https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318917744067 Management Communication Quarterly 2018, Vol. 32(2) 271–275 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0893318917744067 journals.sagepub.com/home/mcq Forum Essay Looking Out From the Family Closet: Discourse Dependence and Queer Family Identity in Workplace Conversation Jenny Dixon 1 As families become increasingly diverse, the opportunity to communicate about one’s family structure becomes all the more important. The need to communicate one’s family into a status of community acceptance is known as discourse dependence (Galvin, 2006). Members of discourse-dependent fam- ilies must communicate family into being by explaining or otherwise ratio- nalizing how the relational structure counts as family. By contrast, families that are not discourse dependent—such a family comprised of a straight cou- ple and one or more biological children—enjoy a structure that is widely taken for granted. One area in which discourse about family occurs is in the workplace. When attempts to engage in discourse about family fail, or if the very attempt feels ill-advised and is therefore avoided, the closet may be deemed a worthy alternative. Among the many reasons organization mem- bers may build a family closet at work are to avoid the perception of making up family obligations at the expense of workplace commitment, or the nega- tive attributions associated with having a family that does not meet the nor- mative criteria associated with a “real family” or that is considered less worthy of regard than more traditional family structures. Considerations of the family closet in organizational communication invite opportunity for introducing discourse dependence to the lexicon of theoretical frameworks 1 Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY, USA Corresponding Author: Jenny Dixon, Department of Communication and Media Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, 221 E. 71st St., New York, NY 10021, USA. Email: jdixon@mmm.edu 744067MCQ XX X 10.1177/0893318917744067Management Communication QuarterlyDixon research-article 2017