ABSTRACT
Chick, hangipants, sheila, Mrs, Miss and Ms. Words for women, do they matter? Are names as harmful as sticks and stones? Are girls better at language than boys? If women are so good at talking, why do men dominate many conversations? Is there a woman's language? Are women and men really communicating across a cultural divide or is `I don't understand' just an excuse for not listening? If a woman speaks like a man, has she lost touch with her femininity? The answers to these questions are not straightforward. As Robin Lakoff, a key ®gure in gender and language research, put it: `The questions surrounding women and language bring together some of the most agonising, complex, diverse and ultimately insoluble issues facing our society' (Lakoff, 1990, p. 199). This book is an exploration of the issues underpinning the sort of questions that get asked about gender and language.
