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<DIV dir=ltr align=left>Apologies for cross-posting.</DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Paul
Baker, Lancaster University UK.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Public
Discourses of Gay Men. London: Routledge.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005>Although sexual and romantic same-sex
relationships between humans have existed for millennia, the ways that such
relationships and the people who engage in them have been celebrated,
normalised, accepted, ignored, problematised or persecuted has been subject to
considerable variation over time and across different societies. Particularly
over the last fifty years there has been an inordinate amount of controversy and
negotiation concerning the ways that gay men have been talked and written about.
<I>Public Discouses of Gay Men</I> explores the variety of ways that gay men are
constructed in public settings in order to make sense of the current set of
discourses or 'ways of seeing the world' that surround this group. </DIV>
<DIV>
<P>Taking a corpus-based analysis approach to examine millions of words of data
from a range of contemporary sources, the book investigates how conflicting
discourses have clashed together, resulting in a definition of homosexuality
that is often ambivalent, confusing or contradictory.
<P>The corpus-based approach allows for the identification of repeated patterns
of language, showing the culmulative effect this has on discourse in everyday
life. The following techniques are used to demonstrate these patterns:
<UL>
<LI>Collocational analyses - what sort of words tend to regularly appear next
to or near words like "gay" and "homosexual" and how does this relate to
different contexts?
<LI>Discourse prosodies - how are gay people regularly constructed in language
use? What are the most common patterns - which patterns are less frequent or
resistant?
<LI>Keywords and frequencies - what words, semantic concepts or grammatical
categories tend to occur more frequently than expected by chance alone in
public texts about gay men? What can this tell us about the ways that
discourses of gay identity are currently constructed?
<LI>Dispersion - how are terms like "gay" dispersed throughout particular
texts and how do dispersion pattens relate to discourses of homosexuality?
</LI></UL>
<P>From conceptualisations of homosexuality as 'unnatural behaviour' in the
House of Lords to discourses of shame and outrageousness in tabloid newspapers,
it is still the case that homophobia underpins contemporary understandings of
homosexuality. However, homophobia is only part of the story - personal adverts
and erotic stories show us how desire is constructed for gay men as intensely
masculine and ostensibly heterosexual. Additionally, sitcoms like Will &
Grace reveal a definition of homosexuality that is weighted in aspirational
class-consciousness and camp humour. The full range of discourses is
demonstrated in the final analysis chapter which examines safe sex
documentation. </P></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Ordering Information</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=478360410-18072005>ISBN: 0-415-34973-7.
<P>Telephone Routledge's Cusomter Hotline on 01264 343071 if calling from the UK
(or 441264 343071 if calling from outside the UK). <SPAN
class=478360410-18072005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2> Or order at
<A
href="http://www.routledge.com">http://www.routledge.com</A>. </FONT></SPAN></P></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>