13 - Language, gender, and sexuality

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of theoretical approaches and important studies in language, gender, and sexuality, beginning with early approaches in which gender and sex were seen as roughly equivalent, essential attributes. It discusses questions concerning the interrelation of language and gender and focusing on male-female language differences. The sociolinguistic study of language and gender traditionally was characterized as falling into one of three approaches or theories: deficit, difference, and dominance. Dominance-based approaches focus on women's relative powerlessness vis-à-vis men in describing and explaining women's vs. men's language. Robin Lakoff holds that women's language as she describes it is weaker than men's, and so she is often characterized as taking a deficit approach. The study of linguistic differences across cultures led researchers focusing on pragmatics and discourse to propose that gender-based language differences can also be conceptualized as cross-cultural differences.