ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the key items, theories and models of language needed to understand the concerns feminists have in their search to investigate the connection between language and the social system which favours males. Feminists have tended to be more interested in the spoken form than the written, and in language produced in real life rather than the imagined sentences derived by native-speaker intuition. Discourse analysis, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, critical linguistics and social semiotic approaches to language are more useful frameworks for those interested in the interaction between language and social structure. Language changes constantly and dictionaries take a long time to be written: when published, they are invariably out of date. Linguistic relativity argues that different cultures divide up reality in different ways and that this is reflected in language. English is said to be a natural gender language. This means that the pronouns he, she and it refer to males, females and inanimates respectively.
