Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the second half of the twentieth century, social science researchers, among them linguists, directed what might easily be considered an excessive amount of attention to the discussion of differences between the sexes, including sex differences in language. Starting in the 1960s, sociolinguists, working as urban dialectologists, began providing detailed descriptions of characteristics that were said to distinguish women's and men's speech ( Wolfram 1969 ; Trudgill 1972 ; Labov 1972 ). In 1973, Robin Lakoff's now classic article, “Language and Woman's Place” ( Lakoff 1973 ), changed the research landscape and launched a new era of work on “women and language.” Lakoff's work did not change the emphasis on difference, however, and women's and men's speech continued to be compared and contrasted. With some notable exceptions (e.g. Gal 1978 ; Nichols 1983 ), it has only been since the early 1990s that researchers have seriously rethought the validity of taking sex and gender difference as a starting point for research on the interaction of language, sex, and gender. It has only been in recent years that sociolinguists have finally begun examining and reporting the significant heterogeneity within women's linguistic practices and within men's, and have begun noticing the similarity of the language of many women and many men. Perhaps even more importantly, since the early 1990s, ... log in or subscribe to read full text