In Alpha Masculinity: Hegemony in Language and Discourse (Palgrave Macmillan, April 2021), Eric Louis Russell, unravels the language mechanisms behind the myth and the reality of the American alpha male. 

Through a detailed, multi-level analysis, Russell shows how the Alpha figure combines elements of dominance, normativity, and androcentrism and how these forces intersect with neoliberal and pseudoscientific discourses to establish a uniquely hybridized male hegemony, one that is familiar to most, but whose internal mechanisms remain largely unquestioned and unexamined.

About the author

Russell is a linguist who is intensely interested in people as linguistic and cultural beings. In his view, language and culture are inseparable, and neither of these can be understood apart from the humans who accomplish them. He's a professor in the Department of French and Italian, and affiliated with the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.

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