This volume showcases cutting-edge research in the linguistic and discursive study of masculinities, comprising the first significant edited collection on language and masculinities since Johnson and Meinhof's 1997 volume. Overall, the chapters are linked together by a critical analytical perspective that seeks to understand the relationships between discourse, masculinities, and power. Whereas some of the chapters offer detailed, linguistically informed critiques of the ways in which old and new expressions of masculinities are complicit in the reproduction of men's hegemonic positions of power, others provide a more complex picture, one in which collusion and subversion go hand in hand. Contributions argue for the need for research on language and masculinities to expand its remit so as to engage with "gay masculinities," and unsettle gendered categories in order to consider the ways in which women, transgender, and intersex individuals also perform a variety of masculinities. Finally, unlike Johnson and Meinhof's 1997 collection, this volume not only offers a wider--and perhaps "queerer" perspective--on the study of language and masculinities, but also covers a broader geographical and socio-cultural spectrum, including work on Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.

Men have responded to feminism with feelings of anxiety, guilt and unease. It has taken time for men to consider ways of changing themselves rather than hiding behind feminist rhetoric. Since the mid '70s a structuralist interpretation of feminism has led to new perceptions of power, domination, oppression and sexuality. The author argues that historically masculinity has been identified with reason and femininity with emotion, so men have been trained to speak for others before learning to speak for themselves. Victor Seidler uses some prevalent positions in social theory to expose the main contradictions in received ideas of power, language and sexuality. Topics discussed include: reason, sexuality, change, control, identity, language, strength and intimacy.

This book examines the linguistic and discursive mechanisms that realize the mythological American Alpha Male. Providing an in-depth dissection of corpora from an online socio-commercial community, a pop-psychology guru, and fictional gay erotica, it unravels the ways language, gender, and hegemony play out in this ideological figure of neopositive, essentialist masculinity. Through a detailed, multi-level analysis, Russell shows how the Alpha figure combines elements of dominance, normativity, and androcentrism and how these forces intersect with neoliberal and pseudoscientific discourses to establish a uniquely hybridized male hegemony, one that is familiar to most, but whose internal mechanisms remain largely unquestioned and unexamined. This book will be of interest to academic scholars in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and gender and sexualities studies.

How do we learn what it means to be a man? And how do we learn to question what it means to be a man? This collection comprises a set of original interdisciplinary chapters on the linguistic and cultural representations of queer masculinities in a range of new and older media: television, film, online forums, news reporting, advertising and fiction. This innovative work examines new and emerging forms of gender hybridisation in relation to complex socialisation and immigration contexts including the role of EU institutions in ascertaining asylum seekers’ sexual orientation, and the European laws on gender policy. The book employs numerous analytical approaches including critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, multimodal analysis, literary criticism and anthropological and social research. The authors show how such texts can disrupt, question or complicate traditional notions of what it means to be a man, queering the idea that men possess fixed identities or desires, instead arguing that masculinity is constantly changing and negotiated through the cultural and political overlapping contexts in which it is regularly produced. These nuanced analyses will bring fresh insights for students and scholars of gender, masculinity and queer studies, linguistics, anthropology and semiotics.

This book explores Japanese women's desire for English as a means of identity transformation and as access to the West and its masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic data and critical discourse analysis, the book illuminates how such desire impacts upon the linguistic, social, and romantic choices made by young women in Japan and overseas.

Identity and Desire. Models of Gay Male Identity and the Marketing of "Gay Language" in Foreign-Language Phrasebooks for Gay Men / Rusty Barrett -- Incomprehensible Language? Language, Ethnicity and Heterosexual Masculinity in a Swedish School / Tommaso M. Milani, Rickard Jonsson -- The Desire for Identity and the Identity of Desire: Language, Gender and Sexuality in the Greek Context / Costas Canakis -- Unpacking Heteronormativity. Constructing Hegemonic Masculinities in South Africa: The Discourse and Rhetoric of Heteronormativity / Russell Luyt -- On-line Constructions of Metrosexuality and Masculinities: A Membership Categorization Analysis / Matthew Hall -- A Bit too Skinny for Me: Women's Homosocial Constructions of Heterosexual Desire in Online Dating / Kristine Kohler Mortensen -- Beyond Binaries? Do Bodies Matter? Travestis? Embodiment of (Trans)Gender Identity through the Manipulation of the Brazilian Portuguese Grammatical Gender System / Rodrigo Borba, Ana Cristina Ostermann -- Butch Camp: On the Discursive Construction of a Queer Identity Position / Veronika Koller -- The Other Kind of Coming Out: Transgender People and the Coming out Narrative Genre / Lal Zimman -- Gender, Sexuality and Space. Language, Sexuality and Place: The View from Cyberspace / Brian W King -- Homophobia as Moral Geography / William L. Leap -- Normal Straight Gays: Lexical Collocations and Ideologies of Masculinity in Personal Ads of Serbian Gay Teenagers / Ksenija Bogetic