ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines different methods and perspectives for analysing the relationship between gender and variation in a speech community. It reviews the traditional way in which the variable of sex or gender has been used in social dialectology, and traces the development of the field from a concern with sex to a concern with gender. Some of the earliest work on gender differences in language focused on cases where there were different particles or suffixes that appeared to only be used by men or only by women. Such differences would constitute sex-exclusive norms, and non-native speakers sometimes perceived the differences to be so marked and so fundamental that it was said that the communities had separate languages for women and men. The chapter also reviews some of the generalisations that have been made about preferential gender differences in language in the past, and it explores what appears to be a paradox inherent to the generalisations.
