Voices of masculinity: Men’s talk in Hungarian university dormitories

Abstract

Research on language and masculinity has been imbued with a paradoxical juxtaposition of seeing White heterosexual men and their language as a ‘default’ and the paucity of empirical studies on what these men actually do in their everyday linguistic practices. This article examines the multivoicedness of masculinities in a specific local context. We analyze Hungarian male university students’ spontaneous conversations, recently recorded in the Budapest University Dormitory Corpus. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of voice, we argue that individual and social voices of masculinity, as well as the contrasts between them, are embedded in gendered and sexualized inequality relations. Even pro-feminist and ‘gay’ voices in the interactions are structured by social inequalities. The voicing of a homosexual figure does not only evoke negatively valued unmasculine behaviors, but also helps in creating homosocial (same-gender and non-sexualized) intimacy. It always happens as a stylized image of ‘another’s language’.

Hungarian Sociolinguistics in the Carpathian Basin, 1985–2022

“…In addition to the Budapest Sociolinguistic Interview project, a similar project was conducted in 2012-2016 in the city of Szeged with 165 respondents (370 hours of recordings), see Németh, Kontra & Sinkovics (2015). A third important project is based on The Budapest University Dormitory Corpus (http://bekk.elte.hu/index.php/in-english/ http://bekk.elte.hu/index.php/in-english/), see Bodó, Szabó & Turai (2019) and Bodó, Turai & Szabó (2022) for insightful analyses of men's talk in Hungarian university dormitories. Issues of moving a participatory research project online due to the coronavirus pandemic in Rumania are discussed by Fazakas & Barabás (2020), while Bodó et al (2022) is a review article on participation in sociolinguistic research.…”

‘I've got a daughter now man it's clean man’: Heteroglossic and intersectional constructions of fatherhood in the spontaneous talk of a group of young southeast London men

“…On the other side there is interactional sociolinguistic and/or discourse analytic work on voices, including the present article, which does not foreground a phonological assessment of voicing contrasts. Instead, this work is concerned with the ways in which speakers evaluate and position themselves in relation to the voices they invoke (Tannen 1989, 2004; Maybin 2006; Pichler 2009; Bodó, Szabó, & Turai 2019). Although many of these linguistic studies apply Bakhtin's conceptualisations to spoken language, definitions of ‘voice’ and foci of analysis still vary, with some focusing predominantly on quotations and dialogue (e.g.…”

“…Tannen), and others blurring the distinction between ‘voice’ and ‘discourse’ (e.g. Bodó et al 2019).…”

Kategóriák és társas jelentések: roma diákok beszédmódjainak elemzése a heteroglosszia-elmélet alapján

“…A beszélők a különböző hangok megszólaltatásával így tudatosan maguk alakítják azt, ahogyan az interakcióban meg kívánnak jelenni: másnak a hangján való megszólalással a hanghoz (és az ahhoz kötődő társas jelentéshez) valamilyen formában viszonyulnak, és így ehhez képest helyezik el, azaz pozicionálják saját magukat (Wortham 2000). Az interakcióban megjelenő hangok az egyén társas ideológiáinak és tapasztalatainak olyan megtestesülései, amelyek kiemelik azt a körülményt, hogy a szavak nem ideológiailag semlegesek, hanem a különböző társas csoportok változatos perspektíváival, illetve sztereotipikus jellemzőikkel telítettek (Bodó-Szabó-Turai 2019). Az elmélet bemutatása azt hangsúlyozta, hogy az interakcióban megjelenő hangok egyrészt társas vonatkozásúak, másrészt az egyénhez kötöttek.…”