麻豆淫院

Author: Lucy Bowling
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall, TA Rebecca Lee听
Class: LING 2400: Language, Gender, & Sexuality
Semester: Fall 2022
LURA 2023

听

听

Jesse Armstrong鈥檚 hit HBO drama Succession is, at its core, a show about a family business. It is also a show about the business of being a family, and all of the battles that go on behind the scenes when there are multiple powerful people under one roof. The patriarch, Logan Roy, grapples with some complex and delicate relationships with his children, one of whom, supposedly, will be Logan鈥檚 successor and take over as CEO of Waystar-Royco. He has to ask himself many questions that a father normally doesn鈥檛: How will the PR response be if I send my son to rehab? How do I emotionally manipulate my youngest to side with me on this acquisition deal? Will my daughter be able to sweep this sexual harassment case under the rug for me? How do I prevent my idiodic son from running for president as an independent?

The Roy family is full of dysfunctional relationships and even more dysfunctional language. Tom Wambsgans, wife of Logan鈥檚 only daughter Siobhan (Shiv) Roy, sums up the show鈥檚 use of language quite nicely when discussing Shiv鈥檚 potential deal with her dad:

鈥淚t鈥檚 like you and your dad have finally admitted how much you鈥檙e into each other, you know? And now you can...you know... not this, but now you can bang.鈥�

The words 鈥渂ang,鈥� 鈥渇uck,鈥� 鈥渇ight,鈥� and 鈥渒ill鈥� are used interchangeably to describe business deals, and with Logan Roy as an almost omnipotent power in the show, incestual sentences like this are uttered many, many times. This is not done purely for the sake of comedy, but for creating an atmosphere of aggressive corporate life which is only intensified by jarring language use.

Armstrong and his team of writers have a foul mouth: in Episode 5, the word 鈥渇uck鈥� is uttered a whopping 99 times. But this use of profanity isn鈥檛 senseless: it is simultaneously deliberately stylized and a real attempt at commenting on masculinity in the business world. The stylization of language in the show, which often ends up being overtly masculine, aggressive, and unprofessional is what attracted me to the thought of making a video essay about the show. In the course LING 2400: Language, Gender, and听Sexuality, we discussed at length how different cultural subgroups develop and utilize their own language, often indexing more complex social hierarchies and norms. While language within the show is to a degree played for laughs, it is also used to expertly comment on gender and create characters whose vocabulary is indicative of important parts of their character.

Oftentimes, the show creates an atmosphere of locker-room banter to the nth degree, with phallic metaphors being a staple in most of the men鈥檚 vocabulary. But the show also subverts the audience鈥檚 expectations in several ways. Women like Siobhan Roy use the same foul language as her brothers, while her nervous, new-to-corporate life cousin Greg Hirsch speaks about as submissively as he can.

We can better understand these complex uses of language by applying early theories of language and gender proposed by Deborah Tannen (1990) and Robin Lakoff (1975) about how language and gender inform one another. While Lakoff focuses on the concept of 鈥渨omen鈥檚 language,鈥� Tannen divides language into a 鈥渢wo-cultures鈥� model, namely rapport talk (associated with women) vs. report talk (associated with men). In addition, we can apply concepts from O鈥橞arr and Atkins鈥檚 (1980) paper on powerless language as well as Scott Kiesling鈥檚 (2004) essay 鈥淒ude鈥� on masculine language.

Is the masculine language used by men on the show an assertion of traditional gender roles? Or do the writers for Succession subvert our expectations of language? In a way, Succession highlights the complexities and nuances of gendered language, showing that while gender does impact one鈥檚 use of language, 鈥渕en鈥檚鈥� vs. 鈥渨omen鈥檚鈥� language is far, far too simple for the Roys.

听

Image Credit

听

Selected References

1. Succession, Jesse Armstrong, HBO 2018.

2. Kiesling, Scott F. 鈥淒ude.鈥澨�American Speech, vol. 79, no. 3, Jan. 2004, pp. 281鈥�305.

3. Lakoff, Robin.听Language and Woman鈥檚 Place. Harper & Row,听 1975.

4. Tannen, Deborah.听You Just Don鈥檛 Understand鈥�: Women and Men in Conversation.听听Morrow, 1990.

5. O鈥橞arr, William M., and Bowman K Atkins. 鈥溾�榃omen鈥檚 language鈥� or 鈥榩owerless language鈥�?鈥澨�Women and Language in Literature and Society,听edited by听Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and听 Nelly Furman. Praeger, , 1980, pp. 93-110

听