The 1975 publication of Robin Tolmach Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place, is widely recognized as having inaugurated feminist research on the relationship between language and gender, touching off a remarkable response among language scholars, feminists, and general readers. For the past thirty years, scholars of language and gender have been debating and developing Lakoff's initial observations. Arguing that language is fundamental to gender inequality, Lakoff pointed to two areas in which inequalities can be found: Language used about women, such as the asymmetries between seemingly parallel terms like master and mistress, and language used by women, which places women in a double bind between being appropriately feminine and being fully human. Lakoff's central argument that "women's language" expresses powerlessness triggered a controversy that continues to this day. The revised and expanded edition presents the full text of the original first edition, along with an introduction and annotations by Lakoff in which she reflects on the text a quarter century later and expands on some of the most widely discussed issues it raises. The volume also brings together commentaries from twenty-six leading scholars of language, gender, and sexuality, within linguistics, anthropology, modern languages, education, information sciences, and other disciplines. The commentaries discuss the book's contribution to feminist research on language and explore its ongoing relevance for scholarship in the field. This new edition of Language and Woman's Place not only makes available once again the pioneering text of feminist linguistics; just as important, it places the text in the context of contemporary feminist and gender theory for a new generation of readers.

Editor's Introduction Author's Introduction Language and Woman's Place: The Original Text with Annotations by Author Part 1: Context 1. Changing Places: Language and Woman's Place in Context, Mary Bucholtz 2. "Radical Feminist" as Label, Libel, and Laudatory Chant: The Politics of Theoretical Taxonomies in Feminist Linguistics, Bonnie McElhinny 3. Positioning Ideas and Gendered Subjects: "Women's Language" Revisited, Sally McConnell-Ginet 4. Language and Woman's Place: Picking Up the Gauntlet, Anna Livia Part 2: Concepts 5. Power, Lady, and Linguistic Politeness in Language and Woman's Place, Janet Holmes 6. Cultural Patterning in Language and Woman's Place, Deborah Tannen 7. The Good Woman, Penelope Eckert 8. Language and Marginalized Places, Kira Hall Part 3: Femininities 9. Exploring Woman's Language in Japan, Sachiko Ide 10. "Woman's Langugae and Martha Stewart: From a Room of One's Own to a Home of One's Own to a Corporation of One's Own, Catherine Davies 11. Public Discourse and the Private Life of Little Girls: Language and Woman's Place and Language Socialization, Jenny Cook-Gumperz 12. Mother's Place in Language and Woman's Place, Shari Kendall Part 4: Power 13. Doing and Saying: Some Words on Women's Silence, Miriam Meyerhoff 14. Computer-Mediated Communication and Woman's Place, Susan Herring 15. Linguistics Discrimination and Violence against Women: Discursive Practices and Material Effects, Susan Ehrlich 16. What Does a Focus on "Men's Language" Tell Us about Language and Woman's Place?, Scott Kiesling Part 5: Women's Place 17. Gender, Identity, and "Strong Language" in a Professional Woman's Talk, Judith Mattson Beam and Barbara Johnstone 18. The New Language and Place of Women in Japan: Reflections on Language and Woman's Place, Toshiko Matsumoto 19. "I'm Every Woman": Black Women's (Dis)placement in Women's Language Study, Marcyliena Morgan 20. The Anguish of Normative Gender: Sociolinguistic Studies among U.S. Latinas, Norma Mendoza-Denton 21. Contradictions of the Indigenous Americas: Feminist Challenges to and from the Field, Sara Trechter Part 6: Sexualities 22. Language and Woman's Place: Blueprint Studies of Gay Men's English, William L. Leap 23. They Way We Wish We Were: Sexuality and Class in Language and Woman's Place, Rudolf P. Gaudio 24. "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar": The Importance of Linguistics Stereotype for Lesbian Identity Performances, Robin Queen 25. As Much as We Use Language: Lakoff's Queer Augury, Rusty Barrett

Robin Tolmach LakoffProfessor of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

"Lakoff, the scholar who inspired me to pursue a career in linguistics, was the first to show that the language used by women (who is more likely--or expected--to say, "Oh dear" and "My goodness"?) and about women (men pass out, but women faint) reflects the way that women are treated and the real-world possibilities open to them."--Deborah Tannen, author of Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends, Revised Edition (OUP, 2005) and You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation |k No