Alexandra Krendel | Lancaster University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Alexandra Krendel
Routledge eBooks, Nov 6, 2023
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
This paper examines language used in five of the largest manosphere communities on Reddit (r/TheR... more This paper examines language used in five of the largest manosphere communities on Reddit (r/TheRedPill, r/braincels, r/MensRights, r/seduction, and r/MGTOW) to identify idiosyncratic language use within these communities. To do so, a novel methodology which combines key-key-word analysis with notions from set theory was used to identify and compare keywords between corpora and to find keywords that are used uniquely within – and thus are distinctive to – these five separate communities. The paper achieves the following: it (i) presents a novel method for identifying what we term ‘complement keywords’ (keywords that are not shared between multiple different corpora when compared against the same reference corpus), and (ii) explores idiosyncratic language use in five separate manosphere communities. The analysis first examines interdiscursive relationships between communities emerging from the complement keywords identified before discussing community-specific preoccupations emergent...
This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTO... more This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), reflect the changing and complex (anti-)feminist ideologies of their time. The authors outline the historical and political background of those discourses and how they are influencing contemporary gender relations. The materials analysed comprise ten manifestos, which are examined with a combination of data-led discourse analysis and theory-led argumentation analysis. The manifestos are similar in that both sets of authors construct homogenous in-groups and out-groups as well as dichotomies between them. There are some differences though in how this is linguistically realised and who is classified as an out-group. Both groups cast social actors in particular roles and establish ethical norms, but strategic planning and utopias are more prominent among lesbian separatists. Freedom, advantage and authority are central in each group's argumentation, but lesbian separatists also stre...
Pragmatics and Society
This study investigates the interactional norms of a manosphere discussion forum known as The Red... more This study investigates the interactional norms of a manosphere discussion forum known as The Red Pill (TRP), and asks whether it can be conceptualised as a self-help group. 2104 posts and comments from regular users and high-status users in the community were analysed qualitatively to determine how the community is characterised by certain speech acts, and how these speech acts correspond to face-enhancement and face-threat as well as to certain impression management strategies. Since personal disclosure, advice-giving, and face-enhancement are key characteristics of TRP, it could be argued that TRP shares some functional characteristics with self-help communities. However, much of the advice given is unsolicited, a disproportionately high rate of face-enhancement is directed towards high-status users, and speech acts such as elaborating, and some advice-giving and personal disclosure seem to be used for self-promotion purposes. Furthermore, the prevalence of unhedged face-threats ...
In this presentation, we introduce our research into various online communities which are charact... more In this presentation, we introduce our research into various online communities which are characterised by online misogyny and anti-feminism. Although these communities are loosely networked, they form a nexus on the Reddit platform. In particular, we investigate four sub-groups: Incels (Involuntary Celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW, a group that encourages men to distance themselves from women), Pick Up Artists (see Lawson and McGlashan, 2017), and Men’s Rights Activists. Our overarching research question is as follows: How do members of these groups use language to a) represent gendered social actors and b) (re)produce misogyny in online spaces? Our corpora have been collected from three sub-reddits, comprising ca. 21.3 million words in total, although they differ in size. So far, we have combined corpus linguistic approaches - keyword analysis, concordance line analysis, word frequencies - with qualitative appraisal analysis of selected keywords in extended context. Init...
This paper investigates the representation of gendered social actors in a specialised corpus of 1... more This paper investigates the representation of gendered social actors in a specialised corpus of 10.9 million words collected from five Reddit communities associated with the so-called manosphere: incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (male separatists), pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, and a group dedicated to wider discussions of ‘red pill’ philosophy. 34 gendered social actor terms were identified as key-key-words across the manosphere corpora. Both male and female social actors are referenced using relational terms, while the latter are also referenced using derogatory terms and the former are referenced using terms for kinship and in-group identification. We then analyse the consistent collocates (Baker et al., 2008) of the four most frequent gendered social actor terms (women, girls, men and guys), to establish the topics, descriptions, and actions associated with the social actors across the five groups. Gendered social actors were constructed in esse...
Misogyny as Hate Crime, 2021
Discourse & Society
This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represen... more This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represent and construct gender identities in an anti-feminist forum on the discussion website Reddit. The lemmas were analysed using corpus-assisted social actor analysis and appraisal theory. Similarities and differences within three sub-communities of the TRP subreddit were considered: Men’s Rights (activists who believe that men are systemically disadvantaged in society), Men Going Their Own Way (who abstain from relationships with women), and Red Pill Theory (primarily pick-up artists). The corpus was characterised by bare assertions about gendered behaviour, although the masculine gender role was less well-defined than the feminine one. Women and girls were dehumanised and sexually objectified, negatively judged for morality and veracity, and constructed as desiring hostile behaviour from male social actors. Conversely, men were constructed as victims of female social actors and external in...
