Abstract:
This thesis aims at studying the characteristics of gay's narratives in the online community of the Blue Sky Society Group on www.pantip.com and analyzing the functions of these narratives. The findings reveal that the narratives of this gay community can be catagorized into two groups namely, memoirs and fictions. As for fictions, two subtypes are found namely novel and short story. The content of these memoirs is about the ways of life of gays, especially how they face and cope with problems and difficulties, and gay's attitudes toward the society. The content of novels and short stories is mainly about gay's loneliness and love experience. In terms of literary techniques, the memoirs are presented from the viewpoint of gays. The authors, all of whom are gays, narrate their stories by using the viewpoint of first person narrator and the focalization on gays. As for the fictions, the main characters in both the novel and short stories are all gays. The main theme of these fictive stories is about the love experience of gays. That is, gays have sincere and pure love although, in many cases, gay's love relation is unsuccessful. As the stories are focalized on the gay's feeling, it is likely that the reader feel sympathetic with the gay people. These features are hardly found in other narratives in general. Three main functions of gay's narratives are found. First, these narratives strengthen the sense of solidarity among the members of this online gay community. Second, they present gay's identity and gay's representation to public. According, the identity of gays in this online community is "blue guys." Gays are normal men who feel passionate to men. Gays are not deviants; they are simply like others in the society. Last, these narratives functions as contesting discourse against the dominant discourse on gays which alienate gays as "the other."