I think the book has aged well, but besides the stringent use of references perhaps some attention to the biological angle on language (perhaps something with the darling of research oxytocin and emphatic behavior in language?), but I'm not sure if that was already a thing in 2003. I think it is appropriate that in a lot of chapters hegemonic femininity and masculinity are teased apart from what are supposedly inherent differences, but if you're more of an essentialist, you can wait for speculations on evolutionary causes for differences in linguistic habits until the cows come home - they're not in here. Frequency, content, discourse, goals and results of particular linguistic behavior, cultural differences, development.īe aware that the whole book takes a constructivist Butlerian angle to gender and language. Other than that, it's all in here (as far as I can tell as a newbie). I do miss references, as they're kept rather infrequent and I think anything touching upon social psychology lacking references is putting itself in a weak position. It is a smooth read, written like a work of popular science, which is not at all a bad thing. The first chapter was somewhat chaotic in terms of the amount of subjects touched upon, but I guess necessary to set the stage. The book aims to be very didactic and accessible to everyone, which leads to some lengthier parts.

The book starts very broad, having to cover quite a lot of ground to ensure the rest of the book can be built on concepts such as constructed gender, discourse of language, etc. In any case I think the book is much more focused on picking apart all ways you can look at gendered linguistic behavior and looking at hypotheses how such behavior was established, perceived etc. I'm also unsure about a comment on the relevance of this work even if there are other forms of stereotyping prevalent (and stereotyping, as in the overestimation of particular (linguistic) traits in one of the genders, is only a small part of this book), I think there is hardly one the subject of speculation - besides perhaps class - as much as gender is. But then again, I do also sometimes rate the course instead of the literature when adding course literature. I'm surprised about the negative reviews here on Goodreads.

Language and Gender by Penelope Eckert