1 ‘FROCI’ AND ‘QUEERS’: 30 YEARS OF COMING OUT IN ITALY AND THE UK ‐ A TEXT COMPARATIVE STUDY by Franco Zappettini Department of Applied Linguistcs and Communication Birkbeck College, University of London fzappe01@mail.bbk.ac.uk © 2010 INTRODUCTION This research investigates patterns of inclusion and exclusion experienced by Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people in relation to the construction, negotiation and performance of ‘non‐heterosexual’ identities in the British and the Italian societies over the last 30 years. In particular, ‘spaces’ and opportunities for the emergence and affirmation of such identities provided (or denied) by social attitudes towards homosexuality will be examined by comparing and analysing corpora of texts. The corpora comprise of a variety of publications produced by LGBT Associations in the two countries as well as a number of LGBT‐related policy documents. These types of texts were chosen because they communicate issues effectively and they lend themselves to discourse analysis, thus providing insights into different perceptions of LGBT identities and the social debate, tension and negotiation involved in their shaping.