‘I'm a boy, can't you see that?’: Dialogic embodiment and the construction of agency in trans youth discourse

Abstract This article offers discourse analysis of young transgender people's interaction, in which they describe being rendered powerless through misgendering or misrepresentation. It argues that the collective responses to these moments enable them challenge ideologies underpinning their marginalisation, and recontextualise language used by others bodies. Stance-taking, production affect, constructed dialogue are shown be key tools an agentive, mutual identity. The thus provides close dialogic embodiment, a process body is quite literally spoken into being. By critiquing cisnormative structures inform responds call for trans linguistics (Zimman 2020) reflects upon author's positionality as cisgender researcher. (Embodiment, affective stance, agency, identity, cisnormativity, linguistics)*