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Palgrave Macmillan
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Online Sex Talk and the Social World

Mediated Desire

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

  • Analyses a large naturally-occurring set of unique sex talk data from an online community of practice
  • Examines what occurs discursively and linguistically in this community and how those practices can be understood as social forces
  • Explores the discursive strategies that participants adopt to codify a non-sexual community of practice as heterosexual
  • Looks to the future of sex talk and technology, including AI and sex robots of different kinds and the controversies that surround them

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality (PSLGS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book develops a feminist and queer linguistic account of the construction of sex, sexuality, and desire through a linguistic and discursive analysis of naturally occurring sex talk from an online community. Critical discourse analysis is used to analyse a corpus of data drawn from incidental sex 'talk' observed in the community over the course of an 18-month period. Sub-types of sex talk that are examined include cybersex, self-disclosure, confidences, joking, games, flirting, and automated sexual commands that ‘generate’ sex between participants. The book will be of use to students and researchers interested in the language of gender and sexuality, as well as feminist and queer accounts of technology and sexual communication.



Reviews

“This book provides an accessible overview of the linguistic and discursive practices around sex, sexuality, and desire within an online community. It is an excellent resource for researchers and postgraduate students in disciplines such as linguistics and sociology who are interested in discourse analytic perspectives on language, gender, and sexuality in digitally mediated communication.” (Evelin Nikolova, Language in Society, Vol. 51 (3), 2022)

“Chrystie Myketiak’s Online Sex Talk and the Social World skillfully demonstrates the utility of research in pragmatics and discourse analysis for understanding human sexuality. … Myketiak’s insights into patterns of interaction that imply sexual meanings will be of interest to researchers examining conversational structure and implicature even if their specific focus is not directly about sex or sexuality.” (Rusty Barrett, Corpus Pragmatics, July27, 2021)

“Myketiak's book makes important contributions to our understanding of how desire plays out through online talk. Broad in scope and solidly grounded in theory, her work is complemented by a depth of description and analysis that make it a valuable reference for discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and scholarship in computer mediated communication.” (Eric Louis Russell, UC Davis, USA)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Humanities, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Chrystie Myketiak

About the author

Chrystie Myketiak is Principal Lecturer in Language and Linguistics at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research investigates discourse and narratives in text and media with a focus on language use in relation to issues of power, identity, and inequality.



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