LINGUISTIC, EMOTIONAL AND CONTENT ANALYSES OF SEXUALLY EXPLICIT SCENES IN POPULAR FICTION.

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  • Author(s): Whissell, Cynthia
  • Source:
    Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. Summer98, Vol. 7 Issue 2, p147-159. 13p. 3 Charts.
  • Additional Information
    • Subject Terms:
      SEXISM & literature; FICTION; BOOKS & reading; CONTENT analysis; HUMAN behavior; POPULAR fiction; EMOTIONS
    • Abstract:
      The article examines explicit sexuality in popular fiction published for a female audience and in popular fiction published for a male audience at the level of linguistic, emotional, and content analysis. Exports of category fiction published by companies have accounted for a significant portion of Canada's balance of trade with respect to books. This fact suggests rather forcefully that the reading of popular fiction is a frequent, and therefore ecologically valid, human behavior. This is particularly true for women's popular fiction, as the yearly traffic involves millions of purchases and encompasses 40% of the total American book market. Men's popular fiction has a smaller market of serialized adventure stories. Category or genre fiction published for both the male and the female market includes many explicit sexual scenes. The reading of popular fiction may be considered in the light of two current models of sex differences in emotion that overlap in many of their assumptions and conclusions. The first model of is based on Tomkins' theory of emotion and second model is based on Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion.