Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Sexuality
Vol. 12:2 (2023) ► pp.173–199

Give it to her

Sexual agency and gendered patterns in erotica

ORCID logo | University of Valladolid, Spain
Pornography is commonly criticized for allegedly representing and promoting sexual dominance of men over women. Studies have shown varying results, with no scientific consensus reached on the matter. To contribute to the discussion with empirical discourse analysis evidence, I examine the linguistic choices reflected in a corpus of erotic novels to test whether there are gendered patterns of agency in the representation of sexual interactions. The construal of prominence is correlated to the notion of agency to find which participant specifies the trajector status and agent role in every relational expression. Results show that male participants take prominence over females in an overwhelming majority of the cases, while expressions with plural agency are marginal. The approach of this paper, combining cognitive grammar with linguistic participation roles, provides comprehensive and realistic results by attempting to operationalize agency as the linguistic expression of a particular cognitive pathway.
Keywords: discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, sexual discourse, linguistic participation roles, construals of meaning, erotica
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Gendered patterns in pornography
    • 2.2Written pornography
    • 2.3Researching sexual agency in written pornography
    • 2.4Sexual relationships as cognitive and linguistic relationships
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Material: Corpus description
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.21020.san
References (71)
References
Amazon. 2021a. Best sellers in erotica. 〈[URL]〉 (May 15, 2021)
. 2021b. Erotic literature & fiction. Sorted by: Most reviews. 〈[URL]〉 (May 15, 2021)
Attwood, Feona. 2010. Porn studies: From social problem to cultural practice. In porn. com: Making Sense of Online Pornography, Feona Attwood (ed), 1–13. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Attwood, Feona, Barker, Meg-John, Boynton, Petra & Hancock, Justin. 2015. Sense about sex: Media, sex advice, education and learning. Sexuality, Society and Learning 15(5): 528–539. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aull, Laura L. & West Brown, David. 2013. Fighting words: A corpus analysis of gender representations in sports reportage. Corpora 8(1): 27–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2005. Public Discourses of Gay Men. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2008. ‘Eligible’ bachelors and ‘frustrated’ spinsters: Corpus linguistics, gender and language. In Gender and Language Research Methodologies, Kate Harrington, Lia Litosseliti, Helen Sauntson & Jane Sunderland (eds), 73–84. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2016. Gendered discourses. In Triangulating Methodological Approaches in Corpus Linguistic Research, Paul Baker & Jesse Egbert (eds), 138–151. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barker, Meg-John, Gill, Rosalind & Harvey, Laura. 2018. Mediated intimacy: Sex advice in media culture. Sexualities 21(8): 1337–1345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barron, Martin & Kimmel, Michael. 2000. Sexual violence in three pornographic media: Toward a sociological explanation. Journal of Sex Research 37(2): 161–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1990. Methodological issues regarding corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation. Literary and Linguistic Computing 5(4): 257–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Reppen, Randi (eds). 2015. The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BookBub. 2021. 21 of the sexiest books of all time, according to BookBub members. 〈[URL]〉 (May 15, 2021)
Bridges, Ana J., Wosnitzer, Robert, Scharrer, Erica, Sun, Chyng & Liberman, Rachael. 2010. Aggression and sexual behavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis update. Violence Against Women 16(10): 1065–1085. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 2019. Sex. In Feminism: A Brief Introduction to the Ideas, Debates, and Politics of the Movement, Deborah Cameron (ed), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carter, Ronald & McCarthy, Michael. 1995. Grammar and the spoken language. Applied Linguistics 16(2): 141–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cocks, Harry. 2016. “The social picture of our own times”: Reading obscene magazines in mid-Twentieth-Century Britain: Table 1. Twentieth Century British History 27(2): 171–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crawford, Mary & Popp, Danielle. 2003. Sexual double standards: A review and methodological critique of two decades of research. Journal of Sex Research 40(1): 13–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dill, Karen E. & Thill, Kathryn P. 2007. Video game characters and the socialization of gender roles: Young people’s perceptions mirror sexist media depictions. Sex Roles 571: 851–864. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Djikic, Maja, Oatley, Keith & Moldoveanu, Mihnea C. 2013. Reading other minds: Effect of literature on empathy. Scientific Study of Literature 3(1): 28–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehrlich, Susan. 2001. Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gârdan, Daiana. 2020. Cum iubim? Coduri de gen în romanul de dragoste românesc. Transilvania 11–121: 109–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodreads. 2021. Most read this week in erotica. 〈[URL]〉 (May 15, 2021)
Gorman, Stacy, Monk-Turner, Elizabeth & Fish, Jennifer N. 2010. Free adult internet web sites: How prevalent are degrading acts? Gender Issues 27(3–4): 131–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hardy, Simon. 1998. The Reader, the Author, His Woman and Her Lover: Soft-Core Pornography and Heterosexual Men. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Harvey, Karen. 2004. Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hester, Helen. 2014. Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex. New York: State University of New York Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Miranda A. H., Alys, Llian, Massey, Kristina, Pina, Afroditi, Scally, Mia & Adler, Joanna R. 2013. A Rapid Evidence Assessment on the Effects that Access and Exposure to Pornography Has on Children and Young People. Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England. 〈[URL]〉 (February 15, 2023)
