(Dis)citizenship constructed in same-sex wedding narratives

• This study examines how both policy and sociocultural practices work together to define a citizen via narrative analysis.
• Under a framework of participatory citizenship, sociocultural practices in addition to state legitimacy construct and deny citizenship.
• As these two same-sex couples narrate their wedding narratives, they index how dis-citizenship is ascribed to them and how they claim citizenship.
• The couples use similar discourses in telling their wedding stories, but focus on constraints and agency distinctly.
• While one same-sex couple emphasizes how they compromised agency in order to achieve legitimate marriage, the other couple emphasizes the choices they made to achieve authentic marriage.

Citizenship as institutional participation includes marriage and weddings, and the lack of rights to legal marriage constructs dis-citizenship. Not only are hierarchies reproduced through language, but individuals who are affected by such processes negotiate (dis)citizen-identities through talk. Through sociolinguistic interviews with couples about their weddings, this research examines that negotiation as two same-sex couples construct identities that produce authenticity and legitimacy for their participation in officially recognized couplehood. Mark and Javier (married in 2010) index social, financial, and legal constraints surrounding their legally-recognized wedding, and Barb and Heidi (married in 2000) index tradition, thus constructing legitimacy despite their ceremony that was not legally recognized. Both couples navigate constraints and possibilities in the ways they linguistically construct their coupled identities in these conversations about their weddings, thus producing (dis)citizenship.