Chapter 6 Gendered Talk: Gossip, Shop Talk, and the Sound of Silence
Chapter 7 Learning How to Talk Like a Lady
Chapter 8 Different Words, Different Worlds?
Chapter 9 Advertising Gender
Chapter 10 Language Reform: A Msguided Attempt to Change Herstory?
Chapter 11 Writing Feminist Futures
References
Author Index
Subject Index
Description
Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Suzanne Romaine's main concern is to show how language
and discourse play key roles in understanding and communicating gender and culture. In addition
to linguistics--which provides the starting point and central focus of the book--she draws on
the fields of anthropology, biology, communication, education, economics, history, literary
criticism, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The text covers the "core" areas in the study
of language and gender, including how and where gender is indexed in language, how men and women
speak, how children acquire gender differentiated language, and sexism in language and language
reform. Although most of the examples are drawn primarily from English, other European languages
and non-European languages such as Japanese are considered. The text is written in an accessible
way so that no prior knowledge of linguistics is necessary to understand the chapters containing
linguistic analysis. Each chapter is followed by exercises and discussion questions to facilitate
the book's use as a classroom text. The author reviews scholarly treatments of gender, and then
uses her own data from the corpora of spoken and written English usage.
Special features include an examination of contemporary media sources such as newspapers,
advertising, and television; a discussion of women's speculative fiction; a study of gender and
advertising, with special attention paid to the role played by language in these domains; and
a review of French feminist thought, particularly as it relates to the issue of language reform.
From the jacket
"Suzanne Romaine's book Communicating Gender is, quite simply,
a masterpiece. Throughout the 11 chapters the author provides a comprehensive
account of how gender is communicated and how it is marked in language,
showing how gendered language practices are learned and how they reveal
underlying assumptions and beliefs. Romaine discusses all the relevant gender
and language-and-gender research of the past decades, putting it into wider
contexts. In particular she should be praised for her universal perspective,
for she draws on an extensive body of data from all over the world, avoiding
the usual Anglo-American dominance. The book is learned as well as well-written,
making it a happy 'must' for any student of linguistics or human relations."
-- Toril Swan, University of Tromsø (Norway)
"One of the world's finest sociolinguists, Suzanne Romaine, brings her
profound knowledge and keen insight to bear on the question of sexism in language.
Communicating Gender is wide-ranging and thoroughly researched, appealing
to a broad array of feminist and linguistic authorities and sources as well as
evidence from anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and popular culture.
Covering both familiar and new terrain, the book serves as a readable and
comprehensive introduction to the feminist study of language. Specialists will
find the book an excellent resource, with a wealth of examples and an up-to-the-minute
synthesis of a vast field. From pronouns to profanity, from science fiction to sexual
harassment, Romaine's discussion reveals how linguistic structures enforce gender-based
inequality--and what feminists have done and can do to dismantle the machinery of gender
ideology in language."-- Mary Bucholtz, Texas A & M University
"An insightful and stimulating book, providing a cogent analysis of the role
of language in constructing gender and in incorporating and perpetuating negative
cultural beliefs about women. Through a well-researched and compelling discussion,
the book deepens our understanding of the linguistic roots of women's oppression.
Romaine tackles a remarkable breadth of topics from language acquisition to visions,
through speculative fiction, into worlds without gender differentiation or inequality."
-- Elizabeth Aries, Department of Psychology, Amherst College
"In this wide-ranging and passionately-written book, Romaine argues that gender
is an inherently communicative process, and that communication is inherently gendered.
Romaine provides evidence for her claims from a wide variety of languages, periods in
history, and scholarly and popular writing. This is one of those rare books that is
clearly written and engaging enough for the lay reader, argued tightly enough for the
scholar, and that lays out the issues (with topics for discussion) in such a way as to be
invaluable to the student."-- Justine Cassell, MIT Media Lab
