the clinic. This learning dynamics took place in the sequential organization of turns-at-talk and, above all, in the question-answer adjacency pair in which a psychologist offered her interlocutor semiotic items for the construction of a performance that fulfills the requirements of the Brazilian trans-specific healthcare program.
Keywords:
discourse analysis; healthcare; interactional analysis; socialization trajectories; depathologization