Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries / Edition 1

by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Mary Bucholtz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195167573
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/22/2004
Series:	Studies in Language and Gender , #3
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	9.22(w) x 6.42(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Robin Tolmach Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely regarded as the founder of language and gender studies, she writes extensively about gender and power and is the author or coauthor of seven books and nearly one hundred articles.

Mary Bucholz is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has coedited several books on language and gender and is the author of numerous articles on race, class, and youth identities.

Table of Contents

Editor's IntroductionAuthor's IntroductionLanguage and Woman's Place: The Original Text with Annotations by AuthorPart 1: Context1. Changing Places: Language and Woman's Place in Context, Mary Bucholtz2. "Radical Feminist" as Label, Libel, and Laudatory Chant: The Politics of Theoretical Taxonomies in Feminist Linguistics, Bonnie McElhinny3. Positioning Ideas and Gendered Subjects: "Women's Language" Revisited, Sally McConnell-Ginet4. Language and Woman's Place: Picking Up the Gauntlet, Anna LiviaPart 2: Concepts5. Power, Lady, and Linguistic Politeness in Language and Woman's Place, Janet Holmes6. Cultural Patterning in Language and Woman's Place, Deborah Tannen7. The Good Woman, Penelope Eckert8. Language and Marginalized Places, Kira HallPart 3: Femininities9. Exploring Woman's Language in Japan, Sachiko Ide10. "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 Davies11. Public Discourse and the Private Life of Little Girls: Language and Woman's Place and Language Socialization, Jenny Cook-Gumperz12. Mother's Place in Language and Woman's Place, Shari KendallPart 4: Power13. Doing and Saying: Some Words on Women's Silence, Miriam Meyerhoff14. Computer-Mediated Communication and Woman's Place, Susan Herring15. Linguistics Discrimination and Violence against Women: Discursive Practices and Material Effects, Susan Ehrlich16. What Does a Focus on "Men's Language" Tell Us about Language and Woman's Place?, Scott KieslingPart 5: Women's Place17. Gender, Identity, and "Strong Language" in a Professional Woman's Talk, Judith Mattson Beam and Barbara Johnstone18. The New Language and Place of Women in Japan: Reflections on Language and Woman's Place, Toshiko Matsumoto19. "I'm Every Woman": Black Women's (Dis)placement in Women's Language Study, Marcyliena Morgan20. The Anguish of Normative Gender: Sociolinguistic Studies among U.S. Latinas, Norma Mendoza-Denton21. Contradictions of the Indigenous Americas: Feminist Challenges to and from the Field, Sara TrechterPart 6: Sexualities22. Language and Woman's Place: Blueprint Studies of Gay Men's English, William L. Leap23. They Way We Wish We Were: Sexuality and Class in Language and Woman's Place, Rudolf P. Gaudio24. "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar": The Importance of Linguistics Stereotype for Lesbian Identity Performances, Robin Queen25. As Much as We Use Language: Lakoff's Queer Augury, Rusty Barrett

Editorial Reviews

"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

"In 1975, when first published, this watershed study was as unprecedented, controversial, and as influential as its basic thesis: that gender influenced vocabulary and usage and that both in turn reflected oppressive social structures. The present volume goes way beyond the category of "revised edition": Bucholtz created an entirely new entity that contains and surrounds the original...the reader feels privy to a lively conversation at a gathering of a very extended family, complete with its controveries. Highly recommended."—Choice

"[A] re-release of Lakoff's 1975 seminal work on gender and language...this book is a first-rate acquisition for a variety of audiences. ...an excellent introductory text for either a graduate or undergraduate class on language and gender. The commentaries are often partly the personal journey of the authors negotiating gender through their lives and their work. Because of this, linguistics is made personally relevant in a way which rarely happens in undergraduate texts."—Elizabeth Winkler, Linguist List 16.521

From the Publisher