Male homossexual identity in proulx’s brokeback mountain: beyond masculinity and heteronormativity

Sexuality involves all human actions, which means to understand such concept differently from those offered by biology and anthropology. Annie Proulx’s short story, Brokeback Mountain was an icon of male homosexual identity even before its film’s adaptation. As language constitutes reality, the representation of what we are is evoked through our discourses. The dialogue between psychoanalysis and linguistics constitute the methodology of this study. The results show that specific lexicalgrammatical choices (within the meaning potencial oferred by the language) establish representations that either maintain some culturally constituted structures (in this case, the construals of masculinity and feminility and their relation to active/passive attitudes in a homoaffective relationship) or destabilize such structures.Thus, Ennis del Mar’s and Jack Twist’s male homosexual identity is constructed through a polysemic discourse, which, based on the analysis of Process types, Participants and Circunstances, can break up with the dichotomic role active-passive in homoaffective relationships.