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The Absent Presence: Negative Space within Discourse and the Construction of Minority Sexual Identity in the Workplace

Imperial Business School, Imperial College, London and PA Consulting Group, james.ward{at}imperial.ac.uk

Diana Winstanley

Imperial Business School, Imperial College, London, d.winstanley{at}imperial.ac.uk

Sexuality and the experience of sexual minorities in the workplace are under-researched areas. The research reported here - a case study in one government department in the UK - utilizes a discursive research method to uncover a theme that is at the centre of this experience - silence. In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with individuals eliciting their stories on their experience as lesbians and gay men in the workplace, and these stories were then used to promote more general discussion within focus groups. Understanding silence in the research process with relation to both the researcher and the respondent was found to be vital for research in this area, and the article raises issues to do with uncovering previously silenced voices. Silence also emerged as a recurrent theme in the research and found that there were many ways in which this silence can play an integral role in organizational discourse and the creation of social identity. We have therefore suggested that silence could be referred to metaphorically as ‘negative space’, as this term helps to emphasize the multifaceted nature of silence. The research highlighted reactive silence and the absence of response, silence as a form of suppression, of censorship and of self-protection and resistance. It also concludes that silence, in all its changing forms, influences and contributes to the creation of social reality and gay identity for lesbians and gay men in the workplace.

Key Words: discourse • gay • homosexual • lesbian • silence • storytelling

Human Relations, Vol. 56, No. 10, 1255-1280 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/00187267035610005


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