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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 8:3 (2017) ► pp.448–471

“Are men sexually harassed?”

Enacting the discourse of hegemonic masculinity in the evaluation of stories of male sexual harassment on Kenyan talk radio

| Riara University
| Université de Valenciennes

Since MacKinnon’s (1979) ground-breaking work in which she coined the term sexual harassment, there has been very little consensus as to what it actually is. Using callers’ stories of male sexual harassment taken from Kenyan talk radio, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the in situ production of an emic definition of (male) sexual harassment. Further, using positioning theory as a methodology, this paper aims (1) to make visible the gendered identity work that defining, or not defining, an event as male sexual harassment occasions and (2) to show how hegemonic masculinity is achieved through stories and their evaluation by the radio host and other callers who talk certain masculinities into being as normative and others as deviant.

Keywords: hegemonic masculinity, radio talk, small stories, sexual harassment, assessments, Kenya
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Method: Positioning theory
  • 4.The data
    • 4.1Talk radio as institutional interaction
    • 4.2The radio show
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Story one
    • 5.2Story two
    • 5.3Story three
  • 6.Discussions and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.8.3.06mue
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