Guided by a non-representational/non-essencialist perspective on languagem-use and identity (MOITA LOPES, 2003; 2006a), this article investigates the construction of gender and sexual identities in interactions drawn from safer-sex outreach work among travestis who prostitute themselves in an urban area in southern Brazil. During the safer-sex outreach work, Sandra and Márcia, two women who have constructed themselves as members of hegemonic/tradicional identity categories (white, middle class, heterosexual, schooled), discursively produce non-traditional identities in a process of adequation (BUCHOLTZ and HALL, 2004) of their subject positions to the travestis' and to the context of the interactions. Based on Wittgenstein's (2005) and Bakhtin's (2003, 2004) theories, I argue that the discursive production of identities is only made possible because of the intertextual aspect of social identities (HALL, 2005). Sandra and Márcia make use of intertexts that construct them as participants of the travestis' universe. The safer-sex outreach workers position themselves through their utterances in identity categories such as travesti, travesti's client, and prostitute and, thus, seem to discursively adjust their subject positions to their transgendered interlocutors. With this background, this paper dicusses the possibility of bringing Applied Linguistics closer to STD/AIDS prevention practices.
sexuality; gender; intertextuality; travestis; safer sex
