Representations of intercourse in American literature: Gender, patiency and fuck as a transitive verb

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Abstract

This article investigates the representation of sexual intercourse in American literature expressed via the use of fuck as a transitive verb. Its goal is to identify possible trends in the differentiation between men and women's roles and power relations in such literary representations. Drawing on theoretical notions from cognitive poetics, the present article assumes that literary representations of intercourse reflect and replicate in readers cognitive-cultural models of intercourse and the roles of, and power relations between, men and women therein. The analysis presented here is quantitative and falls under the rubric of corpus stylistics and is based on data from the FICTION component of the Corpus of Historical American English. The analysis measures the preference of male or female passive participants in propositional scenarios denoted by transitive fuck, thus allowing for the identification of large-scale patterns in sexual objectification of men or women in American literature.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
BogserieAcademic Quarter
Vol/bind8
Sider (fra-til)119-130
ISSN1904-0008
StatusUdgivet - 2014

Emneord

  • Det Humanistiske Fakultet

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