ABSTRACT
Twenty years after Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society published Kramer, Thorne and Henley's (1978) review essay on gender and language, Cameron (1998a) wrote another for the same journal. In it she suggested that, during the time spanning the two reviews, an interest in the topic had been undiminished. Indeed in the late 1990s there seemed to be a `notable ``burst'' of publishing activity' (Cameron, 1998a, p. 945). Cameron attributed the renewed vigour of feminist language study to the discursive turn across the humanities and social sciences, where the socially constructed, discursive nature of life is stressed. In psychology the in¯uence of the discursive turn is evident in the development of approaches that argue that language and not the mind is the best site for understanding human conduct (see Edwards, 1997; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). Feminist psychologists are playing key roles in the growth of discursive approaches, not least of all by developing analyses of the linguistic practices that produce and sustain social beliefs about gender (e.g. Edley and Wetherell, 1999; Gavey, 1992; Gill, 1993; Kitzinger, 2000a; Marshall and Wetherell, 1989; Weatherall and Walton, 1999).
