scholarly journals The Power of Pleasure: Contributions from Embodied Sociolinguistics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shannon Couper
Keyword(s):  
Group Discussion ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Sexual Scripts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
The Political ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Political Value

<p>In this thesis I argue that foregrounding young women’s intersectional voices through an embodied sociolinguistic approach can afford a contribution to empowering sexual scripts. In doing so I demonstrate the political value in harnessing the linguistic negotiation of pleasure. To enact this goal, my research questions are: 1. How do women make sense of experiences of sexual pleasure in talk? 2. How do women construct their identities when talking about sexual pleasure? 3. How do women describe their bodies when recounting sexual pleasure?  An embodied sociolinguistics offers insight into the discursive construction of sexual embodiment, and together with a critical feminist approach, centers the voices and experiences of women. Sexual experiential embodiment entails reflexively constructed understandings of sexual pleasure and desire through attention to discursive bodies, particularly for those that are historically misrepresented.  The analysis makes use of conversations in intimate female friendships that serve as identity construction sites and reflect both agency and interdependent self-authorship. This data offers insights into the challenges of navigating various discourses in the pursuit of self-definition and is comprised of 6 hour-long conversations between 6 pairs of young female friends, as well as 4 hours of recorded focus group discussion.   My findings demonstrate that ideologies of femininity play a large role in the initial construction of the intimate conversational site which creates space for dynamic negotiations of desire, subjectivity and the multifaceted nature of sexual experiences. The continuing interaction affords constructions of complex feminist identities within neoliberal constraints. I develop this into a critique of how uncritical discourses of sexual agency can transform sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. Embodied sociolinguistics allows access into how sexual pleasure dynamically unfolds in the discursive formulation of the body. Ultimately this culminates into a mapping of historical pleasure landscapes that illustrate the significance of foregrounding language and conversation on sexual pleasure.   Sociolinguistic investigations that seek to transform harmful hegemonic discourses are essential in the ongoing combat against entrenched rape culture. My study advocates for a culture that values discussion of female sexual pleasure. This focus is potentially more destabilizing and contestive than focusing on sexual violation because it directly challenges hetero-patriarchal culture’s hostility toward women’s agency.   The framework employed in this thesis offers significant implications for the field of language, gender and sexuality, including the further advancement of the theory of embodied sociolinguistics and a methodology of intimate insider research. Employing intersectionality allows for the queering of normative sexual practices and disrupts normative gender discourses by centering agentive feminist voices. From a critical perspective, the research contributes to building a model of pleasure activism that prioritises joy. A body-focused linguistic approach demonstrates that true transformation of our sexuality culture must begin with destabilizing the neoliberal project and moving toward collective liberation. There is no inevitability to the sexual danger script when we channel the political power of pleasure. </p>

scholarly journals The Power of Pleasure: Contributions from Embodied Sociolinguistics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shannon Couper
Keyword(s):  
Group Discussion ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Sexual Scripts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
The Political ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Political Value

<p>In this thesis I argue that foregrounding young women’s intersectional voices through an embodied sociolinguistic approach can afford a contribution to empowering sexual scripts. In doing so I demonstrate the political value in harnessing the linguistic negotiation of pleasure. To enact this goal, my research questions are: 1. How do women make sense of experiences of sexual pleasure in talk? 2. How do women construct their identities when talking about sexual pleasure? 3. How do women describe their bodies when recounting sexual pleasure?  An embodied sociolinguistics offers insight into the discursive construction of sexual embodiment, and together with a critical feminist approach, centers the voices and experiences of women. Sexual experiential embodiment entails reflexively constructed understandings of sexual pleasure and desire through attention to discursive bodies, particularly for those that are historically misrepresented.  The analysis makes use of conversations in intimate female friendships that serve as identity construction sites and reflect both agency and interdependent self-authorship. This data offers insights into the challenges of navigating various discourses in the pursuit of self-definition and is comprised of 6 hour-long conversations between 6 pairs of young female friends, as well as 4 hours of recorded focus group discussion.   My findings demonstrate that ideologies of femininity play a large role in the initial construction of the intimate conversational site which creates space for dynamic negotiations of desire, subjectivity and the multifaceted nature of sexual experiences. The continuing interaction affords constructions of complex feminist identities within neoliberal constraints. I develop this into a critique of how uncritical discourses of sexual agency can transform sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. Embodied sociolinguistics allows access into how sexual pleasure dynamically unfolds in the discursive formulation of the body. Ultimately this culminates into a mapping of historical pleasure landscapes that illustrate the significance of foregrounding language and conversation on sexual pleasure.   Sociolinguistic investigations that seek to transform harmful hegemonic discourses are essential in the ongoing combat against entrenched rape culture. My study advocates for a culture that values discussion of female sexual pleasure. This focus is potentially more destabilizing and contestive than focusing on sexual violation because it directly challenges hetero-patriarchal culture’s hostility toward women’s agency.   The framework employed in this thesis offers significant implications for the field of language, gender and sexuality, including the further advancement of the theory of embodied sociolinguistics and a methodology of intimate insider research. Employing intersectionality allows for the queering of normative sexual practices and disrupts normative gender discourses by centering agentive feminist voices. From a critical perspective, the research contributes to building a model of pleasure activism that prioritises joy. A body-focused linguistic approach demonstrates that true transformation of our sexuality culture must begin with destabilizing the neoliberal project and moving toward collective liberation. There is no inevitability to the sexual danger script when we channel the political power of pleasure. </p>

