Sexual Stylistics

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to survey the field of sexual stylistics and to illustrate the latest analyses within that field. The first section addresses the questions some researchers have asked in their studies about the language of sexuality in literature. The second section lays out the primary trends in this field, including feminist, critical, and corpus stylistics. The third section delves into the main research topics in this field. Special attention is devoted to different genres (e.g., children’s literature or popular fiction), linguistic features (e.g., metaphors or euphemisms), and sexual practices (e.g., masturbation or incest). The fourth section illustrates the trend of corpus stylistics through a computational and discourse analysis of the language of sexuality in the tetralogy Antagonía by Catalan author Luis Goytisolo. The chapter closes with a summary and some guidelines for future research.