Jeffries, Leslie. 2007. Textual Construction of the Female Body: A Critical Discourse Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jensen, Robert. 1993. Pornographic novels and the ideology of male supremacy. The Howard Journal of Communications 5(1–2): 92–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Getting off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Cambridge: South End Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, Robert & Dines, Gail. 1998. The content of mass-marketed pornography. In Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, Gail Dines, Bob Jensen & Ann Russo (eds), 65–100. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, Alan, Baisa, Vít, Bušta, Jan, Jakubíček, Miloš, Kovář, Vojtěch, Michelfeit, Jan, Rychlý, Pavel & Suchomel, Vít. 2014. The Sketch Engine: Ten years on. Lexicography 1(1): 7–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klaassen, Marleen J. E. & Peter, Jochen. 2015. Gender (in)equality in Internet pornography: A content analysis of popular pornographic Internet videos. Journal of Sex Research (52)71: 721–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koller, Veronika. 2015. Who’s really normal? Language and sexuality in public space. Journal of Language and Sexuality 4(2): 254–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koopman, Emy M. & Hakemulder, Frank. 2015. Effects of literature on empathy and self-reflection: A theoretical-empirical framework. Journal of Literary Theory 9(1): 79–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2013. Essentials of Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lischinsky, Alon. 2017. Doing the naughty or having it done to you? Agent roles in erotic writing. Porn Studies (5)21: 156–174.Google Scholar
Manning, Elizabeth. 1997. Kissing and cuddling: The reciprocity of romantic and sexual activity. In Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance and Intimacy, Keith Harvey & Celia Shalom (eds), 43–59. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marko, Georg. 2006. ‘… was an incredibly sexy Latin stud’: Critically analysing descriptors in a (pornography) corpus. In Planing, Gluing and Painting Corpora: Inside the Applied Corpus Linguist’s Workshop, Bernhard Kettemann & Georg Marko (eds), 175–203. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2008. Penetrating Language: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Pornography. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar
Mautner, Gerlinde. 2016. Checks and balances: How corpus linguistics can contribute to CDA. In Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds), 154–179. Los Angeles: Sage.Google Scholar
McCarry, Melanie. 2009. Becoming a ‘proper man’: Young people’s attitudes about interpersonal violence and perceptions of gender. Gender and Education 22(1): 17–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McEnery, Tony & Hardie, Andrew. 2012. Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McKee, Alan. 2005. The objectification of women in mainstream pornographic videos in Australia. Journal of Sex Research 42(4): 277–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morrish, Liz & Sauntson, Helen. 2011. Gender, desire and identity in a corpus of lesbian erotica. In Queering Paradigms II: Interrogating Agendas, Burkhard Scherer & Matthew Ball (eds), 63–81. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2013. Gentlemen before ladies? A corpus-based study of conjunct order in personal binomials. Journal of English Linguistics 41(3): 212–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Focusing on normativity in language and sexuality studies: Insights from conversations on objectophilia. Critical Discourse Studies 11(1): 49–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Corpus linguistics in language and sexuality studies: Taking stock and looking ahead. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7(2): 145–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paasonen, Susanna. 2007. Strange bedfellows: Pornography, affect and feminist reading. Feminist Theory 8(1): 43–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Good amateurs: Erotica writing and notions of quality. In porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography, Feona Attwood (ed), 138–154. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Penguin Random House. 2021. Seductive erotica books for mature audiences only. 〈[URL]〉 (May 15, 2021)
Peter, Jochen & Valkenburg, Patti M. 2016. Adolescents and pornography: A review of 20 years of research. Journal of Sex Research 53(4–5): 509–531. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, Stephen R. 1987. Power, Pain, and Pleasure in Pornography: A Content Analysis of Pornographic Feature Films, 1972–1985. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Richardson, T. Wade. 2013. Paths of love: Age and gender dynamics in the erotic novel. In A companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, Thomas K. Hubbard (ed). Malden: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Catherine & Diamond, Amy. 2012. Evolutionary perspectives on the content analysis of heterosexual and homosexual pornography. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology 6(2): 193–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanga, Luciana. 2021. Tanabe Seiko, Feminism, and the making of a love novel. Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese 55(1): 35–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schick, Irvin Cemil. 2004. Representation of gender and sexuality in Ottoman and Turkish erotic literature. Turkish Studies Association Journal 28(1/2): 81–103.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John M. 1995. Corpus typology: A framework for classification. In Studies in Anglistics, Gunnel Melcher & Beatrice Warren (eds), 17–34. Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Smith, Clarissa. 2007. One for the Girls! The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women’s Porn. Bristol: Intellect. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. Pleasing intensities: Masochism and affective pleasures in porn short fictions. In Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture, Feona Attwood (ed), 19–35. London: IB Tauris.Google Scholar
. 2010. Pornographication: A discourse for all seasons. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 6(1): 103–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Don D. 1976. The social content of pornography. Journal of Communication 261: 16–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Springate, Julia & Omar, Hatim A. 2013. The impact of the Internet on the sexual health of adolescents: A brief review. International Journal of Child and Adolescent Health 6(4): 469–471.Google Scholar
Strasburger, Victor C. 2012. Adolescents, sex and the media. Adolescent Medicine State of the Art Reviews 231: 15–33.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charlotte. 2013. Searching for similarity using corpus-assisted discourse studies. Corpora 8(1): 81–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ubilluz, Juan Carlos. 2006. Sacred Erotism: Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowski in the Latin American Erotic Novel. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.Google Scholar
Vannier, Sarah A., Currie, Anna B. & O’Sullivan, Lucia F. 2014. Schoolgirls and soccer moms: A content analysis of free “teen” and “MILF” online pornography. Journal of Sex Research 51(3): 253–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Andrew. 2012. Using corpora in depth psychology: A trigram-based analysis of a corpus of fetish fantasies. Corpora 7(1): 69–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Young, James O. 2017. Literary fiction and true beliefs. In Art and Belief, Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley & Paul Noordhof (eds), 85–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Suñer, Ferran & Barbara De Cock
2024. The role of reticence in the comprehension of metaphorical taboo expressions in the foreign language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 34:2 ► pp. 746 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.