Men Talk

Men Talk draws on rich conversational material from a wide range of contexts to illuminate our understanding of men and masculinities at the turn of the millennium. Draws on rich conversational material to illuminate our understanding of men and masculinities at the turn of the millennium. Collects data from a wide range of conversations, including garage mechanics on a break, carpenters at the pub after work, and university academics chatting after hours. Focuses on stories, which occur within all-male conversations. Makes a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the intersection of language and masculinity.

‘Though many blandly assert that gender is socially constructed, few really understand how. In this insightful work, Jennifer Coates takes us inside, deep inside, the construction of masculinities and enables us to watch them in the process of their construction, as men use language to create gendered meanings and hierarchies, and are, in turn, made by those very meanings.’ Michael Kimmel, SUNY at Stony Brook and author of The Gendered Society ‘Men Talk is the first in-depth study of all-male conversations. Coates’s book takes a fresh look at the way in which men's use of language helps to maintain, and sometimes challenge, traditional gender boundaries.’ Sally Johnson, Lancaster University "Very readable, grounded in data, with the chapters very logically and clearly linked, providing a degree of overall coherence that is often missing in books of this kind...[the book contains a] wealth of detail and careful empirical analysis." Discourse and Society

Jennifer Coates is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Surrey Roehampton. She is author of Women Talk (Blackwell, 1996) and editor of Language and Gender: A Reader (Blackwell, 1997).