‘There is a Concern’: Strategies of Emotion Talk

Abstract

In this chapter I am beginning to explore the ways in which men speak about their emotions. I am interested in how emotions are constructed in men’s narratives of past emotional experiences. Here, as well as in the next chapter, I shall only be interested in men’s narratives. The issue of how women talk about men’s emotions would merit a different study, as it would offer more insight into women’s discursive practices, rather than men’s. I shall focus here upon two super-strategies of men’s accounts of their emotions: first I shall explore distancing strategies (i.e., strategies in which emotional states are not ascribed directly to those who are constructed as experiencing them); second, I shall be interested in their counterpart: accounts in which men talk about their emotions directly.