Language and Mediated Masculinities Cultures, Contexts, Constraints

From television shows to the manosphere, and from alt-right communities to fatherhood forums, debates about masculinity have come to dominate the media landscape. What does it mean to be a man in contemporary society? How is masculinity constituted in different media spaces? This growing cultural tension around masculinities has been discussed and analyzed both for general audiences and in burgeoning academic scholarship. What has been typically overlooked, however, is the role that language plays in these mediated performances of masculinity.

In Language and Mediated Masculinities, Robert Lawson draws on data from newspapers, social media sites, television programs, and online forums to explore language and masculinities across a range of media contexts. The book offers a critical evaluation of the intersection between language, masculinities, and identities in contemporary society and addresses three key questions: How are masculinities constructed, in both public and private spheres, through linguistic and discursive strategies? How does language about masculinity and men affect (and recreate) gender ideologies in different social, political, and historical contexts? What might the language of men tell us about the state of contemporary gender relations in the twenty-first century? Lawson furthers our understanding of how language is implicated in (re)creating gender ideologies and how it shapes contemporary gender relations. Against a cultural backdrop of rising neoliberalism, ethnic nationalism, online radicalization, networked misogyny, and fractious gender relations, this book is an important contribution to charting how language is used to monitor, evaluate, and police masculinities in online and offline spaces.

Robert Lawson is Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University. He has held numerous international positions, including at the University of Pittsburgh as a Fulbright Scholar and the University of Jyväskylä as a Junior Visiting Professor. He is the editor of Sociolinguistics in Scotland, co-editor of Sociolinguistic Research: Application and Impact, and has publications in major peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Gender and Language, English World-Wide, Discourse, Context & Media, and Social Media+Society. His research focuses on language and masculinities, the application of language research outside academia, and language in media contexts.

List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements

1. Contexts, Cultures, and Constraints: Language and Mediated Masculinities in the 21st century

2. Setting the Scene: Some Key Ideas in Language and Masculinities Studies

3. Approaches to Analyzing Language and Masculinities: Data, Theories, and Methods

4. Representations of "Hard Man" Masculinity and Ideologies of Toughness in the British Press

5. Being a "Real Man" in /r/The Donald: Masculinity, Ethnic Identity, and the Alternative Right

6. "Alphas get treated like bygone emperors and betas live lives of quiet desperation": Toxic Masculinity and Discourses of Gender in the Manosphere

7. Positive Masculinity and Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Reconfiguring Dominant Gender Tropes in Television Comedy

8. The Language of Fatherhood 2.0: Discourses of Caring Masculinity in an Online Fathers' Forum

9. Conclusion: Where Next for Language and Masculinities Studies?

References
Index