‘Real’ families

Critical Discourse Studies 11 (2):175-193 (2014)
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Abstract

This essay examines a New York Times special transnational/racial adoption blog series, ‘Relative Choices’, to interrogate how statements of love in adoption discourse engender symbolic violence in order to narrowly define ‘real’ family. The blogs are an important site of inquiry because of the ways in which new technology enables individuals with access to the Internet the ability to contribute to knowledge production. These transnational/racial adoption blog entries generated more than 1000 comments by adoptees, adoptive parents, and interested readers. The statements that emerged from the blogs and comments included denying adoptees' history, claiming the title of ‘real’ parent, and articulating statements of love. This essay complicates new media adoption discourse to show how symbolic discursive violence is hidden and embedded in adoptive family-making.

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10.1080/17405904.2013.852983

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Ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination.Avery Gordon - 2008 - Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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