Constructing risk across timescales and trajectories: Gay men's stories of sexual encounters

Jones, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9426-727X and Candlin, C. (2003) Constructing risk across timescales and trajectories: Gay men's stories of sexual encounters. Health, Risk & Society, 5 (2). pp. 199-213. ISSN 1369-8575 doi: 10.1080/1369857031000123966

Abstract/Summary

This paper explores the way risk is constructed in the stories gay men tell of their sexual experiences. It focuses on how tellers use such stories to portray themselves both as rational actors and as legitimate members of their social groups by reconstructing the ‘orderliness’ of sexual encounters. An analysis of a corpus of stories derived from a diary study of gay male sexual behaviour in Hong Kong using current theories of discourse analysis reveals how narrators organize their experiences along two primary vectors of engagement: a sequential vector along which the trajectory of the sexual encounter is presented as a chain of occurrences, each occurrence contingent upon previous ones and warranting subsequent ones, and a hierarchical vector along which processes perceived on longer timescales are portrayed as exerting pressure on the ways processes on shorter timescales unfold. Examining how men portray these vectors in their accounts of risk behaviour can help us better understand both the situatedness of risk behaviour and the ways it is linked to larger social practices, identity projects and community histories

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/58359
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/1369857031000123966
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
Publisher	Routledge
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