Alpha Masculinity: Hegemony in Language and Discourse

This book explores the linguistic and discursive mechanisms that construct the mythological American Alpha Male, combining dominance, normativity, and androcentrism with neoliberal and pseudoscientific discourses to establish a hybridized male hegemony.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 249 pages
Publication date: 17 April 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

This comprehensive exploration delves into the intricate linguistic and discursive mechanisms that shape the mythological American Alpha Male. Through a meticulous analysis of corpora sourced from an online socio-commercial community, a pop-psychology guru, and fictional gay erotica, the author unravels the complex interplay of language, gender, and hegemony in this ideological construct of neopositive, essentialist masculinity. Through a detailed and multi-level examination, Russell unveils how the Alpha figure seamlessly blends elements of dominance, normativity, and androcentrism, intersecting with neoliberal and pseudoscientific discourses to establish a distinctively hybridized male hegemony. While this hegemony is widely recognized and familiar to many, its underlying mechanisms remain largely unquestioned and unexamined. This book holds immense appeal to academic scholars engaged in the fields of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and gender and sexualities studies, as it offers valuable insights into the dynamics of power, identity, and representation in contemporary society.

Weight: 354g
Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030704728
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021