Language and Gender

The relationships between language and gender are complex. Feminist researchers have importantly documented the ways language reflects, maintains, and even produces gender. This entry describes two issues that have dominated the research. The first is the matter of gender differences in language use. Despite widely held beliefs to the contrary, there is a lack of evidence that women and men use language differently. The second issue is sexism in language. It is now widely accepted that gender in language can reflect sexism. More recently constructionist theories expand the role of language to consider the ways discourse, conceptualized as broader meaning systems, produces beliefs about gender and sexuality.