Language and Gender

This new edition of Language and Gender has been thoroughly revised and updated, including the addition of entirely new chapters that explore recent work in the field. A range of approaches is covered at an introductory level, presenting sometimes difficult and complex issues in an understandable way. Every chapter concludes with a list of recommended readings so that each topic can be taken further. Like the first edition, it will be popular with students for its accessibility and with teachers for the range and depth it achieves in a single volume.

As in the first edition, the book is organised into three parts. An introductory section provides preliminary grounding in early ‘classic' studies in the field. In the second section, Talbot examines the language used by women and men in a variety of speech situation and genres. She addresses a range of issues and problems, including the difficulties arising from accounting for gender differences in terms of dichotomies like public vs private and informational vs affective and, not least, the trouble with looking for ‘differences' at all.

Talbot's emphasis, however, is on recent research. The last and largest section examines not gender difference but the construction and performance of gender in discourse. It includes new chapters outlining recent research on women's talk in public contexts and on language, gender and sexualities. The section as a whole reflects both the high degree of interest in mass media and popular culture found in recent language and gender research and the preoccupation with discourse and social change that is central to Critical Discourse Analysis.

The second edition of Language and Gender will become a key textbook for undergraduates and postgraduates in linguistics, sociolinguistics, cultural and media studies, gender studies and communication studies. The book is usable by students for whom it their first, or only, contact with sociolinguistics.

Mary Talbot is Secretary of the International Gender and Language Association