The Handbook of Language and Gender

Janet Holmes, Miriam Meyerhoff

Wiley, Feb 7, 2003 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 759 pages

The Handbook of Language and Gender is a collection of articles written by leading specialists in the field that examines the dynamic ways in which women and men develop and manage gendered identities through their talk.

It can be argued that society categorizes people first and foremost by gender. This book examines how and why this occurs, and looks at the implications of gender ideologies for the ways we interact. Data and case-studies from interactions in a number of different social contexts and from a range of different communities provide the basis of the discussion, while the contributors' theoretical discussions explore the problems, pitfalls, and potential benefits of research on and discourses about gender.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive, up-to-date, and stimulating picture of the field of language and gender for students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines, including linguistics, gender studies, communication, management, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

About the author

Janet Holmes holds a personal Chair in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington and is Director of the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project and the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Introduction to Sociolinguistics (second edition, 2001) and Women, Men and Politeness (1995). She is editor of Gendered Speech in Social Context (2000).

Miriam Meyerhoff is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, before which she was Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. She has published articles on language and gender, language change in creoles, and is the author of Constraints on Null Subjects in Bislama (Vanuatu) (2000).

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Handbook of Language and Gender; Volume 13 of Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics
• Editors: Janet Holmes, Miriam Meyerhoff
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Wiley, 2003
• ISBN: 0631225021, 9780631225027
• Length: 759 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General; Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics; Language Arts & Disciplines / Reference; Social Science / Gender Studies