Feminism and Linguistic Theory

Feminism, as a movement for social change, has always recognized the significance of language in both theory and practice. In the new feminist scholarship of the past two decades, theories about language have played an important part in attempts to understand and transform women's lives. Feminism and Linguistic Theory is a critical but comprehensive and accessbile introduction to recent work in this area. It ranges over a wide and varied field; not only does it review work in linguistics and other mainstream disciplines, but the alternative currents of radical feminist, Lacanian and postmodernist linguistic thought are given detailed consideration.