Styling men and masculinities

Interactional and identity aspects at work

Bibliographic Data

ID2859991
AuthorsA Georgakopoulou (0000-0002-0440-6628, King's College London, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume34
Issue02
Publication date2005-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404505050074
OpenAlexW2147298579
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited23

Departing from interactionally focused research on the “representations” (cf. “constructions”) of the “other,” including recent dynamic approaches to the sociolinguistics of style/styling, this article looks into the practice of talk about men that resonated in the conversations of four Greek adolescent female “best friends.” The discussion sheds light on the interactional resources that participants draw upon to refer to and identify or categorize men, their local meanings, and their consequentiality for gender identity constructions (in this case, both masculinities and femininities). It is shown that personae and social positions of men are drawn in the data by means of a set of resources (nicknames, character assessments, stylizations, membership categorization devices) that occur in, shape, and are shaped by story lines (intertextual and coconstructed stories that locate men in social place and time). It is also shown that the men talked about are predominantly marked for their gendered identities: Social styles that represent men as “soft” (“babyish,” “feminine”) or “tough” (“hard”) are those that are more routinely invoked. Each mobilizes specific resources (e.g. stylizations of the local dialect for “hard” men), but both are drawn playfully. The conclusion considers the implications of such discursive representations for the gender ideologies at work and the participants' own identity constructions and subjectivities.Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Birkbeck College Applied Linguistics seminars and at the 8th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Toronto, 2003. I am grateful to audiences there for their comments, to Nikolas Coupland for fiercely constructive criticism, to an anonymous reviewer for encouragement, and last but not least, to the sharp editorial eye of Jane Hill

Aesthetics · Art · Categorization · Constructive · Discourse analysis · Identity (music) · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Politics · Social group · Social identity theory · Social science · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Style (visual arts) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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