The sexy dad and caring father

Professor Angela Smith has contributed an entry on male stereotypes to the International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. It explores how fatherhood can be articulated as both an opportunity for men to demonstrate their caring, nurturing side, while also being a site for sexual desirability, popularly referred to as the “DILF.” Angela shows how the “new man” masculinity that emerged in the 1990s came to be linked with the popularizing of female‐directed pornography around the same time, finally merging in the 21st century as the “sexy dad.” By drawing on various media texts relating to fatherhood, she shows how there is a self‐presentation of fatherhood that is largely in line with the caring, emotional “new man,” but at times wittily espousing a playful form of macho masculinity linked with gym culture. This is contrasted with the media interpretation of such fatherhood that seeks to sexualize the male body in the popular press. The discussion finds that the act of carrying or holding a child becomes a site for these two discourses to meet, both in the visual images used to illustrate stories and in the associated text.

Smith, A. 2020. Male Stereotypes: The Sexy Dad and Caring Father. In Ross, K. et al. (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

A new online grammar of North East English

Senior Lecturer in English Language Dr Mike Pearce has written a major new grammar of North East English. Drawing on a naturalistic corpus of contemporary vernacular writing, the grammar covers morphology, syntactic linkage, syntax, and the organisation of discourse. This new work appears alongside Mike's archived research on his Dialectological Landscapes of North East England site, where you can read about perceptual dialectology, the 'survival' of traditional dialect lexis, the use of vernacular forms in the linguistic landscape, and the origins and meanings of the region's ethnonyms.

A house through time

Professor Angela Smith's research into early 20th century social welfare has been used to inform the content of the popular BBC2 programme, A House Through Time.  Using extensive data - mostly gleaned from the National Archives - Angela's research was published in a 2012 book which examines the way in which British widows of servicemen who died in the First World War were represented in society and by themselves, exploring the intertwining discourses of social welfare, national identity, and morality that can be identified in these texts. The third series of A House Through Time focuses on a house in Bristol, and as the timeline reached the early part of the 20th century, researchers there found three sisters who were widowed as a result of the First World War.  Angela's research led to the development of this aspect the house's history being explored in a 20-minute section of the third episode of the series, and for the first time in the series, viewers were able to hear the testimony of a former resident of the house who revisited it, and was interviewed by host, David Olusoga. This programme attracts more than 3m viewers per episode, which makes it the most popular show on the channel.

Discourses Surrounding British Widows of the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2012).