‘DOING THE NASTY’…OR HAVING IT DONE TO YOU?

agent roles in erotic writing

Alon Lischinsky — Oxford Brookesalon@lischinsky.net

‘DOING THE NASTY’…OR HAVING IT DONE TO YOU?

agent roles in erotic writing

Alon Lischinsky — Oxford Brookesalon@lischinsky.net

FROM THE SECRET MUSEUM TO TIMES SQ

Pornography has become an increasingly prominent part of social life

THE PORNIFICATION OF THE WORLD

agent roles in erotic writing

FROM CENSURE…

“Prolonged consumption of pornography distorts perceptions of sexuality […] breeds discontent with the physical appearance and the sexual performance of intimate partners [and] increases men's propensity for committing rape.”

Zillmann (1986:26–7)

“Pornography […] portrays stereotypical views of women as passive."

Rosen & Christiman (1997:210)

ACADEMIC VIEWS OF PORN

agent roles in erotic writing

…TO CELEBRATION…

“Pornography is valuable. It sends out messages of comfort and rebellion. It says: Lust is not evil. The body is not hateful. Physical pleasure is a joyful thing and should not be hidden or denied.”

Califia (2000:52)

“One of the most common informal sources of sexual information was pornography in its various forms. Pornography was usually described as one of the only resources available.”

Kubicek et al. (2010:250)

ACADEMIC VIEWS OF PORN

agent roles in erotic writing

…BUT FOCUSED ON THE VISUAL ONLY

“The visceral energies directed ‘at’ pornography by social forces concentrate on its visual aspects […] While pornographic books and magazines are also mass-produced and -consumed, they are less visible as targets of critique or analysis because the prevailing figure for pornographic consumption lies so squarely in the enthralled spectatorship of the eye.”

Wicke (1995:75)

ACADEMIC VIEWS OF PORN

agent roles in erotic writing

TOWARDS (CRITICAL) PORNOLINGUISTICS?

Linguistic methods can give empirical answers to long-standing criticisms of porn

The gendered construal of agency can be observed through transitivity analysis (cf. Carter 1997, Trew 1979)

● ‘She fucked him’● ‘They fucked’● ‘He fucked her’

agent roles in erotic writing

ACADEMIC VIEWS OF PORN

TRANSITIVITY AND COGNITIVE CONSTRUAL

The construal of sexual agency expressed in plural subject + intransitive verb constructions differs from that of singular subject + transitive verb ones

“Morgan, we had sex. Well, I had sex with you.”

“I wasn't supposed to kiss him, and definitely wouldn't let him fuck me. Now we were actually making love and it wasn't one-sided.”

agent roles in erotic writing

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION

CORPUS OF ONLINE EROTICA

Literotica: large free erotica repository

Top 15 stories from each category (excluding how-tos, reviews and novellas)

For this paper, also excluded primarily same-sex categories

Python script to download and clean up text

5,384,376 tokens; 60,460 types

POS and grammar tagged with Sketch Engine(Kilgarriff et al. 2014)

agent roles in erotic writing

METHODS AND MATERIALS

REPRESENTING (HETERO)SEXUAL ACTIONshag (v) f = 3 (0.46 per million)

ream (v) f = 30 (4.62 per million)

nail (v) f = 38 (5.85 per million)

plow (v) f = 45 (6.93 per million)

bang (v) f = 77 (11.86 per million)

ram (v) f = 139 (21.42 per million)

screw (v) f = 274 (42.22 per million)

pound (v) f = 205 (79.82 per million)

make love (make-v + love-n) f = 439 (67.65 per million)

have sex (have-v + sex-n) f = 450 (69.34 per million)

fuck (v) f = 4,552 (701.50 per million)

agent roles in erotic writing

METHODS AND MATERIALS

MANUAL DISAMBIGUATION REQUIRED

Automatic parsing does not reliably distinguish particles from complements

agent roles in erotic writing

METHODS AND MATERIALS

“With both hands on my knees, Erin fucked herself up and down on my shaft faster than I would have ever thought possible.”

“A simple job! SIMPLE! You almost had them too and then you fucked it up!”

“I want you to fuck me over and over until my pussy is filled with your potent juice.”

“Soledad, next time you decide to fuck me over and abuse my confidence in you, make sure you forget my address first.”

THE MANY USES OF ‘FUCK’

Concordance hand-tagged using the schema of McEnery & Xiao (2004)C Cursing expletive “Fuck Kobe and fuck the Lakers”

D Destinational usage “Fuck off and leave him alone”

E Emphatic intensifier “I'm a fucking barracuda at work”

G General expletive “Fuck, that's hot!”

I Idiomatic set phrase “I didn't sign up to fuck with the mob”

L Literal usage “A woman who fucks to get ahead”

O Pronominal form “You knew we'd get busy as fuck”

P Personal insult “The fat fuck himself”

X Metalinguistic/other “Did she mean ‘fuck’ literally?”

agent roles in erotic writing

METHODS AND MATERIALS

LITEROTICAmake love (make-v + love-n) f = 439 (67.65 per million)

have sex (have-v + sex-n) f = 450 (69.34 per million)

fuck (v, filtered) f = 3,246 (602.85 per million)

total f = 4,135 instances

COCAmake love (make-v + love-n) f = 3,374 (7.49 per million)

have sex (have-v + sex-n) f = 6,814 (15.14 per million)

fuck (v) f = 10,616 (23.59 per million)

agent roles in erotic writing

METHODS AND MATERIALS

SEX RARELY SEEN AS JOINT/MUTUAL ACTION

Low proportion of plural + intransitive (or + reflexive) constructions, varying inversely with crudeness of expression

proportion of intransitive literal uses

make love 217 / 439 49.43%

have sex 144 / 450 32.00%

fuck 234 / 3,246 7.20%

agent roles in erotic writing

INTRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

SEX RARELY SEEN AS JOINT/MUTUAL ACTION

agent roles in erotic writing

INTRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

“I couldn't help sneak a peek at the two of them as they made love in the living room.”

