Strategies of Negotiation in Mainstream Media: Vernacular Discourse and Masculinity in The Full Monty

Abstract

This article examines how vernacular discourses operate in mainstream popular culture. Taking the film The Full Monty as a case study, it argues that certain examples of vernacular discourse operate in tandem with official discourses. Specifically, by utilizing Bakhtin's notion of the spectacle and Burke's thinking on the comic frame, this film generates a discourse of economics and class that is in opposition to its discourse of White, male privilege. Ultimately, the two discourses illuminate the crisis in masculinity that resulted from Thatcherite economic policies and how this crisis was resolved through the privilege of race and gender. The implications for vernacular rhetoric lie in the nuances and complexities that emerge as a result of the interactions between vernacular and official discourses.