scholarly journals The body cannot be cheated: sexual practices and modern contraceptive use among street-involved young people in two South West States in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Mary O. Obiyan ◽  
Atinuke O. Olaleye ◽  
Macellina Y. Ijadunola ◽  
Morenike O. Folayan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Parental Monitoring ◽  
The Body ◽  
Transactional Sex ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Modern Contraceptive ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
Modern Contraceptives

Background: Young people aged 10-24 years constitute about one-third of the total population of Nigeria. Street-involved young people (SIYP) face a double burden of living condition instability and lack of adequate parental monitoring. This leaves them vulnerable to poor sexual and reproductive health (SRH) choices and behaviour. Risky sexual behaviour with poor access to SRH information and interventions increases their vulnerability to adverse SRH outcomes. This study explored the use of modern contraceptives and sexual practices among male and female SIYP (10-24 years) in Nigeria. Methods: This qualitative study used an exploratory research design to guide the development of the focus group discussion (FGD) and in-depth interview (IDI) guides. Participants were asked questions on background information, lived experiences and SRH practices. The FGDs were stratified by sex and age. Both FGD discussions and IDI interviews were recoded; transcripts were transcribed and translated from local dialect into English language. Content analysis was conducted thematically with the aid of NVivo. Results: In total, 17 IDIs and 11 FGDs were conducted among SIYP aged 10-24 years. The total number of respondents interviewed was 109. There is high awareness of modern contraceptives among SIYP; the commonly known method was condom with a few also aware of emergency contraceptives pills. However, participants reported low use of modern contraceptives. The common reasons alluded for not using condoms were reduced sexual pleasure, cost and associated myths. The five themes that emerged under sexual practices of SIYP included early age at first sexual encounter, multiple sex partners, transactional sex, same-sex relationships, and transactional sex. Conclusions: There is low utilization of contraceptives by SIYP against the background of their high-risk sexual practices. SIYP would benefit from free contraceptive education, social safety nets and interventions to dissuade them from transactional sex and other unhealthy sexual practices.

Reconstructing Sexuality in the Shadow of Neoliberal Globalization: Investigating the Approach of Charismatic Churches in Southwestern Nigeria

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tola Olu Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Behavior ◽  
Global Exchange

Abstract This study examines how Charismatic churches in southwestern Nigeria are attempting to construct new social identities through their doctrines on marriage and sexual practices specifically constructed to set them apart from other social groups. I argue that these perspectives on sexuality revolve around narratives of the body, sexual desire, and conjugal sexual pleasure within monogamous marriages. The strong rejection of polygyny and other sexual discourses are linked to the global exchange of ideas. I make the case that an important device for developing these identities is emotion training and a vision for both public and private behavior. This study is a textual analysis of written and audio material that lays bare their theories and practices. The data reveal a focus on shaping sexual desire and building conjugal love, trust, and respect, but the training also molds other emotions such as fear, guilt, and shame.

scholarly journals The Spectacle of Violence in Duterte's “War on Drugs”

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo Andres Reyes
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Political Value ◽  
State Protection