“I'd fantasized about doing her ass since we first had sex, but I never built up the courage to ask her to try it with me.”

“And then she wasn't able to say anything more as I crushed my lips to hers and we fucked each other with our tongues as much as we were with our loins.”

“Did she just suggest that we fuck while her friends watch us in videochat?”

AGENT ROLE USUALLY ASSIGNED TO MALES

“Men do the fucking. Women get fucked. That's the way of life.”

Transitive uses of ‘fuck’ take male agents more than twice as frequently as female ones

gender of agent in literal uses

female 905 31.28%

male 1947 67.27%

inanimate object 8 0.28%

(unclassifiable) 34 1.17%

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

AGENT ROLE USUALLY ASSIGNED TO MALES

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

“He was lubing me with my own pussy juice. He was lubing me with my own pussy juice so he could fuck me in the ass.”

“Always looking at Carlos, she pulled him forward, and softly said. ‘Fuck her Carlos, fuck her brains out. Fuck her silly.’”

“Her voice trailed off as he swivelled the monitor to her and she saw a woman with her legs spread wide being fucked by a highly modified mixer.”

“Looking to her side, she saw Mike sitting in a chair and slowly masturbating while watching her fuck Carl.”

AGENCY PATTERNS ARE VERB-SPECIFIC

Other highly frequent verbs in the corpus do not share this strong preference for male agents

male : female agent ratio

make love 1 : 0.40

have sex 1 : 1.21

fuck 1 : 0.46

pull 1 : 1.17

kiss 1 : 1.23

move 1 : 1.49

leave 1 : 1.18

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

PATIENTS TEND CONVERSELY TO BE FEMALE

Transitive uses of ‘fuck’ take female patients almost three times as frequently as male ones

gender of patient in literal uses

female 2114 72.28%

of which body parts 250 8.55%

male 782 26.74%

of which body parts 57 1.95%

inanimate object 5 0.17%

(unclassifiable) 23 0.79%

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

PATIENTS TEND CONVERSELY TO BE FEMALE

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

“You need to go out with the boys to you can come home and fuck your girlfriend in a way to which you hope she becomes accustomed.’”

“‘I can feel you swelling Dave,’ she said. ‘So you like fucking my ass? Fucking my tight, wet ass?’’”

“Holly cried, running one hand through her long hair as she arched her back, gathering and holding some of it there as she fucked the rotating dildo shoved up inside her pussy.”

“And it's not like you fucked Barry, you just showed him some tits and ass, maybe a little pussy.”

FEMALE AGENCY: SOME CAVEATS

A majority of the instances of transitive ‘fuck’ with female agents corresponds to uses of insertable sex toys

agent roles in erotic writing

TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS “Helen kept a steady rhythm,

fucking Chloe with the dildo steadily as she did.”

“She is very good at stroking my cock while she fucks my asshole with her strapon, and the rhythm she uses to do both things at once drives me incredibly wild with lust.”

CRITICISMS OF PORN PRIMA FACIE JUSTIFIED

The grammar used in representing (hetero)sexual acts seems to assign agency primarily to males

Women are more likely to be represented in an agent role when performing a penetrative action

CONFIRMING AND REFINING CRITIQUE

Distinguish narrator voice from reported speech

Separate categories (as sub-genres)

Correlate with author's gender and orientation

agent roles in erotic writing

CONCLUSIONSAND PLANS

Califia, P. (2000). Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (2nd. ed.). San Francisco: Cleis.

Carter, R. (1997). Investigating English Discourse: Language, Literacy, Literature. London: Routledge.

Davies, M. (2008–) The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

Kilgarriff, A., Baisa, V., Bušta, J., Jakubíček, M., Kovář, V., Michelfeit, J., Rychlý, P. & Suchomel, V. (2014). The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography, 1(1), 7-36.

Kubicek, K., Beyer, W. J., Weiss, G., Iverson, E., & Kipke, M. D. (2010). In the dark: Young men’s stories of sexual initiation in the absence of relevant sexual health information. Health Education & Behavior, 37(2), 243–263.

McEnery, A., & Xiao, Z. (2004). Swearing in modern British English: the case of fuck in the BNC. Language and Literature, 13(3), 235-268.

Rosen, D. & Christman, J. (1997). Toward a New Model of Sexuality. In: Soble, A. (Ed.). Sex, Love, and Friendship (pp. 199–214). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Trew, T. (1979). “What the Papers Say”: linguistic variation and ideological difference. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress, & T. Trew (Eds.), Language and control (pp. 117–156). London: Routledge.

Wicke, J. (1991). Through a gaze darkly: pornography's academic market. Transition, 54, 68–89

Zillmann, D. (1986). Effects of Prolonged Consumption of Pornography. Paper written for the Surgeon General’s Workshop on Pornography and Public Health. Arlington, VA.

agent roles in erotic writing

REFERENCES