Routledge eBooks, Nov 6, 2023
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
This paper examines language used in five of the largest manosphere communities on Reddit (r/TheR... more This paper examines language used in five of the largest manosphere communities on Reddit (r/TheRedPill, r/braincels, r/MensRights, r/seduction, and r/MGTOW) to identify idiosyncratic language use within these communities. To do so, a novel methodology which combines key-key-word analysis with notions from set theory was used to identify and compare keywords between corpora and to find keywords that are used uniquely within – and thus are distinctive to – these five separate communities. The paper achieves the following: it (i) presents a novel method for identifying what we term ‘complement keywords’ (keywords that are not shared between multiple different corpora when compared against the same reference corpus), and (ii) explores idiosyncratic language use in five separate manosphere communities. The analysis first examines interdiscursive relationships between communities emerging from the complement keywords identified before discussing community-specific preoccupations emergent...
This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTO... more This Element shows how two social movements, lesbian separatism and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), reflect the changing and complex (anti-)feminist ideologies of their time. The authors outline the historical and political background of those discourses and how they are influencing contemporary gender relations. The materials analysed comprise ten manifestos, which are examined with a combination of data-led discourse analysis and theory-led argumentation analysis. The manifestos are similar in that both sets of authors construct homogenous in-groups and out-groups as well as dichotomies between them. There are some differences though in how this is linguistically realised and who is classified as an out-group. Both groups cast social actors in particular roles and establish ethical norms, but strategic planning and utopias are more prominent among lesbian separatists. Freedom, advantage and authority are central in each group's argumentation, but lesbian separatists also stre...
Pragmatics and Society
This study investigates the interactional norms of a manosphere discussion forum known as The Red... more This study investigates the interactional norms of a manosphere discussion forum known as The Red Pill (TRP), and asks whether it can be conceptualised as a self-help group. 2104 posts and comments from regular users and high-status users in the community were analysed qualitatively to determine how the community is characterised by certain speech acts, and how these speech acts correspond to face-enhancement and face-threat as well as to certain impression management strategies. Since personal disclosure, advice-giving, and face-enhancement are key characteristics of TRP, it could be argued that TRP shares some functional characteristics with self-help communities. However, much of the advice given is unsolicited, a disproportionately high rate of face-enhancement is directed towards high-status users, and speech acts such as elaborating, and some advice-giving and personal disclosure seem to be used for self-promotion purposes. Furthermore, the prevalence of unhedged face-threats ...
In this presentation, we introduce our research into various online communities which are charact... more In this presentation, we introduce our research into various online communities which are characterised by online misogyny and anti-feminism. Although these communities are loosely networked, they form a nexus on the Reddit platform. In particular, we investigate four sub-groups: Incels (Involuntary Celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW, a group that encourages men to distance themselves from women), Pick Up Artists (see Lawson and McGlashan, 2017), and Men’s Rights Activists. Our overarching research question is as follows: How do members of these groups use language to a) represent gendered social actors and b) (re)produce misogyny in online spaces? Our corpora have been collected from three sub-reddits, comprising ca. 21.3 million words in total, although they differ in size. So far, we have combined corpus linguistic approaches - keyword analysis, concordance line analysis, word frequencies - with qualitative appraisal analysis of selected keywords in extended context. Init...
This paper investigates the representation of gendered social actors in a specialised corpus of 1... more This paper investigates the representation of gendered social actors in a specialised corpus of 10.9 million words collected from five Reddit communities associated with the so-called manosphere: incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (male separatists), pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, and a group dedicated to wider discussions of ‘red pill’ philosophy. 34 gendered social actor terms were identified as key-key-words across the manosphere corpora. Both male and female social actors are referenced using relational terms, while the latter are also referenced using derogatory terms and the former are referenced using terms for kinship and in-group identification. We then analyse the consistent collocates (Baker et al., 2008) of the four most frequent gendered social actor terms (women, girls, men and guys), to establish the topics, descriptions, and actions associated with the social actors across the five groups. Gendered social actors were constructed in esse...
Misogyny as Hate Crime, 2021
Discourse & Society
This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represen... more This study investigates how the lemmas woman, girl, man and guy are used to discursively represent and construct gender identities in an anti-feminist forum on the discussion website Reddit. The lemmas were analysed using corpus-assisted social actor analysis and appraisal theory. Similarities and differences within three sub-communities of the TRP subreddit were considered: Men’s Rights (activists who believe that men are systemically disadvantaged in society), Men Going Their Own Way (who abstain from relationships with women), and Red Pill Theory (primarily pick-up artists). The corpus was characterised by bare assertions about gendered behaviour, although the masculine gender role was less well-defined than the feminine one. Women and girls were dehumanised and sexually objectified, negatively judged for morality and veracity, and constructed as desiring hostile behaviour from male social actors. Conversely, men were constructed as victims of female social actors and external in...