Language and gender is an area of study within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and related fields that investigates varieties of speech associated with a particular gender, or social norms for such gendered language use. A variety of speech (or sociolect) associated with a particular gender is sometimes called a genderlect.
The study of gender and language in sociolinguistics and gender studies is often said to have begun with Robin Lakoff's 1975 book, Language and Woman's Place, as well as some earlier studies by Lakoff.
The study of language and gender has developed greatly since the 1970s. Prominent scholars include Deborah Cameron, Penelope Eckert, Janet Holmes, Deborah Tannen, and others.
Read more about Language And Gender: Studies of Language and Gender, Speech Practices Associated With Gender, Gender-specific Vocabulary
Famous quotes containing the words language and, language and/or gender:
“Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)