Gender, publication and citation in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology: The construction of a scholarly canon

Abstract

Feminist scholars have begun to ask how existing conceptual schemes and organizational structures in academic disciplines have excluded women and feminist ideas, and to provide suggestions for transformation. One strand of this work has been the exploration of how canons of thought are constructed in such fields as economics, sociology, and sociocultural anthropology. This article begins such an investigation for sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology by reviewing how gender correlates with publication and citation over a 35-year period (1965–2000) in five key journals, and in 16 textbooks published in the 1990s. It describes some marked differences in the publication of works by women and on gender in the five journals, as well as some significant differences in the degree to which men and women cite the work of women. It also considers how the rate of publication of articles on sex, gender, and women is correlated with publication of female authors. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for changing institutional practices in our field.