ABSTRACT
The field of language and gender has increasingly expanded to produce a large number of works relating to women’s and men’s lives, so much so that there is now a ‘feminist linguistics’ corresponding to and borrowing from feminist thinkers. Therefore, this chapter presents a brief overview of the development of the field of language and gender, the major works and their critiques. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the notion of femininity, drawing on the writings of sociologists, feminist thinkers and feminist linguists. In linguistics, the focus is on empirical research without much theorizing, while in feminist theory, the views of major thinkers are presented. Also, there are many works on femininity, yet none that combines the aspects of theorizing and research; therefore, the second part of the chapter deals with this. Lastly, the importance of feminism is highlighted in contrast to the troubling notion of postfeminism, setting the aims and questions of my work.
