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.