In this project, I use the LGBT movement in Italy as a case study to investigate how social movements in culturally diverse social environments strategically employ contentious language to develop discourses that maximize cultural and policy outcomes without encountering discursive fragmentation. My research shows that supporters of LGBT civil rights in different Italian regions relied on a tactical use of particular words in order to respond to regionally specific norms of cultural expression regulating the boundaries drawn around the concept of family. Taking a cultural and linguistic approach to the study of social movements, I present the mechanism of asymmetrical metonymy as an example of the strategic use of polysemic language to achieve discursive convergence through culturally specific tactics, and I argue that discourse and rhetorical analysis offer a way to understand how movements make sense of different cultural limitations in a fragmented social environment.
