Mediated Masculinity at the Millennium: The Jim Rome Show as a Male Bonding Speech Community

Abstract

Using an ethnography of communication suggested in Hymes' work on speech communities, the authors analyzed 10 days of the Jim Rome radio call-in sports program during the month of January 2000. After examining the show's topics, its style of conversation and humor, its conception as "place," and the initiation rites carried out with callers, the study suggests that The Jim Rome Show is an exemplar of a male bonding speech community, serving as a gatekeeper and embellisher for the enactment of contemporary discourse of traditional male camaraderie while also providing a mediated substitute for the traditional male "place."