MASTER THESIS

The Application of CTI to Interrogate Mentorship's Implications for Queer Identity

Defended in August 2020
Passed with Distinction and Excellence

Abstract
This communicative study sought to take communication mentorship studies further and step away from strictly professional, academic, or at-risk populations that are usually at the front seat of the conversation. I aimed to instead investigate mentorship through a lens that considers how a mentor can impact a queer mentees’ identity and connection to the larger LGBTQIA+ community. For the purpose of navigating queer identity in a way that accounts for several aspects of identity and can be altered to include intersectionality, I will be applying Michael Hecht’s (1993) Communication Theory of Identity. Identity has been explored with several different theories in communicative research, however, CTI uniquely addresses identity in a way that includes how identity is communicatively co-constructed between an individual and others. In this research, I interviewed 19 self-identified queer individuals who had experienced being a mentee in a relationship where they could discuss their LGBTQIA+ identification. From the data, I discovered that mentorship impacts the personal, enacted, relational, and communal layers of identity and found four identity gaps that queer mentees experience: personal-personal, personal-relational, personal-enacted, and personal-communal. Next, I also found what kind of aid needs to be present in a mentoring relationship in order for the mentoring relationship to contribute positively to queer mentees’ effective management of their identities. Finally, I introduce a new concept called “Queer Space”. Queer space refers to physical, social, and emotional space that queer individuals need in order to process, accept, and live out their queer identities. Queer space is given in a variety of ways such as a) validation, b) normalization, c) genuine caring, and d) support.

Take a Look at my Participants' Demographics & Nature of their Mentoring Relationships