Review of Lawson (2023): Language and Mediated Masculinities

In Language and Mediated Masculinities, Robert Lawson presents a series of five interconnected studies that interrogate the ways in which masculinities are performed, enacted and constructed through language.He explores a variety of different contexts: while online spacesthe so-called manosphereform the basis for the majority of the inquiry, attention is also given to newspaper articles and a television sitcom.The book is very aware of its relevance to the current political moment, with Donald Trump mentioned on the very first page, and warns that its findings may be polarizing.Although, as the author admits, there is already a significant body of research on masculinities, he argues convincingly for the need for more work interrogating the specific ways in which language constructs them across diverse media.The first three chapters set out the conceptual and methodological framework for the studies that follow in chapters four to eight.Lawson is explicit about the scope of the book from the outset: while he highlights important work done elsewhere on, for example, queer and female masculinities, he stresses that the focus here is primarily on subjects that are heterosexual, cis-gendered, White, and English-speaking.He justifies this decision by explaining that such masculinities are often presented as "normal" or "everyday", used as a benchmark against which someone's masculinity is judged to be "successful" or "failed" (p.11), and therefore in need of further scrutiny.Chapter 2 lays out the theoretical framework, defining central terms like man, male and masculinity, and exploring various approaches to the study of masculinities.Lawson adopts a lens that is both social constructionist and multidimensional in its understanding of identity categories.He engages with R. W. Connell's (1987Connell's ( , 2005) ) concept of hegemonic masculinity, while also offering some critiques and signposting other formulations, including toxic, positive, and caring masculinities.Chapter 3 summarises the methodological choices underlying the project.Here, the author provides a clear rationale for the types of data selected for the researcha key priority is to analyse a range of contextsand offers an overview of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics, along with various tools associated with these methodologies.He also discusses multiple legal and ethical concerns, with particular attention given to the impacts of GDPR on research involving social media and online forums, and