Today, the topic of gender identity is being discussed more widely than ever before. With the rise of online misogyny and in the wake of #metoo, language around masculinity and toxic masculinity merits closer examination. Accessibly written by two leading linguists, this book provides a comprehensive treatment of the debates around language and masculinity, asking how language is used to perform masculinity and how language is used to represent men.

Including examples of research from a range of international scholars, along with original case studies and engaging examples from popular culture, media, literature, advertising and politics, the authors address a wide range of theoretical and methodological standpoints. The book examines concepts of gender performativity, hegemonic masculinity and queer theory, drawing on disciplines and methods including conversation analysis, phonetics, ethnography, interviews, focus groups, visual analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse studies and corpus linguistics. Situating male language use in terms of power, dominance and subordination, the book concludes with an examination of the more recent concepts of toxic masculinity and healthy masculinity, exploring critical stances towards and around language used by men.

This book demonstrates the role that linguistic research can play in addressing real-world problems associated with masculinity – problems experienced by people of all genders and the natural world more broadly. Masculinities and Language is vital reading for scholars, researchers and students of language and gender, sexuality, identity, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics within linguistics, English language and related areas.