This article argues that, in Duterte's “war on drugs”, state power is exercised through the body in a spectacle of humiliation and violence. The analysis draws from the work of Foucault (1979) on the political value of a spectacle of the body to explain the distinctive character of Duterte's violent war on drugs; of Feldman (1991) on the use of the body as an object in which violence is embodied to send political messages; of Agamben (1995) on eliminating life supposedly devoid of value; and on Mumford et al. (2007), who pointed to the popularity of “violent ideological leaders.” I argue that, under the Duterte administration, criminals are humiliated and killed in a spectacle of violence that politicises their lives, sending a message that intimidates others. In the process, law-abiding citizens are meant to feel safe, which is seen as likely to increase the newly elected president's popularity and his power as chief executive. Duterte has thereby politicised life, not only putting criminals outside the benefit of state protection but actively targeting them. Duterte is the first mayor and president to have actively targeted criminals and, in doing so has encouraged other politicians to follow his example. The politicisation of the bodies of criminals is distinctive in Duterte's form of violence. This article is drawn from data sets of individual killings when Duterte was either serving as or acting behind the mayor of Davao, and compared with cases of drug-related killings since he became president on 30 June 2016.

Unbinding the Maternal Body in Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-402
Author(s):  
Madeline Lesser
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fixed Position ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Order And Disorder ◽  
Political Value

This article addresses Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder, an epic, twenty-canto retelling of Genesis. Scholars have often considered Hutchinson’s poem an inferior version of Paradise Lost insofar as it does not transgress biblical narrative. Attending to the poem’s portrayal of childbearing in relation to seventeenth-century birthing prayers and affect theory, this article demonstrates how Hutchinson’s figuration of the body belies any notion of her poem as “Christian cliché.” The article argues that the political value of Order and Disorder stems not from Hutchinson’s depiction of motherhood as a prototype of self-possessed, liberal political agency, but from her account of affective feeling as unbinding woman from any fixed position or category. Finally, the article shows how Hutchinson’s depiction of childbearing, as an ongoing process rather than a teleological event, parallels her understanding of both poetry and providence.

»There is something beautiful in this« (Milan Marković Matthis): On autobiography, body and pain, sexual pleasure, biopolitics, the eventfulness of script and more

Maska ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (198) ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
Alja Lobnik
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Slovene Language

Summary The dramatics of Simona Semenič always emerge through an autobiographical declarative position, they moult through the body. The position of the author, a woman, mother, an artist with an unsettled medical care status, self-employed in culture, an epileptic and smoker is inscribed in them. This holds especially true for the Victim trilogy (I, Victim; The Second Time) which toys with the relation between the bodily and the pathology of the political, between reality and fiction, and between the performative and the dramatic. The text addresses the eventfulness of her textual positions which are most commonly spread through her solo self-performances of the biopolitics of everyday life, as well as through the installation of texts in space which try to give texts a different form of existence. I also consider the juiciness of her texts through which she plays with the Slovene language and gives it some sort of fundamental vibrancy as well as the unreserved zeal that strolls along the taboos of inhibited sexuality and male-female relations, and nonchalantly reveals the production and autonomy of the 'female' sexual pleasure.

Turnout in Multi-Level Systems

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Level ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Different Levels

Voters face different incentives to turn out to vote in one electoral arena versus another. Although turnout is lowest in European elections, it is found that the turnout is only slightly lower in regional than in national elections. Standard accounts suggest that the importance of an election, in terms of the policy-making power of the body to be elected, drives variation in turnout across elections at different levels. This chapter argues that this is only part of the story, and that voter attachment to a particular level also matters. Not all voters feel connected to each electoral arena in the same way. Although for some, their identity and the issues they most care about are linked to politics at the national level, for others, the regional or European level may offer the political community and political issues that most resonate with them.

Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Notturno, the book of the Italian war: Political commitment, national regeneration and its ideological roots

2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110054
Author(s):  
Guylian Nemegeer ◽  
Mara Santi
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Political Message ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Political Value ◽  
Cultural Message

This article argues that Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Notturno conveys a conscious political and cultural message which is consequent of his long-lasting political commitment to the nation. This political value of the book has been mainly overlooked. Therefore, the first part of the article shows the locations of the political and war-related content, and how the book can be considered as a war diary. Moreover, the first part of the article relates the Notturno to d’Annunzio’s political project for the nation at the time when the book was composed (1915–1921). The aim of this part is to dispel the enduring critical misinterpretation of the Notturno as an intimate collection of memories and visions and to foreground its national value. The second part of the article addresses the roots of the Notturno’s political message from a literary point of view by relating it to the national commitment underlying d’Annunzio’s works since the 1880s. This commitment is based on the revalorization in the author’s literary works of the Italian national past, in particular of the 16th century, where d’Annunzio continues and renews the national storytelling of the Risorgimento.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document