Blackwell Reference Online

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In this chapter, I examine the complex relationship between gender and language, so that the common-sense nature of each of the terms and their relation to each other are troubled. I also analyse the way in which stereotypes of femininity play a major role in informing our beliefs about women, men and language and I suggest how we can consider the relationship between language, gender and other variables more productively. Feminist language research in the 1970s focused on the question of male dominance and female deference in conversation ( Lakoff, R. 1975 ; Spender 1980 ). It criticized both the social system, which it viewed as patriarchal and as forcing women to speak in a subservient way, and also individual males who were seen to violate the rights of their female interlocutors. Robin Lakoff's polemical analysis of what she considered to be female language patterns was one of the first feminist linguistic analyses that made a clear connection between the social and political oppression of women as a group and their linguistic behaviour. This subordinated status was displayed in the language patterns which she describes as ‘talking like a lady’ ( Lakoff, R. 1975 : 10). She gives, as an example, two statements which, she suggests, characterize the difference between women's subordinated language and men's dominant language: 1 Oh dear, you've put the peanut butter in the refrigerator ... log in or subscribe to read full text