Language and Mediated Masculinities

Debates about masculinity have come to dominate the media landscape. This growing cultural tension around masculinities has been analyzed both for general audiences and in scholarship. What has been typically overlooked, however, is the role that language plays in these mediated performances of masculinity. Robert 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 neoliberalism, ethnic nationalism, online radicalization, networked misogyny, and fractious gender relations, Language and Mediated Masculinities charts 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.