These are exciting times for the feminist study of gender talk. Since the mid-1970s there has been a rapid growth in the number and range of approaches that have set about exploring the relationship between gender and language. This is, in part, a consequence of the postmodern ‘death of the subject’ and ‘turn to discourse’ in the social and human sciences, in which language is seen, not simply as a neutral means of expression, a passive vehicle through which we report on events and experiences-but instead, as something that is central to the construction and reproduction of gendered selves, social structures and relations (Gergen 1985; Shotter and Gergen 1989).