TY - JOUR

T1 - The men and women, guys and girls of the ‘manosphere’

T2 - A corpus-assisted discourse approach

AU - Krendel, A.

PY - 2020/11/17

Y1 - 2020/11/17

N2 - This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represent and construct gender identities in an anti-feminist forum on the discussion website Reddit. The lemmas were analysed using corpus-assisted social actor analysis and appraisal theory. Similarities and differences within three sub-communities of the TRP subreddit were considered: Men’s Rights (activists who believe that men are systemically disadvantaged in society), Men Going Their Own Way (who abstain from relationships with women), and Red Pill Theory (primarily pick-up artists). The corpus was characterised by bare assertions about gendered behaviour, although the masculine gender role was less well-defined than the feminine one. Women and girls were dehumanised and sexually objectified, negatively judged for morality and veracity, and constructed as desiring hostile behaviour from male social actors. Conversely, men were constructed as victims of female social actors and external institutions and, as a result, as unhappy and insecure. © The Author(s) 2020.

AB - This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represent and construct gender identities in an anti-feminist forum on the discussion website Reddit. The lemmas were analysed using corpus-assisted social actor analysis and appraisal theory. Similarities and differences within three sub-communities of the TRP subreddit were considered: Men’s Rights (activists who believe that men are systemically disadvantaged in society), Men Going Their Own Way (who abstain from relationships with women), and Red Pill Theory (primarily pick-up artists). The corpus was characterised by bare assertions about gendered behaviour, although the masculine gender role was less well-defined than the feminine one. Women and girls were dehumanised and sexually objectified, negatively judged for morality and veracity, and constructed as desiring hostile behaviour from male social actors. Conversely, men were constructed as victims of female social actors and external institutions and, as a result, as unhappy and insecure. © The Author(s) 2020.

KW - Appraisal theory

KW - corpus linguistics

KW - critical discourse analysis

KW - online sexism

KW - Reddit

KW - social actor analysis

KW - systemic functional linguistics

KW - ‘manosphere’

U2 - 10.1177/0957926520939690

DO - 10.1177/0957926520939690

M3 - Journal article

VL - 31

SP - 607

EP - 630

JO - Discourse and Society

JF - Discourse and Society

SN - 0957-9265

IS - 6

ER -