Kulturmannen

Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to give an understanding of how to word “kulturmannen” (culture man) was constructed in the Swedish newspapers arts section. The word was first used during a cultural debate in 2014 by the journalist Åsa Beckman at Dagens Nyheter. The word has been used to describe a male, in a pejorative manner, working within the culture
sphere.
To be able to deconstruct the word we decided to use Orla Vigsøs rhetorical analysis method, and picked out articles from two Swedish daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The articles were chosen by the level of intent trying to portray the culture man by the writer. The articles have been examined through the three principles of rhetorical
analysis, Logos, Ethos and Pathos. To put our rhetorical analysis into a theoretical perspective we depended on a series of gender studies by the sociologist Raewyn Connell, in particular her work surrounding masculine gender roles.
Our key findings in this thesis showed that the word was constructed and driven from an ethos point of view by the journalists participating in the debate. Furthermore, we also found a link between Raewyn Connells theory about the masculine hegemony and the rhetorical description of the culture man shown in the articles. This indicates that the culture man, as Connell describes it, belongs to a position called “complicity”. In other words, the culture man is a person who benefits from the patriarchal structures and is therefore gaining from the masculine hegemony.
Keywords: Masculinity, Rhetorical analysis, Raewyn Connell, Gender, Kulturmannen